Healthy chicken and vegetable sausage rolls recipe for kids

These yummy sausage rolls are perfect when you need to use up extra vegetables - or when you need to disguise veggies from your kids. The chicken mince gives these sausage rolls a lighter flavour, and they're packed with the fibre and protein.

Ingredients:

• 8 Pre-prepared frozen puff pastry sheets

• 1kg chicken mince

• 4 eggs

• 3 tablespoons LSA, (a mix of ground linseed, sunflower and almond kernels), optional

• 1 cup flaked quinoa or amaranth, optional

• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs

• 1kg vegetables 

• 1/4 cup chopped parsley

• 1 egg for brushing pastry, cracked and mixed lightly

Method:

Pre-heat your oven on high (around 210°C).

Chop up all the vegetables as small and fine as you can.

In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients except for the puff pastry and the extra egg (which will be used to brush the pastry). Massaging all of the ingredients together can be the best way to make sure they are well combined.

After the puff pastry is defrosted, cut a sheet in half and lay in front of you as a long rectangle.

Using a tablespoon lay out the sausage roll mix in a long line at the bottom of the sheet, just remembering not to make it too thick. Keep in mind you will need to roll the puff pastry over the sausage roll mix so that there are two layers of pastry overlapping by at least 1cm.

Before rolling up the mix in the pastry, brush some egg as ‘glue’.  Keep the roll whole, brush with more egg on top and place on a tray with baking paper.  Keep in the fridge.  Repeat this process until all of the mix is used up.

With a sharp, thin bladed knife, cut the logs of sausage rolls into smaller pieces. Each roll makes 7 or 8 bite sized sausage rolls.

Lay each piece 2cm apart on a tray lined with baking paper.  Don’t try and squeeze too many on one tray as they will steam rather than bake and you won’t get a golden colour from the pastry.

Bake on high for 15min, until the pastry starts to golden then turn the oven down to 180°C.

Depending on the strength of your oven, you may need to move trays around from top to bottom and keep an eye on the bottom of the sausage rolls that they don’t become too dark.

Notes:

• The trick is to keep the size of the vegetables in the sausage rolls as small as possible - bring out the food processor from the cupboard if need be!
• Adding LSA (a mix of ground linseed, sunflower and almond kernels) which is high in fibre, protein and Omega 3 makes these far healthier than most sausage rolls, along with adding quinoa flakes rather than just breadcrumbs which is high in fibre and protein.
• The following vegetables work well in these sausage rolls: onions, garlic, carrots, celery, zucchini, mushrooms, broccoli, eggplant, corn, peas, leek amd spinach.
• You can also use the following but they will need to be boiled first so they are soft – sweet potato, celeriac and pumpkin.
• This makes a big batch (over 100 small pieces) so you can freeze them and bring them out at times when you don’t feel like cooking but want your kids to have vegetables.