Not just supposed to be. It is. And across the street is Stefano’s, an italian place and my fave restaurant. Chef Stefano is a James Beard award nominee. He makes decent italian sausage too. Note that his joint is really italian, NOT italian-american.
When I worked in Tucson back in the 90s the cafeteria used to serve chorizo and scrambled eggs every Thursday morning. Good, sloppy chorizo with lots of red grease. Getting hunger pangs just remembering something I ate more than 20 years ago…
My favorite lunch meat as a kid outside Philly. A Pennsylvania Dutch thing (hence Lebanon - as in Lebanon, PA). Haven’t seen it in ages…
For some reason anyone I know who didn’t grow up in the Philly area turns their nose up at scrapple. Mrs. Martian in particular. I would kill for a few slices fried crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside.
I found white pudding I had in Ireland to be quite similar.
I’ve certainly turned my nose up at descriptions of scrapple, but I quite enjoyed it at Dutch Eat Place. Maybe Philadelphians are just bad at descriptions?
I’ve always wanted to try it, so when I first visited my brother- and sister-in-law in Hershey, I found some at the local supermarket and grilled it up. It’s quite all right! I think every time I’ve visited since I’ve made some for myself and brought home some to freeze.
Oh, and Lebanon Bologna, as well. That’s kind of an interesting one. Looks more like a cotto salami than a bologna. The sweet version is odd, but both the regular and sweet are perfectly fine lunch meats.
Hell no. The description is accurate(ish), issued as a challenge to an outsider. Overcome your squeamishness and enjoy a wonderful food, otherwise more for us.
Most cultures have such a challenge food. I was good with haggis in Scotland, couldn’t like black pud with my Full English Breakfasts (first thing I dropped from my orders after the first day). Likewise duck blood soup in Korea. All the varieties of rotting/strangely preserved fish in Scandinavia.
Fair point. I, too, enjoyed haggis in Scotland and was OK, although not delighted, with black pudding. Natto is an abomination, but bee babies are surprisingly tasty (although neither fits any reasonable definition of “sausage”).
Yeah, I grew up with stuff like head cheese, kiszka (Polish blood sausage), liver & onions, various pates/terrines made from god-knows-what, jellied pigs feet, chicken hearts in the soup, etc., so scrapple was totally like “what’s the big deal?”
You know, if the Pennsylvanians are counting scrapple, I think the entry for North Carolina sould be livermush. In fact Wikipedia says livermush might be derived from scrapple. I do not know if it’s the most popular, but it’s definitely the most uniquely North Carolinian.
That said, although I grew up in North Carolina, my parents were from Wisconsin, so we never ate livermush growing up. Although our very Southern neighbors would try to feed it to us when we were over there playing with their kids.
Whenever we went to Wisconsin to visit my grandparents, we would return home with a cooler full of bratwurst packed in dry ice. You can buy it anywhere now, but back in the 1980s is was impossible to find outside the Upper Midwest.
Dang it, this thread is making me want some bratwurst. I think I’ll pick some up from the butcher this weekend. And I think I’ll also get some chorizo while I’m there and do chorizo and eggs for brunch this Sunday. Or maybe a breakfast burrito with chorizo, eggs, salsa, and maybe some potatoes.
I love scrapple, Park’s particularly. I grew up with it. It did not kill me. White ring pudding was an occasional treat that I enjoyed with Manning’s hominy, King’s Po-T-Rick syrup and ketchup (any brand). Christ, I need to visit back home soon.
Yeah, that could use a little rebranding. "Hey kids! Who’s up for some livermush! Or some kidneyslop? Snoutpaste?”
Shhhh! Otherwise everybody will want some.
Illchester’s pretty big around where I am.
The most popular sausage in Australia would be the Bunnings Sausage.
Bunnings is a hardware chain that on weekends has a charity sausage sizzle out the front, volunteers cooking very basic BBQ sausages on a hotplate and serving them on a slice of white bread with sauce and onions if you like.
Personally I prefer a Spicy Debriciner in a crusty roll with Sauerkraut and hot English Mustard but they’re much harder to come by.
I was in Vienna a month and a half ago, and I had one of those at a stand just outside the Albertina. Probably the best thing I ate in the city, although the bar wasn’t that high (beautiful city, warm and friendly people, an the cleanest public bathrooms I’ve ever seen - but the local food was overcooked and under-seasoned, and would it kill you people to eat a vegetable every now and again?)
Head cheese is still popular in Wisconsin too, and could be considered a sort of skinless sausage equivalent. My dutch grandmother did enjoy her “hoofdkaas”, as she called it. Some german folks around here called it “souse”. I never was a fan of it.
It’s nothing I buy for myself, but when I’m at my parents’ house and raid the fridge for a snack, if I find some head cheese, I’ll make at least one open-faced sandwich on Polish rye with it and a healthy smear of mustard on it. If I’m feeling up to it, a couple slices of tomato and thinly sliced onions, salt, and pepper, as well.
Liverwurst/Braunschweiger, on the other hand, I will occasionally buy for myself as both me and my wife will eat it. That gets mustard and sliced onions (w/salt and pepper).
Southside Market in Elgin does make delicious links. Most of the pitmasters in Central/South TX make and smoke their own sausage in-house. I’m a big fan of the jalapeño cheese links at Kreuz’s and the spicy sriracha sausage at Wiatrek’s Meat Market in Poth and San Antonio.
After reading this thread, I know what’s going on grill tonight.
This is the early 60s lunchbox I had in K-1st grade:
Mom always packed it with a Tastykake (Peanut Butter Kandy Kake was my favorite), a few pieces of carrot or celery, and a sandwich. It was always a crap-shoot which of 3 types of sandwiches I would find in my spaceship box:
PB&J: ho-hum. 
Bologna: Blech! That’s it, I’m flying away in my spaceship! 
Liverwurst, cheese, mustard, and a thick slice of Bermuda onion: Yeah Mom, I guess you do love me! 
That plus a box of warm, slightly sour milk was my school lunch in the early days. 60 years later, I still love liverwurst.
It’s definitely the most uniquely NC sausage, but I’ve lived here most of my life–including in WNC for the last two decades–and have never seen it on a menu. If it weren’t for my co-worker from Shelby, NC, I would have forgotten it exists. (A few years ago I asked him about his weekend plans, and he said he was going home for the Livermush Festival, and that day I learned something new about the world).
Far and away the most popular sausage here will be either breakfast sausage or hot dogs. And given the amount of pork produced and consumed in NC, I’d rather we lay claim to breakfast sausage.
Great, I (the OP) am the 100th post! I need to mention that I live near to sausage Valhalla. Gibb’s Butcher Block is on the site of my ancestor’s original mill in this area and has a mill stone with a bronze plaque to commemorate it. It’s a nice country meat market with dozens of sausage varieties. Every Saturday afternoon in season they grill free samples of a bunch of their sausages. There are so many customers it requires traffic control.