Put This Sausage In Your Mouth

This is a post about sausages. Go ahead and make whatever jokes you want to make, but I love a good tube steak.

I love sausages so much that on the 4th of July we do "The Festival Of Tubular Meats" at my house. We cook a huge variety of sausages, drink booze, eat ice cream sundaes and blow stuff up. So let's discuss the circular meats that I like to eat.

This is not a ranking, this is some favorites and in one case why something is not my favorite. Let's start with the fact that I prefer coarse ground sausages. I generally like all beef and sometimes a mix of beef and pork. I'm also only going to talk about the ones you can get here. I'm also not going to talk about Jalapeno or cheese, because we're going to stick with the meat of the matter.

My go-to sausage is the "Smokehouse Ranch Beef Sausage". This is the working man's sausage and the one you'll find chilling in my refrigerator right now. It has enough spice to taste special but not enough to make the wife complain. This is the organ meat that I eat at least once a week but...

Remember how I said I'm not going to rank these? It's because United's Signature Farms smoked beef sausage has all of the same elements, coarse ground, nice spice, etc.

And let's add another one to that list, Kiolobasas smoked sausage is right in there too. If all three of these are pretty much the same, then why do I go with the Smokehouse Ranch (which is a ranch, not like ranch dressing) the answer is because it's usually the one that's always in stock. That's really it and it takes us to a big one...

Raider Red sausages are obviously a tetch better than my big three but they can be a bit hard to find. When I see them on the rack I buy them no matter what. Big E once told me this was what he used and if you've ever had a sausage wrap at a concert or late night in the Depot District then you know how special these are.

I guess I have to mention the biggie too. If you find yourself at the right place at the right time of the year, St. Joseph's Sausagefest is definitely among the best anywhere.

There are two more that are worth mentioning. If you like things with a big more of a less spicy/old world spin, then grab some Slovek's or Opa's. Both are killers (the Slovek's used to be at Sam's but I haven't been there in a year).

So what sausage bites the big wienie? The answer is Eckrich. They probably have a good sausage or two, but they generally so finely ground that it makes me wonder what's in there. These are the bologna or hot dogs of sausages. Even then, I have them every once in a while, but I find these best scrambled with eggs and not as a solo star of a sausage wrap.

Thank you for coming to my online sausage party. You can always send me good choices to try here.

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