Sausage sizzles

IT'S AN AUSTRALIAN GUY THING

This morning I did the Eltham walk. It's Saturday - and there outside Woolworths was a sausage sizzle. The picture is of a Bunnings sausage sizzle - they are famous for it - well the two are so quintessentially Australian aren't they ? Bunnings and sausage sizzles. The smell is very tempting, although in lots of ways sausages must be one of the world's unhealthiest foods - whatever kind of sausage you are talking about - even the fanciest, though no doubt the very, very best have pure meat and other flavourings in them. But what we are talking about here is the common or garden snag.

As an aside - nobody really seems to know why we Australians call sausages snags. The most likely explanation seems to be that it is from an English dialect (they don't say which) word which means morsel or light meal. As one website pointed out a snag is not really a morsel or light - but I guess it's not a full meal.

But back to the sausage sizzle - not a terrifically ancient tradition though they do seem to have been around in the 19th century they don't really seem to have taken off until the 1940s and not really in a big way until the 1970s. My theory is that it might have been around then that people started getting picky about cake stalls - the traditional way of raising money for charity - and a very good one too. They were very popular and easy to manage. Mums in schools were usually quite willing to make a cake for a cake stall. But as allergies blossomed and increased and people got very picky about food labelling and hygiene, cake stalls eventually had to meet such stringent standards that they basically died. How often do you see a cake stall now?

Sausages though are a different thing - as numerous quotes will tell you it's probably best not to know what goes into them. And nobody seems to care much about the hygiene aspects of it all. Well I guess they are cooked very well.

And the wonderful Terry Pratchett also weighs in:

“They don't go in for the fancy or exotic, but stick to conventional food like flightless bird embryos, minced organs in intestine skins, slices of hog flesh and burnt ground grass seeds dipped in animal fats; or, as it is known in their patois, egg, sausage, bacon and a fried slice of toast.” Terry Pratchett - Mort

They are the food of the common man, and somehow blokey. Not like cakes. Which is also why they are also commonly found at elections. It's an opportunity for the politicians to show that they are just like us. So a sausage sizzle is a symbol as well as a way of raising money - the money being raised today outside of Woolworths was for the CFA - a vital but blokey service.

And what do you get at a sausage sizzle? Again this is peculiarly Australian - you get a square slice of white bread, sometimes buttered, sometimes not. On this is placed diagonally, a grilled sausage - sometimes you get onions as well - and on top you get a squirt of tomato sauce. (I knew it as tomato ketchup.) Tomato sauce is another very Australian and blokey thing - often dolloped on a variety of foods - mostly pies and sausage rolls - also very blokey. All of which looks like this:

And I have to tell you it's surprisingly tasty! Because it may be blokey but women and children love them too. Messy to eat though, which is why you are also usually given a napkin too to hold it with. Tricky not to dribble the sauce and fat down your face and on to your clothes though. And they're hot too.

“A sausage is an image of rest, peace and tranquility in stark contrast to the destruction and chaos of everyday life.” Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

And just to conclude with the gourmet possibilities. Well they are endless really - starting with the type of sausage and the bread or bun you use, and going on to what you put on it. Here pictures of just two of these: