I'm sure I'm not the first to write about this, but I decided to investigate. I bought, examined, cooked and ate a pack of these famously cheap sausages - and I'm going to tell you all about it.

The Famous 2p Sausages

Here they are - this pack of eight bangers cost me 16 pence.

The first - and probably most important - thing to note, is that these are not sausages that have been specially manufactured to be sold at 16 pence a pack - they are in fact just Tesco's own 'value' brand sausages - that have always been available in this form and recipe.

So what we're seeing here is not a sausage phenomenon - it's merely a promotional one.

Examining The Pack

Before we get to the sausages themselves, let's take a good, close look at the information provided on the pack...

The Front label

454g of sausages - 56g per sausage (I tested this and the declared weight was true), or 28g of sausage per penny.

There's an at-a-glance nutrition information panel on there - pointing out that two of these sausages contributes one-third of your RDA of salt, and one-fifth of your RDA of saturated fat

Livestock Standards

The front label also informs us that the pork in the sausages is produced according to Tesco's livestock standards - which, on its own, means nothing much at all (its not as if they would sell them something that fell short of their standards - that's what standards are for - isn't it?)

Tesco's policies on livestock can be perused here - they seem fairly reasonable, although I'm sure animal welfare campaigners would probably pick them up on lack of quantitative data. Take a look and make up your own mind...

The Ingredients And Nutrition Panels

Crikey, that's a lot of text. Let's try to summarise the composition:

40% Pork, supplemented with a stabilised mix of water, fat and wheat starch, protein and flour, plus some other stuff for flavouring and preservation, plus rusks.

That's not a particularly large amount of meat (around 60% is typical for standard bangers - 'butcher' sausages typically contain more still), but at the same time, it's not astonishingly low either - I've seen other brands - even those not specifically marketed as low budget foods - with a smaller percentage.

Nutrition

This is where I got a bit confused - because I can't make the figures add up. The chart below is taken from the stated breakdown per 100g of raw product:

The stated nutritional components add up to 46.2% of the sausage - we know there's less than 40% water, because the ingredients have to be stated in descending order of quantity. So there's at least 14% - probably more - of the sausage that isn't fat, protein, carbohydrate, fibre, or water, despite it having to be from one or more of the declared ingredients.

If anyone reading this can suggest a plausible identity for the missing matter, please let me know...

Anyway, I guess that's enough waffle - let's take our first look at the sausages themselves.

Out of the pack, they look like - well - they look like sausages - they're conspicuously soft to handle, and they're a bit pink and featureless.

So, above, I looked at the information on the packaging, and what it might be telling us - here, we're looking at the sausages themselves - in the flesh... well... 40% flesh, that is...

Taking one out of its skin was quite interesting - it really is quite a smooth, sticky paste inside, rather than something I could honestly describe as sausagemeat.

So, into the pan they go - I'm cooking four of them without their skins - for a number of reasons - the main one being that my kids prefer them that way, but it also offers another way to examine them as they cook, and when they're done.

I started with the eight sausages in the pan - four of them have the skins removed - as my kids prefer them that way - but it will also be interesting to see if the skinless ones cook differently.

After 20 minutes or so of gentle frying, they were turning nicely golden brown - the skinless ones were developing a distinct and crunchy crust (must be all that wheat, I think). There was about half a centimetre of fat in the bottom of the pan - all from the sausages.

When they were done, I weighed them. The ordinary ones had reduced from 56g to 52g - mostly from exuded fat - although a little of the weight loss will have been water.

The skinless ones had dropped to 41g - that's more than 25% lost weight.

Eating The Sausages

I served them up with fried potatoes, beans and an egg.

The Final Verdict

OK, here it is - the unvarnished truth.

They're not bad.

Seriously - I know a lot of people will be willing me to say they were foul or inedible, or deeply sub-standard or something. They're not - they're... OK. They're certainly nothing to rant and rave about, but there's nothing particularly bad about them either.

The flavour was fair - they were quite succulent (all that fat, I bet) and nicely seasoned. They're not at all 'meaty' or chunky in texture - in fact they're quite soft - it's a bit like eating a sausage already in a bun (which I guess is all the wheat). But you can actually taste the pork.

The kids thought they were quite good - in fact they enjoyed them more than they would enjoy a more substantial and meaty sausage

A Bit Of A Surprise Then

Yes. A bit of a surprise. I'm determined not to be too snobby about this - and I refuse to imagine a problem where none is apparent - It is true to say that I do also enjoy a really good-quality, meaty, solid, chunky butcher sausage - and these tuppenny sausages aren't anywhere close to that. But they're not trying to be - they're just trying to be cheap, ordinary bangers - and it cannot be denied that they achieve some measure of success in achieving that.

So there it is. I cannot see any objective reason to hold these to absolute scorn. Too soft? Too fatty? So what? - people eat (and wildly enthuse about) other soft, fatty things (Foie Gras, anyone?). They're not going to satisfy everyone, but nothing does that anyway.

When I get a chance, I'll pick up packs of the budget sausages other supermarkets have on offer, for comparison.