Sausage

Let's talk about sausage, and let's be honest with each other first.

A sausage is ground meat and fat, bound in a casing, and a lot about its texture comes down to how finely that meat was chopped and how the fat was kept cold while the butcher worked it. Cut into a finely chopped sausage and you'll see a smooth, even surface, almost like a pâté — that comes from cold fat and meat bound tightly together, not from fat that's been allowed to melt or smear. Cut into a coarser one and you'll see small, visible flecks of fat, and the texture underneath will be looser, more open. That's what your eyes and your knife tell you. No mystery, just cold hands and a sharp blade.

Choose sausage the way you choose a friend — by looking it straight in the face. The cut surface should be even, no grey patches, no puddle of separated fat weeping onto the paper. Smell it close. It should smell like meat and spice, not like a chemistry lab.

Some people say a pale sausage is a lean, healthy sausage. No! Paleness doesn't reliably tell you how much fat is hiding inside. A raw 100 grams here carries nearly 25 grams of fat and 308 kilocalories — colour won't warn you of that. Believe this myth, and you'll drop a "light" sausage into a pan with oil it never needed — watch it glisten and give up its own fat instead.