Chicken Sausage Party

So, a while back I get an email with a promotional offer. And I liked the PR firm’s gumption. Here are the most relevant parts. I’ve added boldface for emphasis:

As an influential blogger in the Albany community, al fresco All Natural – America’s #1 chicken sausage —wants to help you throw a dinner party!
Here’s the scoop: We will provide you with the basic supplies needed to host a fun dinner party featuring al fresco – coupons to purchase al fresco, cooking gear, recipes with wine pairing suggestions, etc. All you have to do is invite a few friends over for dinner and then share your (honest!) experience on your blog or on al fresco’s Facebook page.

Now a few months later, they sent me the coupons (and a little bit of schwag)*, I invited some friends, and the sausages have been evaluated. Generally I’ll try whatever anyone wants to send me. If it’s considered food by any subset of the human race, I’ll eat it. If it’s good, I’ll write about. If it’s not, I’ll write about something else.

I don’t feel the need to be critical of the good people who want to send me free food. That’s why you never heard about that disgusting candy I got a while back. Oh man, that was bad.

But Al Fresco asked for my honest opinion, and that’s what you are going to get.

There’s a lot to like about these sausages. They are made from 100% skinless breast and thigh meat. That means they never use any mechanically separated chicken meat. Also there aren’t a lot of funky ingredients in these either. For example the sweet apple chicken sausage contains:

SKINLESS CHICKEN MEAT,PURE MAPLE SYRUP,BROWN SUGAR,DRIED APPLES(UNSULFURED),AND CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF SALT,LEMON JUICE,SPICES.IN A NATURAL PORK CASING.

The nutritionals aren’t bad on these either. And I appreciate that despite it being a chicken sausage they decided to stick with a pork casing because of how it improves the taste and texture of the sausage.

But at the end of the day, these are conventionally raised and produced meat products. As much as I would like to be an ideologue on these matters of GMOs, antibiotics, animal rights, and sustainability, I still eat conventionally produced meat with some frequency. However, I try my best to make sure those occasions are spent on something special.

As they stand, these sausages don’t quite reach the mark.

Which isn’t to say they couldn’t. If Al Fresco adopted a higher standard against antibiotics used in the production of their chicken, took a stance against GMOs in feed, and/or worked with an organization like Certified Humane I might buy them again. Especially the Buffalo Style ones.

So where do they fall short? Mostly on texture and flavor. But I may just not be a chicken sausage kind of guy, or a fruit in the sausage kind of fellow. For this party we picked up Sweet Apple (with pure Vermont maple syrup) for the kids, and also decided to try Chipotle Chorizo (with mango and adobo), Spinach and Feta (with a hint of rosemary), and Buffalo Style (tangy with medium heat).

Without harping on the shortcomings too much, the apple ones were too sweet, the chorizo was okay, but the fruit gave it an unpleasant texture, and the spinach with feta oddly tasted more like Asian dumpling filling than a Mediterranean sausage (Mrs. Fussy concurred).

Also I found a small bone fragment in one of the links. That wasn’t appealing either. Especially in a product I was feeding to my children.

But the Buffalo Style were kind of fun. It probably helps that I’m a sucker for Buffalo Style anything. And I could see myself having some more fun with these. Dressing them up with a slaw of organic carrots and celery, or mixing slices into oven crisped potatoes tossed with additional Buffalo sauce for a slightly healthier upstate NY version of Salchipapas.

I might even get these again regardless of whether the company improves its production practices. Especially as I consider next year’s Super Bowl.

But until then, in all honesty, if I were in the market for a chicken sausage I’d probably reach first for one that takes a stronger stand against antibiotics like Hannaford’s Nature’s Place. Or Bilinski’s which now has an organic line, which means the chickens in those sausages were raised on feed that was free of GMOs.

Still, neither of them have a Buffalo style. So that may still remain my guilty pleasure.

*For the sake of full disclosure, in addition to four coupons for free packs of sausage, I got an insulated Al Fresco beer tote/shoulder bag, an Al Fresco wood trivet, an Al Fresco wood spoon, an Al Fresco oven mitt, and an Al Fresco plastic flower vase.