Turkey & Cranberry Sausage Rolls (2024)

FAQs

Why does cranberry sauce go with turkey? ›

Turkey is often dry, salty, and bland, which makes it the perfect partner for something sweet and moist. Cranberries are not overly sweet. Their tartness pairs well with the more bland-tasting turkey.

Why do my homemade sausage rolls have soggy bottoms? To prevent soggy sausage rolls, make sure your oven is preheated before cooking. Ensure to space out the sausage rolls on the baking tray when cooking to ensure there is enough room for the air to circulate and allow them to crisp up.

Carefully cut off and discard the netting from the rested turkey; slice the turkey crosswise into ¼-inch-thick pieces. Divide the mashed potato and cooked Brussels sprouts between 2 dishes. Top with the sliced turkey and cranberry sauce. Enjoy!

While sausage rolls are not specifically a holiday food in the UK — they're eaten year-round — I love serving them in the winter months.

They usually have a cute name like Gobbler, Pilgrim or Mayflower. But all versions are virtually the same at the end of the day. Consisting of turkey meat, cranberry sauce and stuffing smeared on a roll to replicate Thanksgiving day dinner.

Cranberries are absolutely perfect with turkey. Sort of like lemons and chicken. Something about the flavors, they're just made for each other. Which is why the sauce is so good to spread over turkey in your leftover turkey sandwiches.

The trays need to be cold when you place the uncooked pastry rolls on them so that they cook evenly in the oven and get a crispy base. Using hot trays will begin to soften and 'melt' the pastry before they're added to the oven - which will lead to soggy pastry.

Why add cream to sausage rolls? I asked our foodie experts about Curtis' bakery trick and they confirmed that cream softens the breadcrumbs and stops the meat mixture from drying out, as the breadcrumbs won't suck up moisture from the meat and other ingredients.

Reheat the defrosted cooked sausage rolls at 180C (160C fan) for 8 – 10 minutes.

If you don't have maple syrup (pancake syrup WILL NOT do, y'all), try honey or a more neutral sweetener like agave syrup, brown rice syrup, or even simple syrup. All of these syrupy ingredients are a perfect quick fix for bitter cranberry sauce.

Does canned cranberry sauce need to be cooked? ›

It's perfectly fine to serve up cranberry sauce — whole berry or jelled — straight out of the can. But in my experience, heating the canned sauce up takes its flavor to the next level. Plus, it becomes a little more aesthetically pleasing.

Due to the importance of cranberries in the 1500s and their abundance, it is believed that the pilgrims and the American Indians would have eaten them at the first Thanksgiving. Contrary to popular belief, cranberries do not actually grow in water. Cranberries grow on a low-growing, perennial vine.

The longest sausage roll in the world was made by King Pie in South Africa and measured 111.11 metres. The most Greggs sausage rolls eaten in 30 minutes stands at 21, and was set by John Dawes in 2022. Sticking with Greggs, the company sells around two million sausage rolls - its most popular product - every week.

I agree with Malcolm Minchin - the US doesn't have what the British, Australians, and Kiwis normally think of as a sausage roll. As others have mentioned, they are generically called pigs in a blanket. In Texas they call them kolaches, (which is a Czech fruit pastry with sausage or hotdogs replacing the fruit.)

Wrapping meat in pastry dates back to the Ancient Greeks and Romans, but the modern sausage roll is thought to have originated in 19th Century France. Sausage rolls grew in popularity in London in the early 1800s as a cheap street food, and rapidly became a quintessentially British snack.

Cranberries are one of the only Native American fruits

Other than that, we can only speculate as to what was on the menu. Native Americans were known to eat cranberries regularly and use them as a natural dye for clothing, so chances are they were found on Thanksgiving Day, 1621.

Cranberry sauce is traditional in New England. The "traditional" Thanksgiving dinners which were served to troops during the Civil War, WW1 and WW 2 were "New England Dinners" with turkey and cranberry sauce. The tradition spread throughout the US and was taken up by marketers when canned food became available.

Fast forward to the 17th century when the Pilgrims and Native Americans shared a feast that would later be recognized as the precursor to the modern Thanksgiving celebration. It's likely that cranberries made an appearance at this historic meal, setting the stage for their enduring role in Thanksgiving traditions.