Healthy Mini Sausage Rolls for Snack or a Meal

I've been craving the pies I loved as a child—but in a healthier way. At first, I just accepted that "healthy me" doesn’t eat pies because they’re hard to find with the right ingredients and seem too complicated for my limited cooking skills. But then, inspiration struck—and I proved myself wrong!

Turns out, they’re not complicated at all. In fact, they’re super easy to make and so delicious!

In this blog, I’ll show you how to make them so you can enjoy tasty, homemade sausage rolls with minimal effort.

What you'll need

1. Organic unbleached and unfortified all-purpose flour - or any all-purpose flour of your choosing.

2. Free range organic butter - or any unsalted butter of your choosing. Note it needs to be cold.

3. Vinegar - I use an organic one.

4. Sugar - as you can assume I use an organic one.

5. Sea salt

6. Some herbs and spices

7. Ground meat or as the South African's say "mince" - notes on this below. But I used 2 x 450g.

8. Tallow to cook the mince in - or any cooking oil or fat of your choosing to cook the mince in.

9. A pan - I choose to use stainless steel pans.

10. An oven - I am LOVING our XL toaster oven.

11. A stand mixer or some arm power - p.s. the KitchenAid stand mixer we have has 100% been worth what we paid for it because of how much easier it makes making things and thus I make so many more things that I wouldn't bother trying to make if I needed to hand mix them. Especially dough.

12. Egg - free range and organic. It is for the egg wash to give the pie's a nice color.

13. Sourdough Starter - active or not.

How to make

Defrost your meat if frozen. See notes on meat.

Start with the dough because it needs to go into the fridge for a minimum of two hours.

I use this recipe by Little Spoon Farm. It is the first pie dough recipe I tried and found I love it and therefore I continue to use it. If you are thinking - "but pie's need a puffier dough". Yes! But one of the reviews on the Little Spoon Farm recipe is that it comes out more like a puff pastry dough than a pie dough. She explained this has something to do with the fat ratio, but the same happened when I made it and I love it, so I did not attempt to make changes to it to "correct" this.

Note: This is a Sourdough Pie Crust Recipe. I choose to make sourdough-based baking goods because they are easier on the digestion. True, this dough doesn't ferment as long as for example bread and buns, but it does still stand, and I do think that some fermentation and using the starter does make this pie crust more digestible.

I have made this dough with both discard and active starter. I prefer making it with active starter (unless I don't have any).

Tips for making the dough:

1. Use the recipe linked above or any dough recipe of your choosing.

2. I recommend a stand mixer with a dough hook to make life easier - it has literally meant I make so many baked goods I would not make if I mixed by hand. Even if a recipe says mix by hand - I don't. I just use the stir feature.

3. Weigh the butter before grating it (I forgot to do this the first time).

4. And to make it healthier - wrap it in a beeswax wrap when it goes in the fridge to limit plastic touching your food.

5. I double the recipe.

The meat part

My meat of choice for these sausage rolls with lean ground bison (about 450g) and a pack of organ blend ground beef. Organs are super food, and I ensure that we eat organs at least once a week in different ways.

The easiest and nicest ways I have found is organs blended in with ground beef and liver pate. For the organ blend ground beef, you have two options. You can buy it if it is available where you live. I live in Calgary, and it is available in 30% organs from Gemstone at the Calgary Farmers Market. Your other option is to make it. This is on my to do list for when I buy the Kitchen Aid mincing attachment. I really want to make our own mince since we buy a half a cow, including the organs once a year. Plus, the South African in me would like to make my own boerewors and drywors. Okay, back to reality since I don't have a mixer - I currently buy the blend.

Combine your chosen mince in a mixing bowl with your hands. Again, I choose stainless steel mixing bowls because I limit our plastic exposure (especially with food) and I have a toddler who likes to participate so glass isn't my go-to.

What makes food healthy in my opinion has less to do with the "recipe" and more to do with how we source the ingredients and how we cook and store the food.

Mix in some sea salt, pepper and other herbs and spices of your choosing. I used, salt, pepper, oregano and some onion powder (p.s. making your own onion powder if you have a dehydrator is awesome. Our toaster oven is also a dehydrator.).

Mix in some egg to bind it. I used 2 eggs for 2 x 450g of beef. I probably could have bound it better using some flour or breadcrumbs, but since there is already flour in the dough I didn't want to add more to the meat. I was okay with it falling apart a little bit and not looking picture perfect.

Heat up your pan with some tallow. My choice of cooking oils and fats are tallow, coconut, ghee and butter. For this I used some bison tallow. Being in Calgary I try to eat the way people from here ate and since bison is native to Calgary I try to incorporate bison into our diet. I do find that bison can be a bit "dry" on its own. Which is why I always mix it with ground beef.

Shape the mince into sausage shape. I shaped them like in the photo below but then cut them in half long ways to make them thinner. I cut them in the pan using a spatula to minimize them failing apart.

Cook the sausage strips in the pan. I found it was found if some of them fell apart. It still worked.

Making the sausage rolls

While cooking that remove your dough from the fridge. Cut it in half and roll out the first half. Put the other half back in the fridge. Cold dough works best.

Roll out the dough to achieve the thick/thinness you want.

Remove the sausage strips from the pan when they are mostly cooked. They will cook more in the oven when the pies are being baked. You can try using raw mince if you want but I didn't want to risk them not cooking through. So, I preferred to use slightly cooked mince.

Line up the sausage strips on the dough leaving enough dough on either side to fold the dough over the sausage strips.

Cut the dough using a dough cutter or a knife to be able to fold it up.

Fold up the one side to the top of the sausage strip.

Make egg wash - using 2 eggs and a little bit of water. Mix it up and get a brush to apply it to the dough.

Brush the egg wash on the top of the folded-up dough where you will be sticking the other side.

Fold up the other side of the dough so that the meat is covered entirely.

Use a dough cutter or knife and cut the sausage rolls to the size you would like. Since I made mini ones, I cut small pieces.

Place the sausage rolls on an oven tray with some space between them.

Brush the top of the sausage rolls with the egg wash.

Bake them in the oven for about 20 minutes on 350F. Check them to see that they are nice and brown and puffed up.

Remove from the oven and serve warm (or cold as a snack) with some sauce.

These healthy mini sausage rolls prove that comfort food can be both nourishing and delicious! They’re easy to make, packed with wholesome ingredients, and perfect for a snack or meal. Whether you're prepping them for a quick bite, a party, or a lunchbox treat, they’re sure to be a hit.

I’d love to hear how they turn out for you! Let me know in the comments if you try them, and don’t forget to share this recipe with anyone who loves a good (and healthy) sausage roll. Happy baking!

Carmen

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