Tasting Australia: Festival of Sausage in Bread salutes the humble snag

Did you know Romans marched off to war with sausages hung over their shoulders? Or that Bunnings sausage sizzles raised $38 million in 2019? Simon Wilkinson reports...

Next time you fling a snag on the hot plate, wrap it in a slice of Tip Top’s finest and drown it in dead horse, pause for a moment and consider what you are eating.

This is the food that has sustained conquering armies and fuelled heroic quests in ancient literary classics.

It is a link between nations, tribes and communities across the globe who, while following different customs and recipes, are united in loving both its practicality, its flavour – and the humour to be found in its vague similarity to a certain male appendage.

Closer to home, it is a pillar of Australian democracy, a financial lifeline for community groups and an icebreaker at a variety of social gatherings.

At face value, it is a simple tube of ground meat, fat and, in some cases, parts better left unknown, stuffed into a cylindrical casing. But for those who understand the power of smell and taste to bring on the most vivid of memories, it is not to be underestimated.

Now the sausage is about to claim its rightful place in the food chain alongside high-brow  delicacies  as  the  star  of  its own major event in the Tasting Australia program.

The Festival of Sausage in Bread will celebrate the vast reach and universal appeal of this perfect package, matching a selection of snags from 10 different nations with the appropriate bread and accompaniments.

Obvious contenders such as the American hotdog with sauce and mustard will be served up alongside more exotic options such as the Argentinian choripan, Scotland’s square lome and the Thai sai ua that will come wrapped in roti.

All the sizzling will take place over charcoal pits in and around the cloisters at the University of Adelaide where there will also be sausage-themed entertainment including games, a bingo call and giant meat tray raffle.

Chef Angus Love has helped organise the Festival of Sausage in Bread at the University of Adelaide’s The Cloisters. Picture: Duy Huynh

Organiser Ross Ganf, the university’s director of cultural and campus events, says a random idea that came up over a glass of wine quickly gathered momentum.

“When I started to delve into this, I found every culture has a sausage, every culture has a different bread, every culture has a different condiment,” he says.

“Every culture put the onions either underneath or on top. Are they going for acid to counter the pork fat? Is it crusty bread or soft? Is the sausage on charcoal or a gas barbecue or broiled.”

To flesh out the concept he enlisted chef Gus Love from Lovefield Catering, who has worked behind the scenes to put together some of Tasting Australia’s previous big-ticket events. They then called on a kindred spirit in Rihann Koekemoer from Ellis Butchers in McLaren Vale to produce the different sausages – approximately 1500kg in all.

With each sausage priced at just $5, a big crowd is expected, with a mix of always-hungry students, faculty members and the general public all welcome.

In fact, sausages have been feeding the masses around the world for thousands of years. For early civilisations they were nothing less than a matter of survival, a way to preserve meat and offal when a large beast was slaughtered to ensure a supply when there was none. They also made use of all the trimmings and other bits that would otherwise be wasted – nose to tail eating was already a thing.

Go back to the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, the ancient Babylonians and the Egyptians and references to the production of sausages can be found scattered through their historical texts.

From ancient Greece, Homer’s epic poem Odyssey mentions its hero Odysseus “rolling from side to side as a cook turns a sausage, big with blood and fat” and also being given a prize of sausage when he won a boxing match.

(Don’t be totally surprised if a toned-down version of Homer’s sausage makes it on to the grill at the festival.)

A gourmet version of an old fave.

The Romans were also fans and the Empire’s soldiers went to war with a dried sausage made from pork, fat, salt, pepper, pine nuts and garum, a fermented liquid similar to fish sauce.

“They hung them from their horses or over their shoulders,” Koekemoer says. “They would march with these sausages and eat them as needed.” The word “sausage” comes from the Latin term “salsus” or salted, referring to the method often used to preserve the meat.

Ingredients and techniques, however, depend largely on geography and climate. Hot weather made it easier to hang the sausages to dry. Cooler temperatures, even snow and ice, meant that smoking the meat might be enough.

In Adelaide, our most popular sausage choices mirror waves of migration, particularly from Germany, Italy and elsewhere across the Mediterranean. The Barossa Valley is famed for its wursts and the Hahndorf Inn, in the main street of the popular Hills tourist town, devotes an entire page of its menu to 11 sausage choices with origins from Germany or thereabouts.

Head chef Alvin Charles reports that he orders up to 300kg of each variety every fortnight. Do the maths.

“Our sausages are always popular,” Alvin says.

“And people love the thrill of our metre-long hotdog with sauerkraut, mustard and gravy. It’s the theatrics of it all.”

Italian butchers such as Marino Meats in the Central Market and Nino’s at Paradise take great pride in producing the specialty sausages their customers crave.

For chorizo and other Spanish/Portuguese favourites, you can’t go past San Jose, a brand known around the country.

Using whole local pigs (always female) and his own spice blends, Jose Coutinho produces a fresh, semi-cured and fully dried chorizo to cover all bases. He has also perfected a black chorizo, or morcilla, made with the pig’s blood.

“We use chorizo on just about everything,” he says. “It’s a poor people’s food but a quality ingredient. On a Sunday afternoon, I will chop up a few red peppers, a red onion and a semi-cured chorizo, and throw them in a pan together. The oil from the chorizo comes out and gives it all flavour. With a glass of red and a piece of bread, it is happy days.”

Community groups ran more than 44,000 sausage at Bunnings stores around Australia in 2019, raising a staggering $38 million.. Picture: NCA NewsWire /David Geraghty

Of course, the bulk of sausages that are consumed each weekend don’t have such exclusive pedigrees. These are what are commonly known as “BBQ sausages”, with a thinner shape that cooks through quickly and normally with a beef-based filling.

You will find them sizzling and spitting alongside the chopped onion on the hot plate at your local junior footy game, where they are crucial to the club’s financial wellbeing.

They are also as much a part of a trip to a Bunnings as coming home with that extra screwdriver or plant that you never really needed. In 2019, more than 44,000 sausage sizzles were run by community groups at Bunnings stores around Australia, raising a staggering $38 million.

Then there is the “Democracy Sausage”, something that has become as compulsory on election day as, well, voting.

“When I rocked up and saw my polling station didn’t have a democracy sausage, it felt like I was getting sidelined,” Ganf says. “I was losing my right to vote.”

Ganf believes the broad appeal of the sausage comes down to its versatility.

“It holds a special place in street food in most cultures,” he says. “It can be as simple as a sausage sizzle through to something more complex and beautiful. You can eat it in your hand and that goes a long way. And sausage in bread is such a nostalgic item, right up there with pie and sauce. Mum and dad turning the snag is an iconic image.”

Koekemoer agrees. “It’s all about your childhood. I look at my own kids and growing up they all have their own unique tastes, but when they start out experimenting with food, for some reason a sausage is always easy to get them to eat.

Sausages are also a favourite on the Aussie barbecue. Picture: Jenifer Jagielski

“When you are an adult you have visions of yourself next to a barbecue and there is almost an emotional link between the sausage you had and those memories.”

Koekemoer grew up in South Africa where there were boerewors on the brai every Saturday and the Parliament enacted a law to determine what could and couldn’t go in the national sausage.

Working in China for 10 years importing wine, Koekemoer also started to bring in some Australian beef and produced his own range of sausages. When he began including these in his tastings, he found they appealed to both expats and locals.

“You see people’s faces light up when they see a sausage and it’s a good one,” he says. “There is an immediate connection between you and the customers.”

As the owner of Ellis Butchers, he gets a similar reaction. At any one time, Ellis will have 10 different sausages on offer, a mix of staples such as Italian pork and fennel and specials such as the North African merguez or even a cheeseburger flavour, complete with mustard, pickles and tomato sauce.

Koekemoers and Love have been working together to tweak the recipes for the festival line-up. Love says his favourites are the chevapchichi in lepinja with Russian salad and ajvar, a roasted capsicum relish, and the “bastardised” Thai creation of a sai au chicken sausage in roti with sour tamarind and orange chutney, pickled chilli and coriander.

Whatever the sausage, Love says there is one rule.

“Nobody likes a soggy sausage,” he says. “If you get one of those limp, floppy sausages that have just gone on the grill and rolled around for a bit they are not very good. It’s all about the crust.”

The Festival of Sausage in Bread is at The Cloisters, University of Adelaide, on Friday, May 7, with two sessions, from 11am-2pm and 5pm-8pm. All sausages with accompaniments will be $5. Details tastingaustralia.com.au