This bangers and mash recipe uses a microwave oven to make the swede mash and mashed potatoes and a mini oven to oven bake sausages.  I love bangers and mash (sausages with mashed potato), but it’s a pricey dish if you order it in a pub, with prices often being close to £8-10, what a rip off.  I prefer to see it on a menu and think “I’ll make that at home and save myself £7-8″…

Aldi’s Easter special offers included Maris Piper potatoes and a whole swede, so I already had those in the house – and I’d got a pack of the Ashfield Farm Lincolnshire Sausages, so that settled it.  I was going to oven bake a couple of sausages and place those on top of some mashed potato and mashed swede and then splash some instant gravy at it!

Ingredients:

• 2 sausages
• 1-2 medium potatoes
• 1/4 swede
• Optional: knob of butter, little black pepper, for the mash.

Method:

1. You can cook a swede portion in the microwave without peeling it first.  I use a microwave steamer to do this, but if you don’t have one of those then use the same method but with a dish covered with a lid or cling film with a tiny vent hole cut in it. Cook Swede Portions.
2. The potatoes were steamed in the microwave steamer too (they can be done at the same time as the swede), or you can use a microwave safe dish with a lid.  Steam Cooked Potatoes. Once cooked, just mash them – I add a knob of butter and a little black pepper and mash them roughly with a fork as I like the chunky texture.
3. The sausages can be cooked in a dish in an oven or mini oven, they will take 25-30 minutes, depending how brown you like them. Oven Bake Sausages.
4. Once it’s all cooked, just stack it and mix up some instant gravy, I always use Bisto gravy granules at the moment, having converted friom cheaper brands as I preferred the Bisto taste.

Serve, eat, enjoy!

50p Dinner

This main meal came in at well under 50p as I used the Aldi Super6 special offers and some own brand sausages.  The sausages were 35p, the mashed potato and mashed swede cost about 8p and the gravy about 1p, so it’s cost about 44p.

Food Cheats Tips:

If you want to use another food cheat and save some time, you can pre-cook the sausages in the microwave oven by placing them in a microwave safe dish and microwaving on full power for 3-4 minutes, turning them a couple of times, before finishing them off in the oven to brown, or under the grill.  You can cook sausages in a microwave oven, they just don’t “look nice and brown” at the end, so you could skip that bit if you just want to be fed!