Christmas dinner and one of my top 3 things to have on my plate is a pig in a blanket. The other two are sage and onion stuffing and decent homemade gravy. Get those three right and the dinner is a winner.
When it comes to post-swim snacks, sometimes the sweet option doesn’t actually appeal. This idea of a massive pig in a blanket as a post-swim snack came from a friend of mine who offered them around after a swim in Ullswater for Christmas. As soon as the box opened, the delicious smell of the sausage meat encased in bacon came wafting out. My initial thought was “What a GENIOUS idea!” The beauty of this they are delicious hot or cold and it’s not as fiddly as sorting out your usual chipolata sausages wrapped in bacon. If you have leftover ingredients, you can easily make this for your New Year's Dip post-swim snack as well!
It’s so simple and easy to do.
Ingredients
1 pack of streaky bacon
1 pack of sausage meat
Method
- Preheat your oven to 180 degrees (fan)
- Get your baking tray out ready
- Using the edge of a knife, stretch out the streaky bacon as much as you can. Do this until the baking tray is covered with strips of bacon.
- I bought sage and onion sausage meat from Cranstons in Cumbria. You could get plain sausage meat and season it up the way you like it best. Roll is out so it is the length of your baking tray.
- Place it on one side of the baking tray and then roll it until the bacon covers it.
- Pop it in the preheated oven.
- Now, timing-wise… I just got a new kitchen and I’m still testing out my new combi oven so bear with me here. Initially, I did it for 25 minutes. After which I checked on it, and the bacon still looked a tad anaemic so I popped it in for another 15/20 minutes. The point is to make sure that it is cooked all the way through.
- Let it cool and then cut into sections.
- Pop into a container ready for post-swim munchies. I had mine after a rather blustery Windermere dip. You can read all about it in the swim location section of the Wild Swimming Journal.
And there you have it. Two ingredients. Super easy and super super tasty! Enjoy!
