Sausage rolls should be approached with caution. Eaten straight from the oven while ostensibly helping out the hostess at a Christmas party, they are the finger food of the gods. Prised from a miserable cellophane wrapper on a garage forecourt, however, the suspiciously pink meat and flabby pastry is enough to drive anyone in the direction of vegetarianism. Unless you can get your year's ration by pigging out in other people's homes over the festive season, sausage rolls are one of those things that's always much better made at home.



The cheat

Simon Hopkinson and Lindsay Bareham agree. "No one makes Sausage Rolls now," they lament in The Prawn Cocktail Years, a book devoted to such unfashionable foodstuffs, "or, if they do, they cheat a little and use ready-made pastry – and why not? It can be very good – or bought sausagemeat, embellished with onions and herbs, or both." Taking them at their word, I purchase some frozen all-butter puff pastry, and six good honest Cumberland sausages (as recommended by a young Mr Oliver in Jamie's Dinners).

Splitting open a sausage, however good the quality, is always a disconcerting experience; the skin shrinks from the knife and the interior is oddly pallid. Undeterred, I soldier on, spooning the stuff into a bowl, adding a cheerful "handful" of roughly chopped thyme, and some lemon zest, then mixing it all together into what Jamie promises will be "fantastically flavoured sausagemeat". I roll out my neat little parcel of ready-made pastry into a rectangle ½ cm thick, and spoon a neat little cylinder of meat down the centre, egg wash the pastry, roll it up, press it together with a fork, and then cut the long sausage into individual rolls. They get another egg wash, and then go into the oven at 220C until "golden and crisp", which takes about 20 minutes. Even allowing for the fact I haven't had a warm sausage roll since last January, they're delicious: flaky, slightly coarse, and pleasingly porky. Then someone asks me how I made the pastry.

The quick

Coarse-cut sausage roll with Delia's flaky pastry. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Delia, who can always be relied upon to think practically, gives a recipe in her Complete Cookery Course for "quick flaky pastry" which she recommends for use in sausage rolls. I grate 175g cold butter into 225g plain flour, then stir with a palate knife until all the fat is well coated before pouring in just enough iced water to bring it all together into a dough, which can be rolled into a ball and put in the fridge, well wrapped, to chill for half an hour. It's easy pastry to work with, and the blobs of butter still visible as I roll it out look promising – and Delia doesn't disappoint. The cooked rolls are crisp, buttery and horribly moreish; I can see why in the Smith household these rolls are "a once in a year treat … with some crunchy pickled onions and celery". I eat four in quick succession while lifting them on to the cooling rack.

The slow

After generously allowing that laziness is occasionally acceptable, Simon and Lindsay go on to give a fearsomely time-consuming recipe for puff pastry, which requires seemingly endless rolling, folding and chilling, culminating with the deadly final instruction, "put the pastry in a polythene bag and leave it in the fridge for several hours or overnight". The following day, things are easier: I roll out the pastry, fill and bake as normal, and am fairly pleased with the results, which are proudly puffy, and wonderfully light. However, good as the pastry is, after it has cooled slightly, I find I'm less drawn to it than I was to Delia's the day before, and it's not just forcemeat fatigue – in a side by side tasting, I definitely prefer its crisp flakiness to this more delicate affair, which is no match for a really robust sausagemeat filling. Plus, one cooled, Delia's are still crisp, whereas these have gone a little limp.

The piggy

Coarse-cut sausage roll with shortcrust pastry. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Leiths Cookery School is unusual in recommending a shortcrust pastry in their sausage roll recipe, using a combination of lard and butter, which is so short it's very difficult to roll out. I love this pastry for quiches, but it's too dense and crumbly to work with the sausagemeat here.

Sausages v sausagemeat

A roll made with sausagemeat as opposed to meat from actual sausages. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

In the past, I've always made the festive sausage rolls with sausagemeat, of the sort available for making into stuffing, rather than sacrificing actual sausages to my greed. I make a batch up, adding herbs and lemon zest as before to make the contest fair, and am surprised at how salty they are in comparison. "This is more like something you'd buy at the fair," says one of my guinea pigs cruelly. "It doesn't have any texture." The coarser sausage filling makes for a more satisfying roll, and allows the flavours of the herbs to shine.

Roll your own

Simon Hopkinson and Lindsay Bareham sausage roll. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Simon and Lindsay, however, are satisfied with neither. Their recipe calls for me to make my own filling, using 400g lean belly pork, 300g lean pork shoulder, 150g streaky bacon and 100g pork fat, which I cut off the belly joint. I mince all of this together with a knife, although a mincing attachment would no doubt be rather easier, and then put it in a bowl with the grated rind of a lemon, some finely chopped thyme, parsley and sage, salt and lots of black pepper, and 1 tbsp syrup from a jar of stem ginger, and mix the lot together with my hands.

The activity is strangely pleasurable, like moulding wet clay at school, and the finished sausagemeat is certainly characterful, with its variegated colours and lumpy finish. But the test is in the eating – and all that chopping is richly rewarded by the reaction of my testing team. "You can really taste the bacon!" one enthuses, helping herself to a second – they like the fact the filling is "more interesting", both in terms of texture and flavour. It's more meaty and less salty, and has crisped up wonderfully on the outside, making it the undisputed winner. At the end of the tasting, I find someone's snaffled the one I left on the cooling rack to photograph.

Final touches

To cut through the richness of the pastry, I add 2 tsp mustard powder, which gives the rolls a bit of a kick, without overwhelming the flavour of the pork. I decide to decrease the proportion of belly pork, as I found this a little chewy, increase the bacon and minced shoulder, and omit the extra fat. Herbs and spices are largely up to you; I added a touch of nutmeg, in a nod to tradition and left out the parsley, as I felt the sage and thyme were quite enough for the meat to cope with. If you don't usually use lemon zest though, do give it a try; it really lifts the whole thing.

Perfect sausage rolls

Perfect sausage roll. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Makes about 25 small rolls

For the pastry:

225g plain flour

Pinch of salt

2 tsp English mustard powder

175g very cold butter

1 egg, beaten with a little water and salt

For the filling:

300g pork belly, skin removed, minced or finely chopped

300g pork shoulder, minced (this can often be bought ready minced if you don't have a good butcher)

200g smoked streaky bacon, rind removed, finely chopped

Zest of 1 lemon

Nutmeg, to grate

2 tbsp roughly chopped thyme leaves

8 sage leaves, roughly chopped

1. Sift the flour, salt and mustard powder into a mixing bowl, and grate in the butter. Stir them together with a knife, so the butter is well-coated with flour, and resembles a rough crumble mixture. Pour in enough ice-cold water to turn the mixture into a dough that comes away cleanly from the bowl – be cautious, it shouldn't be sticky – and bring together into a ball. Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for half an hour.

2. Put the meats into a large bowl and mix well with your hands. Tip in the rest of the ingredients and combine, seasoning well with black pepper and a little salt (remember the bacon will be salty, so don't go overboard). Pre-heat the oven to 220C.

3. Roll out the pastry on a floured surface to about a thickness of about ½ cm, and cut into 3 lengthways. Divide the meat into 3 sausages, as long as your pastry, and place one slightly off-centre on each strip.

4. Brush one edge of the pastry strip with beaten egg and then fold the other side over to enclose the sausagemeat. Press down to seal, and then go along the edge with the back of a fork if you like, to make a pattern. Brush with more eggwash, cut to the desired size, and prick each with a fork. Repeat with the rest of the pastry and meat.

5. Put the rolls on a baking tray, and bake for 25 minutes, or until golden. Cool on a rack, and serve warm.

Are sausage rolls the best party food ever, and what's the best meat to make them with; does anything rival the classic pork and herb? And has anyone ever found a decent commercially-made version?