Steak Lorne Sausage Mix - 1kg

I bought this mix after researching it online . I decided to try and make my own as I have, up until now, been ordering from a butchers in Scotland so thought Id have a go myself..I used the Lidls 750g beef + pork mixed, plus spices for me were , coriander, mace, ginger, nutmeg ( all ground) plus lots of pepper. I also add 2 herbs, ground wild garlic and tarragon.. I would suggest you do not add any extra salt as the Lorne mix does have a bit of a salt kick to it. I mix all of the spices into the meat mix first. Add 250g of the Lorne mix then add the water — perfect! Made 12, good and thick proper slices that looked and tasted just like a butcher’s lorne .Half the batch I mixed in some chopped dried green chilli flakes .. my goodness , what a great flavour.Slices freeze brilliantly with baking paper between them and cook perfectly straight from frozen.The 500g bag of Lorne mix will easily make 2 comfortable batches of 12 slices — great value and highly recommended!

I seen this being used on social media and looked it up as had tried to make my own lorne sausages as I don't live in Scotland anymore.The bag gives instructions on how to make a massive batch but I just divided the weights down according to how much mince is being used.1st attempt I could only get 5% lean steak mince 1kg so added 125g of the sausage mix and same weight of chilled water as instructed. I mixed the mix in with the mince yo get it uniformly mixed and then added the chilled water and mixed again. Laid cling film out over a large loaf tin and pressed the mix into the tin so that it is wrapped in clingfilm and the lorne block can be lifted out in one piece later. I put this in the fridge overnight then sliced it up the next day. I would give this attempt about 6/10 as the sausages were a bit like the texture of a normal pork sausage and not exactly like authentic lorne sausage you would buy from a Scottish butchers, but still very nice.2nd attempt I decided to buy a 750g pack of 10% minced beef and also bought 500g of 5% lean pork mince. One of the reasons for this is the sausages when sliced 1st attempt were a bit small due to the large loaf tin (2kg tin I think) so I thought extra weight would make the sausages a bit larger like you would expect a lorne sausage to look like and the addition of the pork to see if that affects the flavour and texture. This time I sprinked 188g of the mix (keeping the ratio proportionate to the instructions for the 1.5kg weight of meat) over the top of the mixed meat but this time added the same weight in water at the same time (not once the mix was mixed through the meat) I then mixed everything through thoroughly, added to the loaf tin using cling film and chilled overnight. When in sliced the block up it made.24 good sized slices and they looked exactly like authentic butchers lorne sausages. On trying them the whole family gave them 10/10 and said they would struggle to tell difference with the butchers ones. I think the ratio of beef to pork mentioned works well and the fat contents of the meats is about right I didn't go with higher % fat pork as didn't want them to be too greasy.Once sliced I used baking paper to layer between the sausages and broke them down into bags of 4. I froze some of these and have found they cook brilliantly straight from frozen and easy to get apart because of the baking paper separating each slice or you could defrost them if you wish. Where they have been frozen they keep their shape really well when cooking.Will definitely be buying this going forward but the 1kg is so big I will get at least another 3 full batches of the 1.5kg lornes out of this before I need more for the price you really can't go wrong.Only thing I thought of as an observation is that the company could use a zip seal bag as you have to cut the bag open but all I did was put the entire bag within a large zip seal food bag I already had to keep the mix fresh.Overall excellent find and will be buying this for years to come. Would highly recommend.

This was great really tasted lovely. Not too expensive.

Good tasty mix only gave 4 stars as am not keen on the bright pinkish colour it gives the meat.

Great quality

Looked great,made nice firm sausage but was so salty that we were unable to eat it and had to throw out the whole batch!

Haven't used it yet.

Good seasoning as i come to expect from Tong Master. A tad salty, maybe use a little less next time i make sliced sausage.