hot country sausage
See also: sausage
A coarsely ground, well-seasoned fresh pork breakfast sausage with chile or cayenne added for heat, sold loose in bulk or formed into patties. Being fresh rather than cured or smoked, it must be cooked all the way through before eating, unlike a ready-to-eat cured sausage.
Buying guidance
Buy it cold and close to when you'll cook it -- fresh sausage is highly perishable and should smell clean, not sour. It's ground from a fattier cut, typically shoulder, so it browns and stays juicy more like ground pork than a lean chop; avoid pressing it flat while cooking, which squeezes out the fat that keeps it moist.
Substitutions
- Mild breakfast sausage plus a pinch of cayenne or red pepper flakes -- lets you control exactly how much heat to add.
- Ground pork plus sausage seasoning, such as sage, black pepper, and cayenne -- close in texture and lets you season to taste.
- Ground chicken or turkey sausage with added heat -- leaner result that cooks faster with less rendered fat in the pan.
Tips & common mistakes
Break it into small pieces with a spatula as it cooks rather than leaving it in one solid mass -- a big clump steams in its own rendered fat instead of browning, leaving it pale and soft instead of crisp at the edges.
Storage
Raw sausage freezes well for a few months, so it's worth buying extra when you find it -- freeze it flat in a bag so it thaws quickly, and cook it directly from thawed rather than refreezing meat that's already been frozen once.