Location: Cuetopia, TX - Home of the Fighting Sausage Heads
Cost: @$21.50 +shipping
Link: Sausage
One of the BBQ people I follow on Twitter is @cuetopia. He is the official Twitter spokesperson of Meyers Elgin Sausage and the Fighting Sausage Heads. Since I have been following him he has tantalized and taunted me with pictures of their smokehouse making sausage. I finally procured some to test and do a review on.
Some friends invited us over to watch a football game, eat chili and socialize. I figured this would be a great time to cook up three packs of the sausage and get some other opinions about them.
I looked at what we had and decided two "regular" and a spicy one would be good to try. I pulled out the Smoked Sausage, Smoked Sausage with Garlic and the Jalapeño & Cheese.
I didn't want to do a long smoke, so I decided to grill the sausage. I used some Kingsford Hickory charcoal. Once the fire was going I put the sausages on.
About every ten minutes I rotated them so they could cook evenly and move them around so no sausage was on a hot spot too long. The temp on the grill was low so it took about 30 minutes to cook them. The sausages cooked up nicely. Swelling up, splitting and releasing their juiciness into the coals making for a mouthwatering aroma.
Once they were cooked I put them in a dish with cheap labels and tinfoil separators. After all we didn't want them to get mixed up.
All three of them were juicy, not greasy like some sausages. Their casings gave a nice crisp snap when I bit into them or cut them. They weren't tough like some, where the whole casing tears off as you try to gnaw through the outer casing to get to the tender meat on the inside. Just the right toughness to hold it all together to grill or smoke.
Smoked Sausage
The Smoked Sausage is great. I took a bite and thought, "WOW! That's good sausage." It has just the right amount of smokiness so you can tell that it has been smoked over hickory wood but not too much where it's overpowering.
These sausages are great by themselves but would make a dish of scallop potatoes really good. My wife makes a great corn chowder and these would make it even better (that is hard to do as it is very good.)
Smoked Sausage with Garlic
I love garlic. Most dishes I cook have garlic in them, even my BBQ pork. I was looking forward to these sausages and was not disappointed. These sausages are just like the Smoked Sausages but with garlic. It is not overpowering, in your face, breath-of-death giving garlic. It is a subtle garlic flavor that enhances the overall taste sensation of the sausage and bumps it up a notch.
These sausages stand well on their own but would be good in an Italian sandwich with onions and peppers.
Jalapeño & Cheese
I like spicy. Every time I eat jalapeños or jalapeño flavored anything I feel ill. These sausages scared me. I thought, "Great, I'll eat these and my stomach will feel like it's turning inside out and my mouth will be on fire." Boy was I surprised!
These are my favorite sausages I have tried so far. The spice is there but not the, "grab-a-gallon-of-milk-my-mouth-is-on-fire" type. It is a nice slow burn. You really don't notice the heat at first but after a couple of seconds your mouth is pleasantly warm. My wife, who is not a fan of spicy, really liked them too. The smokey flavor and the heat make for a happy mouth and I had no ill side effects from the jalapeños.
These sausages would make great enchiladas or other Mexican style dishes.
All three of these sausages are great. I wish there were a local store I could by them at. If I had a BBQ restaurant I would serve these. To quote one of my friends when I asked him what he thought of the sausages, "Mmmm...mmm...mmmm...good. On the Gibbs Ribs* scale these easily get a full rack of ribs with extra sauce on the side.
*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor. I will tend to stick to a full rack, half rack or one rib.
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