Yes, American breakfast sausage (of the variety pictured in the link) is very fatty.
It leaks a ton of fat when you cook it. Great for instances where you need lots of drippings, such as making turkey stuffing, or frying eggs, or the gravy mentioned by cher3.
They make reduced fat varieties, but even these are very fatty.
Fine!:mad: I will admit it. I tried sausages, once. For 20 minutes. I was curious. 
Here is a review of a new low- fat variety, available in my area. Link requires registration. However, Bugmenot.com avoids registration. In fact, the password for the Baltimore sun is:
bugmenot90@mailinator.com
bugmenot
Heck, here is the relevant portion:
P.S. It doesn’t say it in the article, but the brand name is Neshama.
:smack: I forgot to mention that that quote was written by Rob Kasper.
Around here you can get – at some local butchers but also at Whole Foods or Trader Joes – Chicken sausage flavored with everything from garlic+sundried tomato to Buffalo sauce and blue cheese. Usually they contain ground chicken, very little filler or fat, and chunky flavor add-ins.
My butcher used to sell them for cheap (I mean, he was just grinding up his extra chicken) until he got wise to the fact that people were buying the crap out of them, and tripled the price. 
Spinach and feta was a favorite of mine there. Also Green apple.
I’ve spent a little time in southern Germany and it seems like every town has their own specialty sausage; different sizes, compositions and even particular ways of serving them. In Nuremberg, they were about the size of American breakfast links, served 6, 9, or 12 with potatoes, or 3 on a hamburger-sized roll. And I had one of the best sausages of my life at a little storefront place in Munich (I think she said it was a Krakower), but I couldn’t find the place again.
If there’s a store around Boston with a good selection of sausages, I haven’t found it. Although I can get good cajun Andouille in some of the grocery stores.
I want to learn to make my own sausage someday, just so I can do them in the shape of balloon animals.
In SoCal, there is a meat packer named Farmer John. They provide the hot dogs at Dodger Stadium (which are the best in the world) and make any number of meat items. Recently, I came across the strangest one yet: Maple Sausage. Just the thing for people who dip their sausage into the syrup on their pancakes. Quite tasty. 
Right, and the Italian sausage comes in two kinds, sweet or mildly hot. The fennel might be optional, or it might only be in the sweet kind – I can’t remember. In any case, these are the sausages that you get outside Fenway Park, with grilled green peppers and onions. What more can I say?
There’s also a thing called a Chinese sausage, which has nothing Chinese about it, except it seems to be colored with that bright red coloring you see on Chinese spareribs. I’ve never bought them, and I don’t know if they exist outside the Northeast.
So that’s Massachusetts sausages for you. Mangetout, you need to take a sausage tour of France. There must be a thousand different kinds. Here’s a sausage-oriented French tongue twister for you: Si six scies scient six saucissons, six cent soixante-six scies scient six cent soixante-six saucissons.
I make homemade sausage on a regular basis. It’s far, far, far easier than you may think if you have the proper equipment. If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them. (Patties are much easier than links, too.)
Is there a local butcher near you? I’ve had no problem just asking the guy at the counter for hog casing. It’ll often be packed in a solution of salt water, so remember to rinse it out both inside and out.
Chinese sausage is indeed Chinese. It’s chewy, mild, and sweet, with a texture something like a Slim Jim and is used as a filling for steamed buns in dim sum restaurants.
I just went into town to bank my pay cheque and there’s a travelling French market there - I bought a couple of dried sausages (saucisson sec) - they had quite a range, including wild boar, but I plumped for one of venison and one of duck. I tasted a few varieties (actually, they’re all pretty similar). I’m really looking forward to eating these little beauties, but I know they’re going to be stinky once they’re cut.
I did make my own cased sausages once (I’ve made meatloaf, meatballs, patties etc more times than I can count); I went to an independent butcher and asked him if I could buy the ingredients from him, then bring back the mixture and use his stuffer; he was fine with this arrangement and I made about twenty pounds of Greek-style (based on Sheftalies) sausages - mostly ground beef, with lots of parsley, onion and mint.
The sausage machine was incredible - it was a big stainless steel cylinder with a lid that bolts down, looking like a submarine hatch or something; a foot pedal causes a powered piston inside the machine to rise, forcing the mixture out through a nozzle at the top/side - the guy threaded the skins onto the nozzle, pressed the foot pedal, and a single, perfectly-stuffed, twenty-foot sausage exploded out of the side (into a large metal tray) in no more than a few seconds.
He then picked it up and, working faster than I could watch, deftly twirled it into a long triple chain of linked sausages. Quite remarkable.
All I can get here in American-style Jimmy Dean (beef) sausages. I will be home in four weeks and will go to all the local fire department Pancake Day breakfasts. All-you-can-eat pancakes and pork sausage!
DOH! :smack:
Last time around I got them from the meat processor, but I don’t really like that place (though they did do a good job), and it’s way out of my way now.
I hadn’t even thought of the local butcher, he opened recently, and I’m so used to living in the sticks of NH, without the specialty stores. I’ll have to check with them!
I’ve made just patties (all you can do without the casings), and I agree, they are certainly easy. And the flavor combinations you can get are only limited by your imagination. (For good or bad)
-Butler
Went to Germany [little bit south east of Stuttgart] and had weisswurst, and loved it. I found a couple of recipes online and am good…
But I also had a little dried/preserved sausage, about the size of a small finger that I loved, but for the life of me I can
t remember the name [other than for some reason the name didnt sound like a german word] bought them in Real in Boblingen, they came in a small plastic pouch thing, say 15 0r 20 of them…anybody have any suggestions? I am pretty sure they were pork or pork/beef mixture. They made a great cold breakfast along with bread and fruit and the ‘easter’ hard boiled eggs=)
and as an aside, anybody know the brand and name of the premade tea with cactus fruit added?
The butcher’s near my parents makes fabulous sausages.
Pork and apple, beef and mustard, lamb and herbs…yummy.
I like black and white pudding in my fry up.
I make Ulster fries when I make a fry up. This consists of bacon, fried eggs, fried tomatos, ordinary sausage, white pudding, black pudding, potato bread and a soda farl.
It is saved for very, very special occasions (it’s fairly heart attack inducing), but I can buy all the ingredients at the corner shop, so some people around here must have it on a daily or weekly basis.
I, Like most people here, buy Denny’s sausages, except when I’m feeling very fancy and want some for dinner, in which case I’ll get butcher sausages or venison sausages from M&S.
The most expensive Denny’s sausages are pretty good.
Oh, my goodness. I love sausage.
In our stores, Jimmy Dean-esque sausage, Italian sausage and bratwursts are common. I’ve noticed some other Italian sausages with various other things in them, one of which is sun-dried tomato. I have never actually been to the only butcher shop in town. <ow, I know!>
In the interest of completeness, here’s a recipe to make American-style pork breakfast sausage:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_23907,00.html
Here’s biscuits:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_151,00.html
And here’s gravy:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_153,00.html
Thanks, AB, for teaching the world how to make good Southern food.