Porky White's (Surrey) - Premium Chicken

The kind people at Porky Whites sent us a range of their sausages so we could update our reviews and try a few new ones. Straighforward chicken sausages, or what we tend to call "other than pork" in our reviews, wouldn't be top of our list to buy as a family if honest, but, we'll give them a go...

The Porky Whites packaging has recently been updated to a new style which we understand to be referred to as "dinner inspiration" and like their other packs it also carries a novel QR code on the back which links to some interesting recipes etc., on Porky Whites own web site. This packaging says that these are made from 84% chicken (succulent breast and thigh meat) which is delicately seasoned. High in protein, gluten free and free from genetically modified ingredients. They say they're a great alternative to pork and are just the thing if you want to eat a little healthier.

The chicken is described (just as the pork is described) as coming from UK and non-UK sources.  Given the amount of interest of such by Sausage Review readers, this sort of statement just isn't as specific as we would like to be honest. Given that we also read from the Porky Whites web site that "Almost all of the meat sourced for our products comes from within the UK with some additional supplies coming from trusted EU farms to make up any shortfall of UK supplies. We always ensure that animal welfare is a priority and over 90% of our suppliers are either RSPCA or Red Tractor accredited." (We believe a figure of 100% should be the case really)

We would also have preferred natural skins on these, but with many manufacturers nowadays gradually switching to using casings that are the collagen type, we'll go with the flow.  These particular sausages have beef collagen skins so cooking these needs to be done very carefully as difficulty will be had trying to cook such by pan frying and avoiding the skins splitting. Chicken sausages are also likely to be very lean and are unlikely to leak extra oil in to the pan through rutured and split skins, but sausages looking unsightly on your plate might not bother some, but it does bother us, and frankly others we have spoken to. Let's see how it goes...

In the raw they looked OK, weighing in around 65g a go and in a fairly standard size it seems at 105mm x 28mm uncooked. Gluten free using rice flour and vegetable fibre etc..

We used the recommended guidelines on the packet regarding shallow frying (as we do all our sampling), however this time (just like the Farmhouse Herbs we sampled recently) we cooked at a very much lower temperature and slightly longer than the 15mins the packaging recommends. We once again utilised a catering thermometer to check the internal temperature and made sure that we exceeded a temperature of 74°C for 20 seconds to make sure they were cooked sufficiently. Food safety and all that...

They cooked up OK and we tried to avoid over cooking as these are lean sausages but even being very careful with the temperature the skins did split and peeled lengthways unfortunately once again. (See photo below)  We agree that this fact isn't dramatic but rubbery bits of skin flapping about does nothing for the overall look when dishing up. Yes we had splits on every sausage but fortunately no burnt residues to contend with.

Minor shrinkage was found and a cooked weight loss of approx 9% was OK to be fair.

The skins were a bit chewy though and although the texture was a good smooth side of medium, the chew was only just OK. The flavour unfortunately in our opinion was a little bland.

We'd probably not buy these ourselves. They're not for us, sorry. However as a perhaps healthier alternative to pork sausage if your dietary needs are such, these may fit the bill.

There's some mixed reviews/comments on the Ocado and trolley.co.uk web sites about these that we've read but look, the above is our honest opinion and of course it may differ completely from your own.
If you don't agree or have yourselves a comment or two about these, we'd be pleased to hear about it.


Porky White's (Surrey) - Premium Chicken
(May 2025)

Here's the sample details:
105x28mm before cooking, 100x28mm after.
65g before cooking, 59g after.
That's a shrinkage of approx 4% & weight loss of approx 9%.
6 sausages in a 380g pack retails online at Ocado £3.90 (£10.26/kg approx).

    

 


  

www.porkywhites.com