Sausage Review - we review sausages

Porky White's (Surrey) - Nduja Inspired Pork

The kind people at Porky Whites sent us a range of their sausages so we could update our reviews. Nduja inspired pork sausages eh? We'll give them a go for sure...

The Porky Whites packaging has the recently been updated to a new style which we understand to be referred to as "dinner inspiration" and like their other packs it also carries a novel QR code on the back which links to some interesting recipes etc., on Porky Whites own web site. This packaging says that these are made from 75% of the finest cuts of pork. Succulent, versatile and flavoursome, is quite a statement in anybodies book!...

Nduja sausage (pronounced 'en-doo-ya') is a spicy, spreadable salami from southern Italy according to BBC Good Food. I cannot imagine this sausage will be "spreadable" when cooked, so the inspiration must be the flavour.

Now the pork is described once again as from UK and non-UK sources, which isn't as specific as we would like to be honest given the amount of interest of such Sausage Review readers have said they would like. As we've said previously we'll continue to investigate this but we have read from the Porky Whites web site that "Almost all of the meat sourced for our products comes from within the UK with some additional supplies coming from trusted EU farms to make up any shortfall of UK supplies. We always ensure that animal welfare is a priority and over 90% of our suppliers are either RSPCA or Red Tractor accredited." (A figure of 100% should be the case really)

These particular sausages do have wheat rusk in them so are probably not gluten free but they are free from any GM ingredients, and as much as we would have preferred natural skins, these are in pork collagen skins as are the rest of the Porky Whites range.

I'm sure you've probably read previously our views on these and the difficulty we've had trying to cook such by pan frying and trying to avoid the skins splitting and in some cases going all "rubbery" and peeling off. OK yes it might not bother some, but it does bother us, and frankly others we have spoken to.

In the raw they looked pretty good weighing in around 62g a go and in a fairly standard size it seems at 105mm x 28mm uncooked.

Pan shallow frying is in the recommended guidelines on the packet (which is how we do all our sampling to keep it consistent), however this time, given the amount of sampling we've completed with these type of skins, we again cooked at a much lower temperature and for longer than the 15mins the packaging recommended. A catering thermometer being used to check the internal temperature and made sure that we exceeded a temperature of 71°C for 20 seconds to make sure they were cooked sufficiently. Food safety and all that...

They cooked up OK but yet again, even being very careful with the temperature the skins split unfortunately once again.  Look we agree that this fact isn't a show stopper but rubbery bits of skin burning in the pan and sticking to the other sausages do nothing for the overall look when dishing up. Perhaps we are being altogether too fussy, but come on things like this do matter. The cases need to retain the contents and keep the sausage succullent, having large gashes in the skins lets the juices/oils out. In this case we noticed approximately an additional 18g of oil in the pan after cooking from only 6 sausages. This amount is very noticeable and given the redness in colour it must contain some of the flavouring ingredients.

Minimum shrinkage was found which is good but a significant cooked weight loss of approx 29% was noted on the sample item. The succulence of these sausages was unfortunately not so good.

The sausages did cut easily and the texture was a good medium.  The bite and chew was OK too with some warmth (really a gentle heat as the labelling says) but the sausage was a little dry. This wasn't just me, the rest of the team said the same. Frankly perhaps loosing so much oil/liquid/moisture in the cooking surely must be the reason.

You may get better results of course with the skins and/or succulence if you were to oven bake or use these in some of the recipes that Porky Whites have on their web site, rather than pan frying or airfrying. Just saying.

The bottom line is, we are not sure about these. Would we buy these in our supermarket weekly shop? Probably not.

Look, this is our honest opinion and of course it may differ completely from your own. If you don't agree or have yourselves a comment or two about these, we'd be pleased to hear about it.


Porky White's (Surrey) - Nduja Inspired Pork (May 2025)

Here's the sample details:
105x28mm before cooking, 100x28mm after.
62g before cooking, 44g after.
That's a shrinkage of approx 4% & weight loss of approx 29%.
6 sausages in a 400g pack retails online at Ocado (and similar etc) £3.50 (£8.75/kg approx).

   

    

 
  

www.porkywhites.com