Tennessee Pride Fully Cooked Sausage Patties

I have only one rule about buying sausage at the store: Don't ever buy fully-cooked frozen sausage, because it is never any good.

And yet, when I saw these Tennessee Pride fully cooked sausage patties at ALDI the other day, I bought them against my better instinct. After all, Tennessee Pride is a solid brand - I've had other products put out by them before, and was never disappointed.

But those products were never fully cooked and frozen.

I opened the package to find the eight patties had been put into sets of two, each set enclosed in a plastic pouch. It seems that these were portioned to microwave two at a time and be served with a couple of biscuits. Sure enough, the package instructions were all about microwaving.  But I was feeding the family breakfast aqnd wasn't interested in an individual serving to heat-and-eat. I unwrapped the lot of them and put them in a frying pan over low heat to warm up, and served them alongside eggs and homefried potatoes

I really like the flavor of Tennessee Pride sausage. The spices are well balanced, and the result is really delicious. But the spongy texture, too wet and too chewy, put all of us off. It's the same reason I won't ever buy Banquet Brown 'n' Serve sausage - nothing against the flavor, everything against the mouthfeel.

I don't think I'd buy them again unless they were wicked cheap.