Honey and mustard sticky sausages

Name: Honey and mustard sticky sausages
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 3
Ingredients: 6 vegetarian sausages; 1 tbsp honey; 1/2 tbsp wholegrain mustard; Salt; Black pepper

July 25, 2016 // 42 Comments »

Before I tell you all about these honey and mustard sticky sausages (which is not a euphemism, I promise), I want to share where I got the honey from. It came from a really lovely family-owned farm called Naranjas del Carmen in Valencia, Spain. The current owners of the farm inherited it six years ago from their grandfather, and have given it a new lease of life, producing olive oil, lemons, oranges, tomatoes, and a lot more – including honey!

The owners of Naranjas del Carmen have come up with a concept called ‘crowdfarming‘, which is a way of cutting out the middle man and putting the consumer in direct contact with the producer – meaning a fair price for everyone involved. You can ‘adopt’ your own orange tree on the farm, and now, your own beehive too! Once a year you’ll receive a delivery of honey from your very own bees – you can even choose what kind of plants you’d like your bees to feed on, to produce different kinds of honey. A bulk delivery once a year may sound intimidating, but since honey never goes off (seriously), you can work your way through it at your own pace. And believe me when I say, this stuff is amazing, so it probably won’t take you long. My own beehive produced orange blossom honey, and you can smell the orange as soon as you open the jar – it’s delicious.

The benefit of the crowdfarming concept – as well as giving you more control and insight into how your honey is made – is that it helps the farmer to reduce food waste. Thanks to the fact that each beehive is owned by one particular consumer, the farmer knows exactly how much honey to produce each year, and they never need to produce an excess or waste anything along the conventional supply chain. Adopting your own beehive is a really easy way to directly support the farmers who work hard to produce amazing honey (amongst other things!). The farm functions organically, without herbicides or pesticides, the use of which has been linked with the declining bee population.

You can find out more about the farmers, the food they produce, and the crowdfarming concept here – I think it’s a fantastic idea, and I’m always happy when I can support lovely family-owned businesses.

Since this orange blossom honey has such a lovely citrusy flavour, it’s perfect spread on toast or drizzled on porridge – but I thought I’d do something a bit more interesting for this recipe. I used it to make a super simple honey and mustard glaze for my favourite veggie sausages. I’ll admit, when I first mixed up the glaze (literally just wholegrain mustard and honey), I wasn’t sure if I was making a mistake – the flavour is intense! But once I’d used it to make these sticky sausages, and the sweet and mustardy flavour of the glaze was mixed with the herby sausages, I was utterly convinced. These are delicious! They get sooo sticky, it’s amazing. Be careful to always use a knife and fork, unless you want to be licking your fingers for days afterwards.

In the winter, these sticky sausages would be great served as bangers and mash, with creamy mashed potatoes and veggies – but since the weather is still gloriously sunny here, this time I made them a bit more summery by serving them with couscous and salad. A really tasty summer’s dinner.

If you’d like to try your own orange blossom honey (or a different kind of honey!), consider adopting your own beehive from Naranjas del Carmen – they’re such a lovely company.