Best vegan sausage rolls in supermarkets
The humble sausage roll is a staple of the UK diet. If you want to cut down on meat, the sausage roll always felt like one of the final frontiers for a meat-free alternative. The launch of the Greggs vegan sausage roll in 2019 created huge demand across the country.
But there is one problem with the Greggs vegan sausage roll – Greggs bakeries have opening and closing hours. Without access to sausage rolls whenever you want, we have found the best vegan sausage rolls you can buy in UK supermarkets. We also look at the Iceland bake-at-home official Greggs sausage rolls in detail.
Top 5 vegan sausage rolls (Greggs alternatives)
You’ll love these supermarket vegan sausage rolls if you like the traditional sausage roll look and taste, without the animal ingredients. The best overall we have to say is the Greggs vegan sausage roll with Quorn, but there are other options available.
| Supermarket | Sausage roll | Price and size | What we reckon |
| Iceland | No Porkies Vegan Sausage Rolls | £2 (6 pack, 600g per roll) | Quite similar to the original sausage roll flavour. Pastry rises nicely in the oven from frozen, not too flaky. |
| Aldi | Plant Menu Vegan No Sausage Rolls | £1.19 (4 pack frozen 400g) | Flaky pastry and the sausage filling is tightly packed. Taste is well seasoned. |
| Morrisons | Naughty Vegan Pig Out Sausage Rolls | £2 (4 pack, 460g) | Very nicely flavoured. Feels more like a fancy sausage roll from a countryside pub, than a classic roll. Pastry puffs up from frozen. |
| Sainsbury's | Plant Pioneers Jumbo Vegan No Sausage Roll | £1.25 (1 pack, 145g) | Great to have a ready-to-eat option in the chiller, but the pastry is a bit dry. The filling is a little grainy, not very moist. |
| The Co-op | GRO The Sausage Roll | £1.10 (1 pack, 135g) | Very herby filling. Pastry to filling ratio is heavy on the filling. Looks and tastes quite ‘farmers market’ but slightly dry from the chiller. |
It seems that the sausage rolls we all know and love aren’t particularly hard to replicate as a plant-based version. And they're all thoroughly processed either way.
Where to buy the supermarket vegan sausage rolls
- Iceland: buy No Porkies Sausage Rolls
- Aldi: buy Plant Menu Sausage Rolls
- Morrisons: buy Naughty Vegan Pig Out Sausage Rolls
- Sainsbury's: buy Plant Pioneers Jumbo No Sausage Roll
- The Co-op: buy GRO The Sausage Roll
Review of the Iceland Greggs vegan sausage roll
As the original and best sausage roll, we had to do a quick rundown of the features. This is all you need to know about buying Greggs vegan sausage rolls to make at home:
- Time: Takes 30 minutes in the oven from frozen (cannot be chilled). Nice to be able to choose how dark and cripsy you'd like the pastry, but fairly long wait overall.
- Pastry: You never get soggy pastry as it's always freshly risen. Very flaky and buttery, almost feels lighter and flakier than the bakery version.
- Filling: Cannot tell the difference between the oven or shop. Exactly the same texture and flavour of Quorn filling.
- Heat: You cook at 200°C and the rolls are piping hot throughout of course. No risk of a warm roll like when you get the last one in the bakery.
- Taste: Sausage filling tastes exactly the same. Pastry tastes almost less fatty and oily than the bakery version.
- Price: A pack of 4 is £2.50. Sometimes there is an offer for 2 packs for £4. In the bakery, you'll pay £1 for one roll, or get a cooked (but not heated) pack of 4 for £3. Overall the frozen rolls are better value, but you do have to use your oven.
Buy Greggs vegan sausage rolls at Iceland
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Flexitarian tip: if you do want to heat and eat official Greggs sausage rolls at home, Iceland also sell the original pork version.
What's in a Greggs sausage roll?
In a Greggs sausage roll, the ingredients of course vary between the pork and vegan version.
As you see nearly all of the same ingredients in the plant-based version, going meatless doesn't mean you're eating a whole new recipe. With only 20% pork in the meat sausage roll, going meat-free doesn't seem like such a big deal.
The ingredients listed in bold below are common between the meat and vegan sausage rolls.
The items on the list which don't sync up on the vegan side are mostly real ingredients such as onion, potato, pea protein, sage and breadcrumbs for example. On the meat side, it's ingredients that we don't know, including terms such as Carboxy Methyl Cellulose, Carrageenan and Tartaric Acid.
Greggs pork sausage roll ingredients
You're not missing out on much meat by swapping for the vegan version. The ingredients listed in bold are also in the Greggs meatless sausage roll.
These are the ingredients of pork sausage rolls in the Greggs Iceland range:
Water, Fortified Wheat Flour (Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Pork (20%), Palm Oil, Rusk (Wheat), Seasoning (Salt, Yeast Extract, Modified Starch, Pea Fibre, Sugar, Stabiliser (Diphosphates), Ground White Pepper, Barley Malt Extract, Acidity Regulator (Tartaric Acid), Preservative (Sodium Metabisulphite), Spice Extracts, Rapeseed Oil, Herb Extracts), Glaze (Water, Sunflower Oil, Rapeseed Oil, Modified Starch, Milk Protein, Emulsifier (Mono- and Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids), Skimmed Milk Powder, Stabiliser (Carboxy Methyl Cellulose, Carrageenan, Cellulose), Acidity Regulator (Sodium Phosphates), Colour (Carotenes)), Rapeseed Oil, Isolated Soya Protein, Wheat Gluten, Salt, Wheat Protein.
Greggs vegan sausage roll ingredients
The vegan version has considerably less ingredients than the pork version. The percentage of the 'meat', in this case Quorn, is the same at 20%.
These are the ingredients of vegan sausage rolls in the Greggs Iceland range:
Water, Fortified Wheat Flour (Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Quorn™ Mycoprotein (20%), Palm Oil, Textured Wheat Protein (Wheat Gluten, Firming Agent (Calcium Sulphate)), Rapeseed Oil, Flavouring, Salt, Starch, Palm Fat, Pea Protein, Potato Protein, Breadcrumbs (Wheat), Yeast Extract, Wheat Gluten, Dextrose, Thickener (Pectins), Dehydrated Onion, Pea Fibre, Rubbed Sage, Rubbed Thyme, Spice and Herb Extracts, Barley Malt Extract, Rusk (Wheat).
Why should we try to be greener folk?
Processed foods are not good for you, whether their ingredients are animal-based or not. However, in the case of pork sausage rolls, animals dying for the same tasty outcome seems hard to justify.
An estimated 10 million pigs are slaughtered annually for the UK meat industry. Of course they're not all for sausage rolls, but even reducing just one part of your snacking repertoire could help reduce the numbers.
When the meat-free alternative like a Greggs Vegan Sausage Roll is such an excellent replica, it's worth switching or swapping regularly. The vegan filling is made from a fungi protein.
Trigger warning: descriptions of animal slaughter. If you want to understand more about how pigs are slaughtered in the UK, you can read the RSPCA information about animal slaughter.