Sticky Balsamic Sausages with Caramelised Onion Mash
What you’ll need
Non-stick, with a lid that fits
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Sharp beats expensive
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Big enough to work on
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Sits in the sink without tipping
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Baking is not a guess
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Or a ricer, for smoother mash
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Ingredients
Method
- 01
Boil the potatoes
Cut the potatoes into even chunks and boil in well-salted water for 18-20 minutes, until a knife slides in with no resistance. Drain and leave in the colander for 5 minutes to steam dry. Wet potatoes make gluey mash.
1 kg Maris Piper potatoes
Steam-dry the potatoesFive minutes after draining. The drier they are, the more butter they take without going heavy.
- 02
Brown the sausages slowly
Cook the sausages in a large frying pan over medium heat for 15-18 minutes, turning every few minutes, until deeply coloured all over and cooked through to 75 C. Medium heat, not high: a thick sausage needs time, and a scorched skin over a raw middle helps nobody. Lift them out.
8 thick pork sausages
- 03
Caramelise the onions in the same pan
Add the sliced onions and the thyme sprigs to the sausage pan with a pinch of salt and cook over medium-low heat for 15-18 minutes, scraping up the browned bits, until dark and soft.
2 onions
One pan, three jobsSausages, onions and gravy share it, so the fond ends up in the sauce. Wash it and you lose that.
- 04
Build the gravy
Add the brown sugar, 2 tbsp balsamic, Dijon and 250 ml stock and simmer over medium-high heat for 6-8 minutes, until reduced to a glossy gravy that coats the back of a spoon. Return the sausages and roll them through it.
1 tbsp brown sugar · 1 tsp Dijon
- 05
Mash
Mash the potatoes with the butter and the milk, warmed. Cold milk makes mash stiff and dull. Season well, then fold about two thirds of the caramelised onions through, keeping the rest for the top.
50 g butter · 100 ml whole milk
Warm the milkCold milk seizes the starch and gives you claggy mash. Thirty seconds is enough.
- 06
Serve
Pile the mash onto warm plates, sit the sausages on top and spoon over the sticky onion gravy and the reserved onions. Discard the thyme stalks.
StorageSausages and onions keep 3 days in the fridge in an airtight box and reheat well in a covered pan over low heat with a splash of water to loosen the glaze. Mash keeps 3 days but stiffens as it chills. Reheat it in a pan with 2-3 tbsp of warm milk, beating until smooth again, rather than in a microwave, which makes it gluey. The sausages freeze 2 months; the mash does not freeze well.