Faggots (meatballs!)

Yesterday I made faggots - for overseas readers, faggots are the name given to large meatballs made from offal, usually pork, with other meats and a filler of some kind added.  It's a cheap but very tasty meal and the quantities make a lot of faggots, so plenty to freeze.

I started off by blitzing a whole pack of cooking bacon (600g) and pack of pigs liver (about 550g) in my food processor, until they were chopped small.  I tipped it into a large bowl and added a whole pack (500g) of minced pork, along with 2 x 170g packs of sage and onion stuffing - the dry mix, I didn't make it up with water.  Used my hands to squish it all together - messy, but hands really are the only way to go with this, it's so much easier than using a spoon or fork, say, and much more efficient at mixing everything well together.  And of course hands are the original implement!  You could use breadcrumbs instead of the stuffing mix - you need something dry to bind it all together, as it's a very wet mixture - but we love the flavour of the stuffing mix.  I put the bowl in the fridge for an hour to firm up the mixture.  

I then took lumps of the mixture and rolled it into balls, about the size of a satsuma....you need to squeeze them quite firm, otherwise they'll fall apart when cooking.  It made 22, it would of course make more or less depending on the size you make them.  I put them in a couple of roasting tins (they need to be deep ones, not flat trays, as you'll be adding gravy later) and part baked them in a medium oven for 30 mins.

  

Meanwhile, I made onion gravy - a lot, about a litre per tin.  I fried off quite a lot of red onion (it was about 3 large ones, I guess - I buy a big bag of pre-sliced fresh red onion from the supermarket), then added 2 litres of thick gravy made with granules, with tomato puree, balsamic vinegar and a splash of Worcestershire sauce added, along with some dried rosemary, oregano, parsley and garlic granules.  I took out the two tins, poured in the gravy, covered the tins with foil and returned them to the oven for another 30 mins.  

We had 2 faggots each with mashed white and sweet potato and buttered Savoy cabbage, mushy peas also go well with the faggots.  The rest of the faggots when cool were put into bags, along with some gravy, and frozen.

They're absolutely lovely, filling and cheap, loads of meaty texture and taste miles better than the readymade frozen Brains ones.  We had some of those last year, having not had them for years, and weren't impressed at all - they had a strange very soft mousse-like texture and tasted of nothing much.  

Thank you for the comments, particularly those suggesting I write a cook book!  I won't be, but thanks for the vote of confidence.  I just love to cook and experiment.