These sausage rolls have a crispy exterior, and gooey insides. Learn how I took a childhood snack to the next level by improvising with a cast iron skillet.

Time: 2/5
Got these done while my SO was in the shower

Effort: 2/5
Kid friendly assembly of preprocessed ingredients

Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

This is not quite a recipe, more so a blog post to document one of life’s many unexpected turns and surprises. Which also happens to be a hack for the creative use of a cast iron skillet as an ersatz sandwich press.

By coincidence, I fell into a situation where I had a surplus of bread, cocktail sausages, and sliced cheese that were nearing their expiry dates. I also had an SO who wanted several breakfasts lined up for the week. Fortunately, these were the nice sort of problems, ones that solve each other.

Last year, I became the proud owner of two small 6-inch cast iron pans (although I insist that they’re perfectly adequate in size – it’s how you use it). While I’ve been having a lot of fun searing steaks, frying drumsticks and roasting chicken thighs with them, I realised in a flash of inspiration that there’s more than one way to use a heavy, heatable metal object in the kitchen.

Looking at the ingredients I laid out on the kitchen counter before me, I was reminded of a snack that featured frequently in the humid summers of my childhood – sliced bread lightly spread with mayo, wrapped around a long and thin sausage. These sausage rolls would be lovingly packed for a field trip, only to be squished against the bottom of a school bag and forgotten, neglected and left to steam in the sweltering heat.

Now, as an adult with a more refined palate (or so I like to think), I wanted to find out what these would taste like with some colour and crunch. Thus was born these sausage roll panini things. I’m still not quite sure how to call them.

But anyway, since my cast iron skillet is pretty much just an inert weight, I used it as an impromptu sandwich press to hold the bread in shape while I toasted the outsides. The heat eventually worked its way to the middle and slightly melted the sliced cheese and reheated the sausages, and now we have a cute little finger-friendly breakfast!

I see a lot of potential in exploring the cast iron pan press idea further. Perhaps preheating the skillet in an oven and creating a chicken-under-brick situation. Using it to press down on a steak or a piece of skin-on thigh for a better sear. Or, heating the bottom of the skillet on the stove and toasting the top of a sandwich while I toast the bottom in a pan.

It was fun to let my mind wander, and see where inspiration took me. If you keep an open mind, the kitchen is a playground to indulge in your inner child. And that’s all I have to say today.

Onwards to more adventures, both culinary and beyond!

Dramatis Personae

Bread

What I had was some dry, crumbly factory bread which was very hard to fold or roll without breaking apart. Nevertheless, I was able to make it work.

You’d have an easier time with larger, softer slices if you want to roll the bread and sausage up into a cylinder instead of just folding the bread over.

The bread would also be easier to handle if you steamed them a bit first, for example by nuking it covered in a microwave safe container with a splash of water.

Sausage

These tiny sausage links are small enough that I could fold the pieces of bread around them. If I had more time and energy I might slice them in half lengthwise so they lie flatter in the sandwich.

Cheese

Good old processed cheese. Nowhere near proper, real cheese in terms of flavour, but they’re convenient and they melt really well. Would I have rather used a nice slice of cheddar or Gruyère? Yes. Do I have cheddar or Gruyère in the fridge? No.

Play by Play

Assembling my sausage rolls. Bread, cheese, sausage and fold over. I hoped the bread could come around a full circle, but some hints are just not meant to be.

Toast the sausage rolls in a pan, using the cast iron pan to keep them from unfolding. If you wanted to speed this up, nothing stops you from heating the cast iron up on the stove to toast both sides of the sausage roll at once.

And we’re done! The dry and crumbly bread I used tore open at several spots, but it’s still perfectly edible. Enjoy fresh, or keep them in the fridge for later (reheat with a pan, toaster or oven – a warm breakfast is so much more energising than a cold one).

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