Is Sausage the Best Burger Meat?

Just so there is no confusion, obviously, a juicy beef burger cooked rare to medium-rare is still one of the greatest things you can eat. I'm not here to argue otherwise. But I am here to make a case that sausage... might be better. Or at least, it deserves a spot in the conversation that it's not getting.

And before you start picturing bratwursts on a bun, let me be clear.  I’m not talking about dry-cured or encased meats. Forget the casing entirely. I'm talking about fresh sausage meat, formed into a patty (typically heavily emulsified), and cooked on a flat top or a grill. That's it.

The genesis of this opinion

About 16 years ago, my business partner Brandon Gillis and I opened a restaurant chain called Bark. Brandon turned me on to the idea. We made a crispy pork sandwich using Heritage pork shoulder and belly made into a simple sausage mix, formed into a patty, then breaded and fried.  Served with spicy slaw, mayo, and pickles. It was sort of a play on a fried testa (head cheese) sandwich, and people went nuts for it.

That sandwich then created a slew of other sausage patties that turned into burgers, often without any breading.  The key insight was that the patty itself could be the primary flavor vehicle instead of relying on a bunch of toppings to do more of the work. The base for the crispy pork sandwich (below) and the the pork & cheddar burger you'll hear about soon stems from this super simple pork sausage recipe here.

‍

Why It Works

Here's what makes sausage on a bun so great, and why I think more chefs should be doing this.

Total control over seasoning and texture. A sausage gives you exacting measures and percentages of salt, sugar, heat, spice... everything. You're not just salting the outside of a patty and hoping for the best. The flavor is built into the meat. And beyond the grind, you can mix the sausage to completely emulsify it, which gives you a smoother texture and mouthfeel. It's clearly not the same as biting into a juicy beef burger. But what you give up in juicy red meat, you gain in optionality of flavor, and maybe more importantly... it's way easier to keep consistent at scale. 

Much easier to layer in other flavors. Here's the thing about a beef burger patty. It's not a great vessel for adding flavor because you have to be really careful how much you mix the meat. Overwork it and you've got a hockey puck. So you're typically relying on toppings, sauces, and condiments to do more. A sausage doesn't have that problem. You can go in a million different directions with the base meat itself.

Versatility across proteins. Beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, duck... sausage technique works with all of them. You're not locked into one animal. You can blend proteins. You can play with fat ratios. The format is endlessly adaptable.

That said, one thing that can be a pain is portioning the patties.  If you mix and emulsify it well, the mixture is typically pretty sticky.  We tried portioning to order with an oiled ice cream scoop that worked pretty well, but the burger press has to be oiled well too.  You can pre-portion the patties, but you still need to press them a bit to make sure the whole thing caramelizes.  We also found some success lightly steaming pre-portioned patties, then chilling and searing at service.

The First Evolution: Pork and Cheddar

The first real "sausage burger" we made at Bark came from scrapping the breading on that crispy pork sandwich. We kept the Heritage pork sausage base, added a little extra wine to the mix (we used Riesling because it played well with the cheese), and folded in big chunks of Grafton cheddar and smoked Grafton cheddar right into the sausage itself. Not melted on top. In the meat.  

The big chunks of cheese were key so you got that ‘juicy-lucy’ style bite.  It was one of those things where every person who tried it said the same thing... "why doesn't everyone do this?"  The cheddar sausage recipe is below, and here's the full pork burger if you're up for it.

‍

Migrating to chicken:

We made a chicken burger by way of a chicken-apple sausage that had roasted apples pureed with Riesling and rosemary (stole that idea from Bouley).  Then Carissa Zelinsky decided to mix that chicken sausage meat with an absurd amount of sriracha and applied a breading to make a spicy chicken sandwich that was crazy good.   Here's the recipe for the chicken sausage and the cispy fried spicy chicken sausage variation.

The Point

This is clearly not a replacement for a smash burger or a charcoal grilled juicy med rare beef burger.   But I do think there is a world of opportunity to explore here that I am surprised has not taken off more.  There’s just so many options with this approach.  And the best part is, especially for restaurants at scale, it is so much more consistent and easy to do really well.  

At the very least, if you've never folded big chunks of good cheddar into a pork sausage patty and grilled it... do that this weekend. And make sure there is something spicy with it like a spicy slaw or a spicy mayo. 

‍