Forget how the sausage is made. We just want to know if it is
any good once it's on our local supermarket shelves. Which brands stand above the rest?
Watch to learn what to buy and what to leave behind.
Sadly, one of these sausage brands had to be handed the title "worst of the worst," and
unfortunately it's Hempler's Andouille. This sausage was just
weird. It had a flavor that could only be described as nutty.
And not nutty in a nice sort of way, but nutty in a bowl of random nuts sort of way.
In fact, we actually had to go back to the packaging to see if we'd accidentally
purchased a plant-based sausage. But here's the thing: We've had plant based sausage before,
and even the people who make plant-based sausage know it isn't supposed to taste like nuts.
Hempler's Andouille is a pork sausage, and we're not sure how it got its flavor.
Anyway, we couldn't put this one very high on the list.
Tyson's Mild Italian Chicken Sausage was a lot less greasy than a pork sausage,
which is a plus, but in giving up the extra fat,
it also lost some of that rich, deep flavor that you expect from a sausage.
As a chicken-based copy of a pork Italian sausage, it can only come so far.
Some chicken sausages make up for that with the spice profile, but not this.
Tyson's sausage has the traditional fennel in it, but it wasn't so detectable that you
can't taste anything else. While it was nice to not have the in-your-face fennel overload,
the rest of the flavors were just a little underwhelming.
To be fair, Tyson is really more of a chicken nugget
brand than a sausage brand, so it's almost like these were a bit of an afterthought.
"Oh, I cooked a beautiful tortilla espanola, and bitstec empanizado, and dinosaur nuggets."
What can we say about this Albertsons/Safeway store-brand smoked sausage? It has a low
price point, but it also has the depth and complexity of a hot dog.
This might be a good time to say that hot dogs do
have their place in American cuisine — at school picnics and baseball games. Still,
they are not in the same category as sausage, and therefore, one should not be like the other.
When they're indistinguishable from an Oscar Mayer dog, there's a problem.
While the Signature Select smoked sausage smelled on point, we cannot say the same about the taste.
The Hillshire Farm Polska Kielbasa was, sadly, over-processed and hot dog-like,
and it was way too salty and greasy. It also costs a little more than you might expect to
pay for what you're getting, and it's not really clear what the extra buck actually does for you.
This sausage is made with turkey, beef, and pork, but one wonders what the point of the turkey is
because it just tastes like any other pork and beef sausage. Other ingredients include soy,
corn syrup, and MSG, plus all the usual nitrates you expect to find in a sausage.
To be fair, this sausage would be okay if you chopped it up,
cooked it with bell peppers, and served it in a tomato sauce over
pasta. But it's not the sort of thing that tastes great right off the grill.
New York Style Sausage Company makes a typical mild Italian sausage. It's uncooked,
so you'll find it with the rest of the pork instead of lumped in with all the other sausages.
Now, you really have to like fennel in order to enjoy this sausage because it's
very fennel-forward — and that can be kind of an acquired taste. The spice can be outright
alarming if it's the dominant flavor, and this one leans towards that territory.
The sausage is also very, very greasy, to the point where if you prick it while
it's on the grill you'll probably get hot grease in your eye. A greasy sausage is a
traditional sausage, though, so it's hard to knock points off on that quality alone.
Still, after a couple of bites, it almost starts to be a little gross.
Boar's Head is one of those names that makes you think you're eating something gourmet,
or at the very least, like you're in a little pub somewhere out in
the English countryside. The Boar's Head Uncured Beef Knockwurst was also one of
the more expensive sausages we tried, but it was one of those moments when we kind
of think maybe another variety would have made us rank Boar's Head a little higher.
They do have some other pretty interesting flavors to choose from like
a Blazing Buffalo chicken sausage and one made with honeycrisp apple. Or maybe we just really
wanted to like this sausage more because of the super cool logo and the English pub name.
"You've had enough!" "This is the World's End, man!" "I know!"
Granted, it was super beefy, which is something you would expect from, you know, a beef sausage.
But we're a little perplexed that Boar's Head calls this a "knockwurst" because not only was
the garlic nonexistent in their spice rub, but a traditional knockwurst is made out of pork and
veal. Don't let the fancy name and high price tag fool you — this sausage is pretty ordinary.
Zoe's Italian Red Pepper & Fennel Chicken Sausage is not great, and not awful. It's an
organic chicken sausage, and the big brag on the packaging is "the art of meat." If this is art,
though, it's more like what you'd see on the wall in a coffee shop than in a gallery.
"That! I love, I absolutely love!" "That's just the air conditioner."
The only thing that really came through was the fennel. It did
taste like an Italian sausage, so points for that.
The main problem with this sausage is that it has "red pepper" right on the label,
yet it does not taste like red pepper. Still, we did think Zoe's was decent,
but probably more for chopping up and putting in a lasagna than eating right off the grill.
We tried the Evergood Louisiana Brand Hot Link Sausage and were ready for something spicy,
given the word "hot" was in the name and the fact that there was a drawing of some
chili peppers on the packaging. But we did not really detect anything hot. Or spicy.
Despite it being an utter letdown in terms of what we thought we were going to be eating,
this all-beef sausage did taste good. It was reminiscent of a summer sausage,
which is the sort of thing you eat cold on New Year's Eve before the big toast,
not the type of sausage you pull off the grill on a summer evening.
It was also really rich and greasy, which clashed with the whole summer sausage
vibe — not that we were really that into the summer sausage vibe in the first place.
Frankly, we didn't expect much from these Johnsonville Beddar with Cheddar
sausages. They're straight like hot dogs, and kind of diminutive and ordinary-looking.
Also, the whole concept of the "Beddar with Cheddar" sausage is just a little uninspired,
and not just because it's really annoying when brands misspell words out of some weird
desire to have people think their marketing department is clever.
"They're smokey, and that ain't no jokey." "Okey-dokey."
Well, these sausages were actually a nice surprise,
keeping in mind that there's a reason why cheddar remains the most popular cheese in
the world — because it's good, and it's good in things, and this sausage is no exception.
There was just enough cheddar to give the sausages a creamy texture and a nice cheese-forward flavor,
but they were not overwhelmingly cheesy or excessively greasy either.
They cooked up nicely on the barbecue and looked tempting on the plate, and their
small size was even kind of a boon because it seemed like a crime to not eat more than one.
In our local store, Hawaiian Brand Portuguese Sausage is sold in single-serving packages
for $1.99, which seems like a bargain until you add up what it would cost to buy enough
of them to feed the whole family. This is a long, skinny sausage that barely
fits on a dinner plate, not that you'd really want to eat a whole one anyway.
This is a smoked pork sausage, but a close look at the ingredients reveals that the smoke flavor
comes from, well, "smoke flavoring." It's unclear if it's also literally smoked, and also, we have
never seen so many sodium-something-or-others on one label. This sausage has five of them.
Still, we thought it had a great flavor. It was meaty, not too salty,
not too greasy texture. Maybe the secret is a lot of sodium compounds. Who knows?
We tried Dibrova's Cajun Style Chicken Sausage, which stood out because it was delicious — it
was surprisingly meaty for a chicken sausage, not overly greasy, and not drowning in herbs
like chicken sausages sometimes tend to be. It tasted great just right off the grill,
but it would also be a stand-out add-in for a gumbo or a pot of red beans and rice.
The other thing we really appreciated about the Dibrova sausage was that it lacked the weird,
cryptic ingredient list. Dibrova's label was like coming up for air after swimming in a
sea of nitrates, sodium phosphates, and corn syrup. This sausage is made
from just chicken and seasonings stuffed into a pork casing, which, let's face it,
is pig guts. If that doesn't bother you, though, this is a definite win.
We did not expect to put a store-brand sausage so high up on the list, but here we are.
Open Nature is the Albertstons/Safeway all-natural brand, so it has all the
good stuff and much less of the bad, while also tending to be less expensive than similar brands.
We went with the Jalapeño Monterey Jack Chicken Sausage and oh, my! The cheese was creamy but
not overwhelming; the jalapeño had a nice little kick, but not too much of a kick.
It was slightly sweet, very flavorful, and had just the right amount of fat — enough so
you know you're eating a sausage, but not so much that you're grossed out.
The label made us happy, too. The first three ingredients are chicken,
Monterey Jack cheese, and jalapeño peppers, which is exactly as it
should be for a product with the name "Jalapeño Monterey Jack Chicken Sausage."
Aidells is famed for its chicken sausages, and the brand's Italian
Style Chicken Sausage with mozzarella cheese proves why that is the case.
We liked this one so very much, but to be fair, Aidells Italian sausage
isn't quite the same flavor profile as a typical Italian sausage. For starters,
mozzarella cheese is the second ingredient, and it's not usually in an Italian sausage.
While fennel isn't on the ingredient list at all, there are plenty of other herbs like parsley and
basil, as well as roasted garlic. So while this did for sure have an Italian vibe, it was — like
their other offerings — a pretty unique take on the flavors. Still, we ranked it high because
it's not too greasy, has a really nice, complex flavor, and a not-alarming list of ingredients.
The winner of our taste test is Silva. Its jalapeño pepper jack
sausage was just a little bit better than the Aidells Italian sausage.
It was also the second — and better — of the two jalapeño sausages we tried.
Silva's sausage had a very similar flavor to what we sampled from Open Nature.
But overall, we just thought it was a little more jalapeño-forward and a little more creamy.
Notably, this is also a pork sausage, but we had to double-check because
it lacks the unpleasant heaviness that a lot of pork sausages have.
This sausage is another one that's touted for its lack of nitrates and the fact that it's
made from meat raised without antibiotics. The first three ingredients are what we
like to see in a jalapeno-cheese sausage: pork, jalapeno peppers, pepper jack cheese.
It does have a couple of weird additions, but it was so good we could overlook that.
Anyway, we are forgiving some of the odd ingredients because this sausage just tasted
so good. It proves that you can actually make a pork sausage that's not greasy,
heavy, and makes you regret certain choices for a few hours afterwards.
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