Announcing This Week’s Theme: Sausage
Published by Joel January 22nd, 2007 in Announcements, Food, Meat. Share This
When ancient man began to preserve the meat from his kills, rather than consuming every scrap at during protein-fueled orgy, he quickly discovered sausage, the “natural outcome of efficient butchery.” By taking bits too small to be saved and organs too strange to be eaten alone, dousing them in what salt and spices were available, and stuffing them into the intestines of an animal, our predecessors were able to create handy meat packages that would keep for a long time.
Because sausage making is such an obvious way of maximizing an animal’s flesh, almost every culture around the world has its own sausage-making tradition, from the famous dry sausages of Italy, fresh sausages like the traditional American breakfast sausage, to cooked smoked sausages like kielbasa and hot dogs. Germany alone boasts at least a thousand different varieties (perhaps up to 1,500).
And of course, the immortal Slim Jim is technically a sausage. Ooh yeah!
This week on Dethroner we’ll be talking about the history of sausage, some great sausage you may not have tried, how to make your own at home, and why Constantine banned the sausage when he embraced Christianity.
This week’s theme is: Sausage.
If you have a tip or a story idea for Dethroner, please feel free to send a tip or drop us a line on AIM, or just add it in directly to this week’s schedule on the wiki. In addition to theme-related links, we also welcome regular submissions to Ask Dethroner and Dapper or Crapper?. Upcoming themes are available for your perusal and suggestion on our Planning Commission Wiki.
There is an excellent episode of Good Eats on sausage that is worth watching if you’re interested in making your own at home. It really doesn’t seem as hard as I thought it would be.
The supermarket just over the border in Germany(I’m in Switzerland) seems to have over 1,000 varieties of Sausage at it’s meat counter. I’m still not certain what things like Teewurst are, other than they are soft and frightening.
Weisswurst are also scary, the Munichers dip them into sweet mustard and suck the flesh from them, discarding the skin.
mmmmmmm…chorizo y huevos
screw you Joel, wtf making me hungry an hour before lunch
this place is *really* a big sausage fest now…. ;)
I’m going to lose massive man point with this one, but outside of Slim Jim - does that REALLY count as sausage? - I despise the meat. Looks gross, smells gross, odd textures (at least from the small sampling I’ve had over the years).
I’ll take my beef jerky, please.