Price Chopper "Chinese" Sausage

As you know, I have somewhat of an unnatural obsession with Price Chopper. P-chops is our local, Upstate New York, big-box supermarket chain and is a delightfully strange place to shop for groceries (see here for past reviews and observations about this subject). I noticed the above pack of sausages in the meat case last night. These are "Chinese" sausages and their glaring red color instantly caught my eye. It looks like Price Chopper is trying to get into the flavored/themed sausages racket. There were also some four cheese/garlic type and a couple others that I don't remember. Anyhow, this was sufficiently weird to warrant a purchase and taste test.

I don't know that I have seen too many fresh Chinese type sausages around, you usually see the dried kind at the Asian markets. A quick perusal of the ingredients yielded fairly standard sausage ingredients with the addition of "Chinese Barbecue Sauce." There was a vaguely char siu-esque smell to the sausage and the red color lent me to believe that this is what they were going for.

For a first test I wanted to simply prepare a couple links. As it is the middle of the week I had to settle for a grill pan as opposed to an outdoor grill.



I had kind of suspected that these guys were chock full of some manner of sugar, be it corn syrup or granulated sugar, and this fact was confirmed with the speed that the sausage blackened along the grill lines. I decided to butterfly the sausage to ensure the insides got cooked.



When they were good and done I took a bite. There was, in fact, a slight char siu taste to the "Chinese" sausage. However, they were really very sweet, almost candy sweet, with no spicy flavor to counterbalance this fact. I was kind of perplexed as to how eat these, not thinking that they would be very good on a bun with mustard. I have some moo shu wraps and some curry ketchup witch might be pretty tasty. I think I might try some sort of rice dish with the rest of the sausage. A follow up is sure to follow if any future creations are conceived.

By the way, does anyone else find this product to be kind of out of left field for P-chops? It seems like they very recently have been getting into all sorts of weird prepared products. I wonder what is up over at the Golub headquarters.