Breakfast Sausage -- Pre-Poll Discussion

From the looks of things early on at Favorite Breakfast Meat – First Pass we’re likely going to need another breakdown poll to see which sausage variety is preferred by most Dopers.

I have culled what are obvious sausage varieties from Breakfast Meats – Pre-Poll Exploration as a starting point.

I suspect we’ll need more precise wording on some of these. “Link sausage” as a case in point.

Add to the list (sausage only, please) or help find more specific names for the ones that need it:

bangers
blood sausage
boudin sausage
Bratwurst
Chorizo
Dry sausage
fake turkey sausage
fancier-than-link sausages
fried balogna
Fried salami
kielbasa
Link sausage
Liverwurst
Other lunch meat sausages fried or cooked in some other way
Patty sausage
pepperoni
Slim Jims
Souse
Taylor Ham
veal sausage
Vienna sausage

I like a small link sausage for breakfast. It’s hard finding one that isn’t too greasy.
Tenn Pride is the best I’ve found.

I buy bulk pork sausage with sage at the local New Seasons Market. It’s outstanding and beats any commercial brand I’ve had.

Do you folks think “link sausage” and “patty sausage” say things precisely enough? Can’t more than one type of each exist enough to require more precise terminology?

I only learned recently from a friend making his own Chorizo that “bulk sausage” was a name for the one-pound lump I always thought was just “sausage.” And he may have even had another name than “bulk” for it.

You can tell my lack of expertise in this area.

How is a banger (which I have never had to know it) distinguished from you basic “link sausage”? I just thought that was British for link sausage and mashed potatoes.

And is souse a form of sausage or its own thing? I used to think that “sausage” was just souse seasoned with sage!

What I do know is that the links they serve at Pancake Pantry are excellent. And I usually go with Tennessee Pride or Rudy’s Hot Bulk Sausage for patties.

Then you have all the sub-groups of link sausage, like Habanero and Maple. But I don’t think they need their own group.

Indeed. I find the Sausage From Wikipedia article to be daunting to say the least.

If y’all wanted reasonable sub-groups of “breakfast sausage” for poll items, what would they be?

Can I just say that IHMO, if it ain’t meat, it ain’t sausage.

And more specifically, if it IS meat, and it has feathers, it AIN’T SAUSAGE.

:eek:

That seems reasonable, but do you have some examples of things called “sausage” that fail your tests? Vegan sausage, turkey and chicken sausage, what else?

Also, just how far do you go in your “meat” distinction? In my mind, meat implies tissue or muscle or maybe even skin, but blood gets close to leaving the “meat” arena for me. So does bone.

Does fish count as meat?

You could categorize by brand rather than type of meat.

Examples, please?

I think you should add Portuguese sausage (linguica) to your list. They had it on the breakfast buffet when we were in Hawaii, and it was delicious!

Jimmy Dean
Johnsonville
Applegate Farms
Schwan’s…

…hmm, that’s all I can come up with. Maybe the brand idea wasn’t so great after all. :smack:

Good deal. It was mentioned in the Pre-Poll Exploration and I neglected to include it here. The Wiki article looks interesting. I’m adding it now. Thanks for the mention.

The earlier mention of boudin makes me wonder if Andouille should also go on the list. Opinions?

It certainly has possibilities as long as the brands aren’t overly regional or overly specific in their product lines.

A few others I could add that might not be known too far from Tennessee could include:

Odom’s Tennessee Pride
Rudy’s Farm
Bob Evans

black pudding (specific form of blood sausage)
white pudding
scrapple

I have no problem including them but the

Scrapple From Wikipedia,

White pudding From Wikipedia

and Black pudding From Wikipedia

articles are a little iffy on the “sausage” nature of these foods as opposed to some other processes.

I know very little from personal experience with any of them, so I would like some other opinions on these before adding them to an already hefty list of poll options.

Anyone else like to think of them as types of sausage?

Here’s another thought on the whole Breakfast Meats issue.

Since the categories in the “First Pass” have been overwhelmingly Sausage and Bacon, with scarcely a vote for the “Lunch Meat,” “Mystery Meat,” and Pudding categories, what would be a better Poll Title than “Sausage” that would go ahead and include most (if not all) of these:

andouille
bangers
black pudding
blood sausage
boudin sausage
Bratwurst
Chorizo
Dry sausage
fake turkey sausage
fancier-than-link sausages
fried balogna
Fried salami
kielbasa
linguica
Link sausage
Liverwurst
Other lunch meat sausages fried or cooked in some other way
Patty sausage
pepperoni
scrapple
Slim Jims
Souse
Taylor Ham
veal sausage
Vienna sausage
white pudding

Also, how many of them can we either combine or just drop altogether?

These are what I’d choose:

Bratwurst
Chorizo
Link sausage
Patty sausage
Polish sausage (not mentioned in the other thread because I forget. Maybe they’re not for breakfast, but I’d eat 'em)

Classifying anything by brand name is the way to madness, since there are so many brands that are country/region/store specific.
I missed something somewhere. What the heck is “fake turkey sausage”? I recoiled in horror at the word “Vegan” earlier in this thread. I know you were asking a question, but still, I recoiled. Nothing remotely Vegan or Vegetarian belongs in any kind of breakfast MEAT discussion. Someone can start a thread/poll about “What Fake Foods That Try Really Hard to Fool You Into Believing They’re Real Foods do you like?”

I’m going to make an executive decision and agree with you by removing the fake stuff from the list. That will leave:

andouille
bangers
black pudding
blood sausage
boudin sausage
Bratwurst
Chorizo
fried balogna
Fried salami
kielbasa
linguica
Link sausage
Liverwurst
Patty sausage
pepperoni
Polish sausage
scrapple
Slim Jims
Souse
Taylor Ham
veal sausage
Vienna sausage
white pudding

Any other candidates for removal or combining?