With British Sausage Week in full flow, many pubs are taking part in special promotions to celebrate the banger. LUCY BRITNER reports
Every day five million Brits eat sausages - so it's no wonder the banger features prominently on pub menus.
Sausages are now available on menus in more than a quarter of a million catering outlets, and their popularity continues to increase.
From speciality sausages, to mix and match sausage and mash boards, to menus totally dedicated to it - the banger is a pub classic whose popularity never seems to wane.
Among those licensed outlets that are showing a lead in this field are the Sozzled Sausage Bar in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, where the menu is devoted entirely to the banger, and the Sussex Brewery pub in Emsworth, Sussex, where more than 45 different varieties of sausage are on offer.
With British Sausage Week - supported by the British Pig Executive (BPEX) - running until 30 October, many pubs are using the promotion to run special banger dishes and increase their offering.
The British Pig Executive recipe creations for sausage week include such gems as: Cumberland sausage with colcannon mash stuffed into mini Yorkshires with thyme gravy, and pork and tomato sausages with mustard bubble and squeak and roasted tomatoes.
Pubs around the country are also taking part in the annual Bangers and Mash Clash, run by BPEX.The competition involves a search for the best sausage and mash recipes, through cook-offs in eight regions.
Sausage 'n' stats
l The word sausage comes from the latin salsus meaning something salty.
l Sausages were the popcorn of ancient Greek theatre - available from aisle sellers in 900BC.
l Sausages are mentioned in Homer's The Odyssey - written almost 3,000 years ago.
l The Iron Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, once remarked: 'Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.'
l Sausages were dubbed bangers during World War Two - because they contained so much water, they would explode when fried.
l The world's biggest sausage was made in 2000 - weighing in at 15.5 tonnes and spanning 35 miles.
l Sausages are the UK's most popular dish for eating in the home.
Outlets that are making those sales really sizzle
Ye Olde Bell & Steelyard in Woodbridge, Suffolk
This pub is offering a gourmet sausage-and-mash menu to celebrate British Sausage Week.
Glenn and Lyn Yates, and their chef, Peter Crane, are offering a different sausage-and-mash dish every lunchtime and evening all this week.
The pub will be using sausages from local suppliers such as Revetts of Wickham Market, and Procter's of Ipswich. Dishes on offer include toad-in-the-hole with colcannon mash and spicy sausages with Bombay mash.
The Clifton Sausage in Bristol
Turnover at this sausage specialist is £80,000 to £100,000 a month.
Head chef Simon Quarrie is offering sausages from around the country on his specials board. Offers include Welsh Dragon, which contains pork, chilli and leek. Quarrie said: 'We are also offering our popular duck and orange, wild boar, and beef and Guinness sausages. The best seller at the pub - clocking up around 6,000 sausages a month - is Gloucester Old Spot pork with whole-grain mustard and local cider.
The pub uses about 6.5 metric tonnes of mashed potato a year - all made by hand from Maris Piper potatoes, double cream from a local dairy, English butter, and seasoning. The pub also serves around 300 litres of onion gravy a month with its sausage and mash dishes.
The Unicorn, in Cublington, Buckinghamshire
Here, around 25% of the menu is sausage based, and head chef Paul Capener will be continuing with the pub's mix-and-mash menu - offering a choice of six types of sausages, four mash and four sauces - for £8.95.
The pub, which sells 200lbs of sausages a month - about 1,200 individual bangers in total - is also holding a toad-in-the-hole day.
In addition the Unicorn has entered BPEX's Sausage-and-Mash Clash with a trio of sausages that comprise pork and mustard, pork and horseradish and pork and apple, with country-butter mash and roasted-red-onion gravy. The twist to the dish is that the Yorkshire pudding the sausages are being served in is made with cider instead of milk.
The best-selling sausage at the pub is the Italian Job, which consists of pork, sun-dried tomato and Parma ham.
The Fence Gate Inn, at Fence, near Burnley, Lancashire
Former master butcher and now head chef, Kevin Berkins, has incorporated his own sausage factory into the pub. Using family recipes, he became Lancashire sausage champion in 2004 with a sausage that contains organic pork, hand-made black pudding, sauteed leek and a hint off sage.
Best sellers at the pub include the combo - beef and sun-dried tomato and pork and chilli. His speciality sausage is Owd Lancastrian - a cross between a Cumberland and a Lincolnshire sausage - and his Best BBQ sausage is Toulouse, which is made with chunks of pork, garlic, parsley and red wine. Kevin has produced a special new sausage for British Sausage Week.
The Fence Gate sells 150-200 4oz sausages a week and serves them with home-made mash, bubble and squeak or chunky chips.
The Big Bang restaurant in Oxford
This outlet recently scooped Restaurant Magazine's UK Best Dishes award for Best Sausage and Mash. The restaurant's proprietor and designer, Maxwell Mason, designed the award-winning dish - Oxford sausages over a carrot-and-swede mash with rich-red-wine jus.
The restaurant's best-selling sausage is the Oxford sausage - which originally contained pork, veal, sage, salt and pepper, although the veal is no longer included.
The Big Bang runs a special offer called Bargain Bangers, which is two Oxford sausages, a pile of fresh mash - made with butter, cream, salt and pepper - stewed red cabbage and a red wine jus for £4.99. The offer is available for students and some local businesses. Most of the sausage dishes on the menu are around £7.99 and they sell 140 sausages a night. In the last 10 months the restaurant has sold 19,000 sausages.
During national sausage week, celebrity banger-lover Christine Hamilton is hosting a sausage and wine tasting.