7 Best Sausage Brands To Buy At The Grocery Store And 7 You Might Want To Avoid

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In case you didn't know it, sausages are pretty popular. This evergreen meat item is a fixture in breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes around the entire world, and its widespread appeal has led to seemingly endless variations and equally endless sales. In 2019, consumers in the United States spent just over 44 billion dollars on sausages (per Statista), with that amount set to size by several billion dollars by the end of 2023.

Sausages are one of the most adaptable meat sources out there. Not only do they fit into pretty much every dish going, from pastas to casseroles, to good old hot dogs, but they can act capably as a flavor base for a host of seasonings. You're as likely to find sausages flavored with apples, cheese, maple syrup, or hot sauce, as you are to find them with just their meat and a few choice seasonings. And as sausages are one of the easiest meat items for plant-based food producers to replicate, they've long been a favorite for vegetarians and vegans, meaning everyone can enjoy them.

But getting the right kind is crucial. Thanks to sausage's popularity around the world, there are dozens of sausage brands out there vying for your attention, and not all of them cut the mustard. Sausage brands can vary widely in the quality of their ingredients, nutritional goodness, and sheer taste, and we're here to separate the good from the bad.

Smithfield sausage products are everywhere. The meat producer has more than a fifth of the share of the entire pork market (per Fitch Ratings), and as the world's largest pork processor, it's very used to people purchasing its items. It's a shame, then, that its sausages are far from top quality. While the price and availability of items like its Hometown Original Breakfast Sausage Links can't be faulted, they tend to taste salty and somewhat plain, when compared to other sausages that are produced in smaller batches. The spice blend of its sausages is also slightly unusual to some palettes, giving them a curious flavor.

The main reason that we would avoid this brand, though, is because of its tendency to include corn syrup solids in its products. Corn syrup solids are, as the name indicates, a solid form of the near-ubiquitous corn syrup, a super-sweet, fairly cheap additive that's found in both sweet and savory items. While corn syrup is highly popular because of its cost-effectiveness and consistency, it also raises the sugar content of some items significantly and calls into question exactly how much processing a product like these sausages has undergone.

There's nothing swaggering about these sausages. Tennessee-based "premium" sausage producer Swaggerty's has been making links since 1930, and boldly states on its website that it makes "quite possibly the best pork sausage you'll ever taste." We'd personally like to challenge that claim, by pointing to the reviews of its Breakfast Sausage Patties, and the ingredients it puts into them. "Many of the patties had those little hard balls of cartilage or bone that you can really chip your teeth on. Not to mention it's gross to bite into," said one disgruntled customer via Walmart, who complained about the product's decline in quality. "I'll be switching to another brand after this last bad batch."

These sausage patties are super-high in saturated fat, with just one patty (weighing only 45 grams) containing 4.5 grams, or 23% of your recommended saturated fat intake. Its ingredients list also raises a few eyebrows, especially with the inclusion of BHT. This additive, also known as butylated hydroxytoluene, is also fairly common in the cosmetics industry and has been found to have varying effects on the human body, with some research finding that it has tumor promotion effects, per the International Journal of Toxicology. Although BHT is generally considered safe when added to food, it's worth bearing in mind that a lot of producers out there do just fine without adding it to their sausages — so it calls into question why Swaggerty's insists on putting it in its products.

It's no secret that sausages can be on the fattier side. But while a moderate amount of fat can give a sausage next-level flavor and make it juicier, too much can just make it unappealing. Sadly, Bob Evans tips the balance the wrong way. Its Maple Sausage Patties are stuffed with saturated fat, and each patty (which is a mere 42.5 grams each) has six grams of the nutrient. That's roughly 30% of most adults' daily recommended intake in 1.5 ounces of meat.

Unfortunately, this is just way too high of a fat-to-meat ratio for our tastes, and leaves these patties with an unpleasant greasy texture and flavor, and not the smoothness that they're likely aiming for. But it also makes them pretty unhealthy. The more saturated fats you eat, the more risk of higher cholesterol you gain, which can clog up arteries and produce knock-on cardiovascular issues (via the British Heart Foundation). Remember that these tiny patties are far from the only thing you're going to eat all day, and if you have two alongside some bacon, that could be your whole saturated fat daily value in a few tiny portions of meat. Bob Evans Maple Sausage Patties are also super salty and have 430 milligrams of sodium in each portion. Yikes.

Impossible Foods has made quite a stir in the plant-based food market, for its uncanny products that look just like the real thing (and, in the case of its burgers, bleed just like the real thing, too). But it takes a lot of ingredients to achieve that. The Impossible Sausage contains thickeners like methylcellulose, which is also used in higher quantities as a laxative, and modified starch, an additive that's devoid of any nutritional value.

But that's not the main thing you should be worried about. "The problem with Impossible [sausages] is they use coconut oil, and coconut oil is a saturated fat, and that increases the total cholesterol and LDL levels," warns "The Eating Disorder Trap" author and registered dietitian nutritionist Robyn Goldberg, per the AARP. Indeed, a single 46-gram patty contains 2.5 grams of saturated fat. When there are now scores of plant-based sausages out there that contain no saturated fat at all and yet still manage to win big on flavor, it makes it difficult to justify going for this brand.

Target's Good & Gather line will be familiar to anyone who shops at the store regularly, and its products are generally pretty solid. But you should give its chicken sausages a wide berth. Its Apple & Gouda Chicken Sausages have a serious problem with their casings, which multiple customers have taken issue with. The casing that Good & Gather uses is so plasticky that some people who have bought the sausages simply can't eat them. "Horrid. Unless you like eating plastic. I boiled. I grilled. Didn't matter, still had to spit out plastic casing. Worst ever," said one customer, per Target.

Interestingly, though, these casings aren't plastic at all. According to the ingredients list, the casing of the Good & Gather Apple & Gouda Chicken Sausages is, in fact, made of pork. While this doesn't entirely explain why the casings are so rubbery, it throws up an entirely new issue. Many people opt for chicken sausages because they're unable to eat pork, either due to an allergy, a dietary restriction, or due to religious observance. While the pork casing is clearly listed on the ingredients, it's fair to say that some people will assume that this is a pork-free product, and will get a nasty shock when they get the sausages home.

As Hempler's has been around since 1934, it's had a lot of time to build up a faithful fanbase and has amassed an extensive product selection of sausages and franks. But you'd think that it might resort to making its patties and links with slightly more traditional, natural ingredients. Instead, Hempler's uses a few modern cooking shortcuts to keep its sausages tasty and long-lasting, with its Andouille Smoked Sausage containing both the preservative sodium nitrite and the sweetener and preservative dextrose.

And although we're not a massive fan of either, it's the dextrose that we want to talk about. Dextrose is commonly added as an ingredient to balance overly-spicy or salty flavors, but this can mean that food manufacturers, like Hempler's, can amp up their salt content to incredibly high levels without us really tasting it. And in its Andouille Smoked Sausage, there's a whopping 640 milligrams of sodium in each serving. That's well over a quarter of the amount you should be consuming daily. Additionally, as dextrose is a type of sugar, it can be broken down rapidly, and when eaten in elevated quantities it can lead to weight gain, strain on the liver and kidneys, and a higher risk of type 2 diabetes (via WebMD). Although there isn't an enormous amount of dextrose in these sausages, plenty of other manufacturers get by just fine without adding it to their products — so why can't Hempler's? ‌

You'll have likely seen Hillshire Farms sausages in the store at some point. The brand is one of the most prominent on the market, and it has a dizzying amount of sausage products. But its market dominance has come at a cost, and that cost is a reliance on industrial production methods that leave you questioning just how your food is made.

Take its Smoked Sausage, for instance. "Hillshire Farms Smoked Sausage includes ingredients like mechanically separated turkey, which can be a concern due to its high processing and potential loss of nutritional value," says registered dietitian Jessie Hulsey, via Eat This, Not That. This "mechanical separation" involves forcing the meat through a sieve-like structure at high pressure, to essentially turn it into a kind of meat paste. While this makes the meat smooth, it's far from an appetizing thought.

It's also worth noting that this product has three different types of meat in it, and is made of pork, turkey, and beef. Again, while this may improve its flavor, it doesn't exactly make you feel as though the animals that made it have been treated well. For her part, Hulsey would recommend steering clear of eating too much of this sausage. Although it's perfectly fine to do so in small quantities, there are far more nutritious and lean options out there, that aren't made with such aggressive methods.