Is it just me or does Christmas food in UK feature a lot of sausages?

[NalPolishRemover]

I love reading through the what's on your Christmas dinner plate thread & the what did you prep on Christmas eve & it struck me how much sausage meat features in so many people's festive food.

Lots of pigs in blankets & pork stuffing & pork stuffing balls & sausage rolls being made & eaten it seems.

I grew up in Ireland & this was really not a thing at all for us. We might have had a cooked breakfast that featured sausages if we were eating dinner in the evening but not every year & that would be it.

Our stuffing was always breadcrumbs, onion, butter & mixed herbs. Never meat.

We did not put bacon on the top of the turkey

Our sprouts did not have bacon in them

We didn't eat sausages as part of our dinner, not as pigs in blankets nor in any other form.

Sausages rolls played no part in our festivities.

It just struck me as unusual how similar so many elements of our celebrations are & yet so different in so many small ways

I'm married into a part English family but can't adopt their love of sausage meat at Christmas!

Yep. It’s brilliant.

Pigs in blankets are the best bit of Christmas dinner

well we are all different aren't we!?

so what did you have? lets all hear about what you eat

We don't have any sausage at all. Never have. My family eat beef traditionally on Christmas Day and goose on Boxing Day.

We do have lardons in cabbage though.

Yes it's great that we have all our own ways of doing things & I love reading about them & I'm often surprised by things that are par for the course for the majority of posters but we didn't have it/ do it where I grew up.

As a child we didn't always have a starter but if we did it was always a prawn cocktail those that ate seafood & melon for the rest.

Then hot turkey cooked that day with cold sliced ham which had been cooked the night before - a real Christmas eve tradition.

The turkey was simply seasoned & liberally coated with butter. No brining & my mother & grandmother before her generally didn't put the stuffing inside the turkey but cooked it seperately.

This was served with roast potatoes, mash (usually not v nice as neither of them were good at making mash), steamed carrots, boiled Brussel sprouts, marrowfat peas (big deal soaking them the night before )
Gravy & stuffing - just made with bread, onion butter herbs & seasoning.

That was it really. We didn't have cranberry or bread sauce nor pigs in blankets or red cabbage. It was a far simpler meal in many ways & I loved it but I still add a few extras to mine now that I'm an adult.

Dessert was always sherry trifle it Christmas pudding which woukd be sliced & doused with brandy & fried in butter on a frying pan then served with cream and custard.

I think the whole pigs in blankets and bacon on the turkey is a recent shift. I certainly don't remember them being part of Christmas dinner with my English family when I was a child. Irish Christmas dinner features at least three types of potato - roasted, mashed and boiled, turkey and ham, brussel sprouts, carrots and turnips, and gravy and bread stuffing. Not that much different. More spuds, less sausage meat.b

So it was a surprise to me when my MIL served sausages with the dinner. I'd literally never heard of it as a thing & wasn't entirely sure they 'went ' with it all. This was 18 years ago now & I honestly thought it was just her like eccentricity.

Were pigs in blankets always such a thing I or is it a more recent phenomenon ?

Pigs and blankets were always a thing in our dinners in the 80s, I remember It was my job to make them up 😄

I think they are fairly new. I'm 45 and as a child had sausagemeat with xmas dinner.

Yup I made up pigs in blankets as a child. Bacon is flavouring in lots of things - quiche, macaroni cheese, pasta..., can be added to bolognaise etc. Doesn't seem at all odd to have pigs in blankets (yum!) at Christmas. Most pub meal christmases will have them.

Ireland has missed out!

I don't get the sausages thing. Christmas should be a feast, the very best, and sausages are a cheap meat.

I'm a similar age Xmas baby and made them up with my gran at Christmas...

Pigs in blankets were big in my 80s childhood. Sausage meat in all forms has been around for all my Christmases so I don’t think it is that recent.

I am always weirded out by the Yorkshire puddings and the soup that other people have. Never ever seen either at Christmas.

Pigs in blankets were definitely a thing in the 70s.

I suspect the use of pork products for winter feasting is because pork preserves so well and can be stored for winter.

Pigs in blankets, sausage or bacon were not a feature of my English Christmas dinner growing up, but my mum didn't eat red meat. I think they have become a thing over the last eight years really. The last Christmas dinner I remember cooking without them was ten years ago. No pigs, no bacon on the turkey, no sausage meat.

Def not just last 8 years if you see other posts!

I don't love sausages & really dislike sausage meat stuffing so I don't feel like I missed out in Ireland

Interesting question OP, I think as a child in S.E England we had bacon on the turkey and possibly sausage-meat in the stuffing in the turkey but no pigs in blankets. We didn't have a ham, veggies were sprouts and roast potatoes and parsnips homemade gravy. We didn't have bread sauce or cranberry. Pudding was Xmas pud with cream. I remember it all being very nice, my Granny who cooked most of it was a good cook but there were probably less items than we get now.

Another pigs in blankets at Xmas here too as a kid (during the 80s). We also used to have sausage meat stuffed in the parsons nose which we don't do anymore.

I hate pigs in blankets but cook them for my family as it's part of our Xmas dinner tradition.

Our dinner was very similar style to yours OP. minus the peas & carrots. Always parsnips (roasted but no honey/maple syrup or parmesan) steamed sprouts (no bacony bits) and braised red cabbage and roast potatoes.

No pigs in blankets.

On Christmas Eve we loved homemade sausage rolls.

I was taught pigs in blankets were to help eke out the main meat especially when you had a large family to feed because pork is such a cheap meat.

It's the way it is here sadly, and a pain in the arse if you prefer something else or a more varied diet.

Eg most supermarket and takeaway pizzas have pepperoni or other processed pork on them and most buffets contain several of pork pies, sausage rolls, mini sausages, scotch eggs, ham sandwiches.

I do like these things but don't want it on everything I eat but it can be hard to avoid if you're eating food prepared by others as it seems like the default for the majority.

I’m in my 50s. Bacon always put on top of the turkey and pigs in blankets were a thing (best bit of a Christmas dinner). Ham and sausage rolls were part of Christmas tea

I like a good sausage 😋 but I don't like bacon. No pigs in blankets here. Or indeed turkey, goose or beef.

No, the only sausage we have is in the pigs in blankets.
I don’t think it’s a UK thing, I think it’s a personal thing.