I was at Bunnings (a huge hardware chain in Australia) today to get a few bits and pieces, and on the way out I stopped by the sausage sizzle and enjoyed a delicious snag & onions on bread with a can of Coke, with my enjoyment further enhanced by knowing my purchase was helping a local kid’s sports team do sports gooder or soemthing. Point is, nom nom sausage sizzle and helping children.
Most of the Aussies here on the boards would, I imagine, be nodding sagely at this point - it’s part of the experience visiting Bunnings to get a sausage on the weekend and it’d almost be UnAustralian not to.
A sausage sizzle, of course, is a barbequed sausage, with buttered bread, and onions if you like. Just in case anyone wasn’t clear on that yet. They’re typically run by community groups and local sports clubs and priced typically around $2-$2.50 or so, with the can of drink maybe another $2.
They’re also an ubitquous part of any self-respecting community event in Australia. School fete? Sausage sizzle. Local sports club has a home game? There’ll likely be a sausage sizzle. Community group running some sort of second-hand market? Don’t forget to enjoy a sizzled sausage while you browse!
It was pretty much the same in New Zealand when I lived there - you could always count on there being a sausage sizzle at those sorts of things. (We didn’t have Bunnings, though - I don’t recall Placemakers or Mitre 10 doing them, but that might have changed)
But what I realised is sausage sizzles aren’t something I’ve encountered in my travels overseas. I don’t recall seeing the Pawnee Honey Badgers barbecuing sausages outside a local Wal-Mart to fund their trip to the Nationals in Bumfluff Falls, for example. I haven’t come across the Sandford Community Association cooking snags to fund the restoration of the town’s fountain.
That doesn’t mean these things don’t happen, of course, but it has got me wondering: Are sausage sizzles popular outside Australia and New Zealand?
I live in California. It’s pretty common around here to sell food at community events and fundraisers, including grilled sausages, but I’ve never heard of a sausage sizzle.
Heavens to Betsy, no! We American’s are much too refined to eat something as pedestrian as a Sausage Sizzle. Our outdoor vendor menu typically includes watercress sandwiches, Beluga caviar, foie gras, pâté, escargot…
…just kidding. Sausage Sizzles sound delicious. Wish we had them over here (unless they’re slathered in Vegemite).
I’d eat one (hold the onions) if I were somewhere that had them. I’ve seen similar foods…a grilled sausage on a bun, like a fancy ass hot dog or a brat…we just don’t call them “sausage sizzles”.
I’ve heard the name in the UK, but as a predecessor to a barbecue (specifically, in a film by Michael Palin set on a family seaside holiday in the 1950s*, when he was just coming into his teens: a wouldbe with-it local vicar invites him along to a “sausage sizzle” on the beach, and you know just from that that it’s going to be a pretty desperate attempt at catering for “the young people”).
On the whole, street food is pretty tightly regulated now, and it wouldn’t be that easy for a local group to set up to cook food for casual fundraising from allcomers in this way.
It has to be a cheap Mad Butcher sausage on floppy white bread for the full effect, though. And Watties sauce. My son’s scout group raises funds by running a stall on weekends sometimes, it puts all other fund-raising efforts into the shade, so much so that you have to book the slot outside the store weeks, if not months in advance so each group gets a go. It’s actually pretty cool that the hardware stores basically run it as a community service, since they could make all that coin for themselves. I mean, most of the bigger stores have their own cafes for the weekend, but no self-respecting handyman would buy a muffin and a latte on a Saturday morning when a flock of eager kids are on hand to sell him a handful of grease, gristle and stodge.
Is the “buttered bread” you speak of similar to a bun or roll? If so, that doesn’t seem much different than your standard all-American hot dog. However, if it is ordinary sliced white bread, I would think it would be difficult to eat since the weight of the sausage and the condiments could more easily cause it to collapse than a bun or roll.
Also, what type of sausage is used? Is it a variety special to Australia or are frankfurters, bratwurst (a.k.a., brats), Polish sausages, Italian sausages, Vienna sausages, and other kinds used?
That’s amazing now that you say it. A common complaint about Australia is what a “nanny state” mentality we have, banning things and sucking the pleasure out of anything even vaguely risky. Despite that it would be easy for me to find several sausage sizzles a week near home or work or local shopping areas.
Now that you have pointed this out it’s not sausages I sniff on the wind but restrictions.
This would be a boerie in South Africa (short for “boerewors roll”, boerewors being the local braai (barbeque) sausage) and in some ways the situation is much like in Aus/NZ - down to them being ubiquitous outside Builders’ Warehouse hardware stores and picking one up being the round-off of hardware shopping (as I did this morning!) - although those stands are commercial, not fundraisers. But they’re standard fundraiser items too, like at my daughter’s school sports day yesterday, where the PTA organized one.
Also a standard late-night stagger-out-the-club streetfood item.
Which is wrong wrong wrong! The bread is for holding the sausage with, you don’t need a serviette to hold the bread. You do need a serviette to wipe your fingers afterward but under the bread is the most useless place as you then either have to remove the serviette or eat it with the bread. As far as pet peeves go it is up there with cafés serving food with a serviette between the food and the plate. I either have to lift the food up and remove the serviette or risk eating the serviette with the food. Just give me the serviette separately damn it! Don’t get me started on diagonal bread…
Sausage is normally a plain beef sausage. It is intentional for the bread to collapse, the bread is wrapped around the sausage. Works best with fresh bread. Stale bread or bread with crispy crust will tend to break. When I do it at home I have butter but the typical fund raising stall doesn’t bother with it.
I’m in the UK – never heard of a “sausage sizzle” before this thread ! “Snag” in this connection, is also a new one on me: clearly, from the context it must be Aussie-speak for a sausage, or a particular kind of sausage.
I’ve come across the word “snorkers” as an Australianism for sausages; but this was in a World War II-era work of fiction. Wonder whether it’s still part of the Australian vernacular nowadays?