10 Sausage Recipes to Upgrade Your Midweek Meals

I don’t know about you, but in my household, once the bills are paid, the next biggest outgoing seems to be food.

The supermarket appears on our bank statement more than almost anything else. There’s the weekly shop, of course, but then come the almost-daily trips for the things we’ve “forgotten” — milk, bread, something for dinner, something we apparently couldn’t possibly have anticipated needing three days earlier. Individually, they don’t seem too painful. Collectively, they gradually empty the bank account.

My husband regularly asks how on earth I manage to spend so much on food. And while I’ll freely admit that meal planning isn’t exactly one of my greatest talents, there’s another fairly unavoidable fact: food is expensive.

There are only two of us at home, so I can only imagine what it currently costs to feed a family of four or five every week.

It has made me look a little differently at what I cook during the week. My midweek meals are fairly standard, but where I might once have thought nothing of buying steak a couple of times a week or picking up salmon fillets, I’ve started looking for ways to make our food shop go further without resorting to meals that feel relentlessly “budget”.

And, somewhat unexpectedly, this has led me to sausages.

I’ve never really considered sausages as anything other than part of a weekend fry-up. They certainly weren’t something I routinely threw into the weekly shop. My husband, on the other hand, loves a good banger — and once I actually started cooking with them, I realised I’d been overlooking one of the easiest ways to make affordable, filling dinners.

A pack of good sausages can stretch surprisingly far. Take them out of their skins and they become sausage meat for pasta or meatballs. Slice them into a traybake and suddenly you don’t need two or three sausages per person. Add potatoes, pasta, rice, vegetables or a rich sauce and you’ve got the sort of hearty dinner that actually feels like dinner.

So, in the spirit of keeping the supermarket bill under slightly better control, here are ten easy sausage recipes for affordable midweek meals.

1. Creamy Sausage & Mustard Pasta

Serves 4

You’ll need: 6 pork sausages, 300g pasta, 1 onion, 2 garlic cloves, 150ml chicken stock, 150ml double cream, 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard, Parmesan and black pepper.

Method: Remove the sausages from their skins and fry the meat until golden, breaking it into chunks as it cooks. Add the finely chopped onion and garlic and cook until soft. Pour in the stock, cream and mustard and simmer for 5 minutes. Toss through cooked pasta with a splash of pasta water, plenty of black pepper and grated Parmesan.

Make it go further: Add frozen peas or spinach just before serving.

2. Sausage, Apple & Onion One-Pan Roast

Serves 4

You’ll need: 8 pork sausages, 600g baby potatoes, 2 eating apples, 2 red onions, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp dried thyme and 150ml chicken stock.

Method: Roast the halved potatoes and onions with the oil and thyme at 200°C for 20 minutes. Add the sausages and apple wedges, pour the stock around the tray and roast for another 30 minutes until everything is golden and the apples have softened.

Why it works: Sausage and apple is a classic combination, but cooking everything together makes it an easy midweek dinner with hardly any washing up.

3. Sausage & Tomato Gnocchi Bake

Serves 4

You’ll need: 6 sausages, 500g gnocchi, 1 onion, 2 garlic cloves, 400g tin chopped tomatoes, 1 tsp dried oregano and 150g mozzarella.

Method: Squeeze the sausage meat from the skins and brown in an ovenproof frying pan. Add the onion and garlic, followed by the tomatoes and oregano. Simmer for 10 minutes. Stir through the gnocchi, scatter with torn mozzarella and bake at 200°C for around 20 minutes until bubbling and golden.

Make it go further: Stir a couple of handfuls of spinach into the tomato sauce.

4. Sausage, Pepper & Paprika Rice

Serves 4

You’ll need: 6 sausages, 250g long-grain rice, 1 onion, 2 peppers, 2 garlic cloves, 1 tbsp smoked paprika, 400g chopped tomatoes and 500ml chicken stock.

Method: Slice and brown the sausages in a large pan. Add the onion, peppers and garlic and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the paprika and rice, then add the tomatoes and stock. Cover and gently simmer for around 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender and most of the liquid has been absorbed.

Make it go further: Frozen peas work brilliantly stirred through for the final few minutes.

5. Sausage & Caramelised Onion Toad in the Hole

Serves 4

You’ll need: 8 sausages, 2 onions, 140g plain flour, 4 eggs, 200ml milk, vegetable oil and gravy to serve.

Method: Heat a little oil in a roasting tin at 220°C and cook the sausages and sliced onions for around 15 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk the flour, eggs and milk into a smooth batter. Carefully pour it around the hot sausages and return immediately to the oven. Cook for 25–30 minutes without opening the door until dramatically puffed and golden.

Serve with: Gravy and peas for a proper comfort-food dinner.

6. Spicy Sausage Arrabbiata

Serves 4

You’ll need: 6 sausages, 300g penne, 2 garlic cloves, 1 tsp chilli flakes, 400g chopped tomatoes, 1 tbsp tomato purée, Parmesan and fresh basil or parsley.

Method: Remove the sausage meat from the skins and fry until browned. Add the garlic and chilli flakes, followed by the tomato purée and chopped tomatoes. Simmer for 15 minutes until rich and thick. Toss with cooked penne and finish with Parmesan and herbs.

Turn up the heat: Add extra chilli flakes or a spoonful of chilli paste if you like things properly spicy.

7. Sausage, Leek & Cheesy Potato Pie

Serves 4

You’ll need: 6 sausages, 2 leeks, 150ml chicken stock, 150ml cream, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, 750g potatoes and 100g mature Cheddar.

Method: Peel, boil and mash the potatoes. Meanwhile, brown the sausage meat in a frying pan, add sliced leeks and cook until soft. Stir in the stock, cream and mustard and simmer until slightly thickened. Transfer to a baking dish, top with mash and Cheddar and bake at 200°C for 25 minutes.

Make ahead: Assemble the whole thing earlier in the day and bake when you’re ready to eat.

8. Sausage Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

Serves 4

You’ll need: 6 sausages, 1 onion, 2 garlic cloves, 400g chopped tomatoes, 1 tsp oregano, 300g spaghetti and Parmesan.

Method: Remove the sausages from their skins and roll the meat into small meatballs. Brown them in a frying pan, remove and set aside. Cook the onion and garlic in the same pan, add the tomatoes and oregano, then return the meatballs. Simmer gently for 15–20 minutes and serve over spaghetti with Parmesan.

Why it works: Making smaller meatballs means six sausages suddenly look like a very generous dinner for four.

9. The Midweek Fry-Up

Serves 4

You’ll need: 8 pork sausages, 8 rashers of bacon, 4 eggs, 250g mushrooms, 4 tomatoes, baked beans, 4 hash browns and bread for toast.

Method: Grill or fry the sausages and bacon until cooked and golden. Fry the mushrooms and halved tomatoes in the same pan, cook the hash browns until crisp and warm the beans. Fry the eggs to your liking and serve everything together with hot buttered toast.

Keep it affordable: A fry-up doesn’t have to be reserved for weekend breakfast. It’s filling, uses inexpensive ingredients and is also an easy way to use up bacon, eggs, mushrooms or tomatoes already sitting in the fridge.

10. Loaded Sausage & Cheese Potato Skins

Serves 4

You’ll need: 4 large baking potatoes, 4 pork sausages, 100g mature Cheddar, 3 spring onions, 2 tbsp soured cream, black pepper and a little oil.

Method: Bake the potatoes until crisp and tender. Halve and scoop out most of the potato, leaving a border around the skin. Fry the sausage meat until browned, then mix with the potato, half the cheese, spring onions and soured cream. Spoon back into the skins, scatter over the remaining cheese and bake for 15 minutes until bubbling and golden.

Make it your own: Add jalapeños, crispy onions or a dash of hot sauce.

That also helps the whole premise because four sausages genuinely become dinner for four people once they’re combined with potatoes and cheese. Much more convincing as an affordable-meals idea.

Sausages Deserve a Place in the Weekly Shop

I’m not suggesting I’m about to give up steak or salmon forever, and there will absolutely still be weeks when my supposedly organised food shop is followed by five completely unnecessary trips back to the supermarket.

But sausages have definitely earned themselves a place in my midweek repertoire.

The trick, I think, is to stop treating them as the main event. Rather than putting three sausages on every plate, use them as an ingredient. Crumble them through pasta, turn them into meatballs, slice them into rice dishes or combine them with plenty of vegetables and potatoes.

Suddenly, one relatively inexpensive pack of meat can become dinner for four — and right now, anything that makes the weekly food shop stretch a little further without making dinner boring is worth knowing about.

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