You Don't Have To Wonder What Vienna Sausage Is Made Of Anymore

Vienna sausages are cute, canned mystery meats you can find at Super Bowl parties and holiday gatherings. They sit on the appetizer table surrounded by cheese platters, bacon-wrapped water chestnut, some Foster Farms mini corn dogs, and any other easy-to-make appetizers you can get from Costco. They're skewered on toothpicks with pickles or olives, slow-cooked in a crockpot of rich bourbon sauce, and wrapped in croissants for pigs in a blanket. And they aren't just confined to dinner party appetizers, either. Vienna sausages make an easy breakfast when you add them to eggs and bacon and are great toppings for nachos, mac and cheese, and most other pasta dishes. But what's really in these tiny canned hot dogs?

Vienna sausages fall into two categories: The European version and the version from North America, brought over by European immigrants in the early 1900's. North American takes are mini-sized and stuffed in a can, made with leftover ground meat like chicken, beef, and pork. Vienna sausages from Europe are more of an artisan-style take on sausage. They look like thin, regular-sized hot dogs, and modern-day recipes are made mostly with cured pork encased in sheep intestine. They can also be made with higher quality ground turkey, chicken, and beef, depending on the region.

Meat, preservatives, and spices like onion and garlic are the building blocks of canned Vienna sausages, but recipes vary depending on the brand. Ingredient labels typically list beef, pork, and mechanically separated chicken, and they're canned in chicken broth. Mechanically separated chicken is made by putting chicken bones and its meat through a pressurized machine to separate the two. It's a process similar to creating lean finely textured beef (LFTB), or the "pink slime" McDonalds stopped using in its beef in 2012. In both cases, the result is a meat substance that is approved by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and in all sorts of ready-to-eat and microwaveable meat products.

Natural flavors, sugar, salt, and the preservative sodium nitrite are also usually included in canned Vienna sausages. Some brands partially boil the meats before finishing them in the smoker, trimming them, and packing in a can. Others treat their sausages to a little liquid smoke before canning to give them a mild smoky flavor that enhances the other tastes.