As a food writer, I am often offered a chance to review something, in this case, Pulled Pork sausages produced under the label of Black Farmer.   I was intrigued by the notion of being able to put the cooked flavour of pulled pork into a sausage so I accepted the offer.

Black Farmer is a premium brand in most UK supermarkets though until now I hadn’t tried them. Created by Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones who was born in Jamaica and brought up in inner-city Birmingham, UK.  After working in the catering industry, Emmanuel-Jones enrolled on a training scheme that led to a job working for Peter Bazalgette on the BBC television series Food and Drink. He later continued to work in television as a producer and director for 15 years, which helped him fulfill his childhood dream to own a small piece of the British countryside, a farm in Devon.

Inspired by his love of the country and wish to support British farming,  he launched The Black Farmer brand. Besides wishing to support UK farmers Emmanuel-Jones wanted to make a premium sausage, so he used only higher welfare RSPCA Assured British meat, quality ingredients and made his sausages Gluten Free.

Pulled Pork Sausage

I ask the company if the pulled flavour actually comes from real pulled pork and they said

“The sausages contain pieces of pre-cooked pulled pork.  There are no issues with this as the sausages are then cooked overall (so no health or biological issues)”.  I also asked and if normal sausage casing where and they answered, “yes normal casing is used”.

Cooking
I cooked the six sausages in a large, nonstick frying on a medium-high heat for about 18-20 minutes, turning them frequently.  My cooking time was longer than the suggested cooking time on the packet (8-10 minutes) which in my opinion is a little on the short time for several reasons:  First and foremost the sausages contain barbecue sauce so they will brown quicker than most sausages which might perhaps give lesser experienced cooks the idea they were cooked prematurely.  Secondly, for all their reassurances I wanted a sausage containing both  raw and cooked pork to be fully cooked.

If your frying pan doesn’t have a plastic handle you can brown the sausage and then finishing the cooking in the oven (preheated 180C), just make sure the overall cooking time (stove and oven) is around 15-18 minutes.

Taste
The taste was both very good and yet disappointing.  Very good because the sausages did indeed taste of pulled pork ….juicy and full of flavour.

Disappointing, because if you have ever tasted good melt in the mouth pulled pork in the USA then however good these sausages are they will never replicate that experience.

For some reason, the skins are a little tough and remind me of the texture of skins on some German sausages, making them chewier?

Conclusion
The pork flavour and texture (of the sausage meat) was good and you can also taste the barbecue sauce, so they are a quality product, just not one I would use week in and week out.

Recommendation
My recommendation of when to use these sausages would be on a barbecue.   I have a simple method of cooking sausages in beer.  I take a disposable foil tray and place 2 packs (12 sausages) of the raw sausages inside.  Cover them in a good quality bottle of ale and 1/2 a thin slice onion and cook in the beer on the BBQ.  After 10 minutes of gently simmering, take the sausages out and brown on the BBQ, then serve.

Don’t forget to visit my other blogs
Easy & Cheap Student Recipes-A great resource if you are a student or just learning how to cook.

Old Blog Posts– A growing archive of posts from my original food blog, which had 20,922,573 page views from its beginning in February 2006 until December 2015.