Featured Ingredient: Sausage

Breakfast sausage and egg, a perfect romance from Nature’s Last Stand.

Easy going and down to earth, spicy and a whole lot of fun, sausage is ready in a pinch and fits beautifully in any situation. Aside from reminding you of your best friend, sausage has been a must-have staple in the kitchens of meat-eaters for millennia, showing up at celebratory feasts and intimate dinners around the world.   

Perhaps the most key ingredient in sausage making is salt. It’s even in the name. The word “sausage” is derived from the Middle English “sausige” which in turn was derived from the Latin “sal,” meaning “salt.” Sausage has been around as long as domesticated livestock, and was originally a method of preserving the extra bits of meat that were less desirable and saving excess. This zero-waste preservation method eventually became an art form, with regional flavoring and styles springing up globally. In cooler climates where preserving food is a bit easier, uncooked and uncured sausage-making methods were developed, while regions with warmer climates created cured sausage recipes.  

It is thought that the Romans were some of the first to preserve meat by making sausage as we know it today, and experimented with adding spices, smoking, and of course, lots of salt. By the middle ages, the practice of sausage making spread across the continent and Europe, with recipes and styles named for the regions where they were invented. Frankfurters come from Frankfurt, bologna is from Bologna, and romano is from Rome. Salami, that favorite dinner party snack, is named for its salting process, “salare,” which in Italian means, “to salt.”   

You can find a variety of sausages at the farmers markets, from fresh links by Nature’s Last Stand, breakfast links from Green Bow Farm, ground and spiced from Olsen Farms, Salami by Salt Blade Meats, chorizo from Skagit River Ranch, and many others. All of our meat vendors raise their own livestock, with the exception of Salt Blade who sources ingredients from Olsen Farm, their neighbors at the University District Farmers Market. Our ranchers and farmers adhere to high humane and ecological standards, so when you source meat from the farmers market, you can do so with a clear conscience.