Why Country Pleasin' Sausage Is A Big Deal In Mississippi

Sausage is a way of life in Mississippi. It's a state where you can get pretty much any kind of sausage, cooked any way, and in anything. You'll find sausage chopped up in gravy and smothered over biscuits, stuffed in cornbread, and layered into sandwiches. There are sausage-based appetizers named after the state, like Mississippi sausage bites and Mississippi Lil Smokies. Red Rose Sausages, also known as Mississippi Reds, are nostalgic for Mississippi locals, a specific kind of sausage injected with sodium nitrite to make them a vibrant red.

In this sausage-obsessed state, Country Pleasin' brand has been turning heads with their hickory smoked pork sausage for almost 50 years. Based in Florence, Mississippi, this brand started with an original recipe that has expanded into 15 varieties, all available online alongside an array of sauces, rubs, and seasonings. It's known for being a flavorful sausage that still provides a good base for all sorts of dishes. It's also gluten and dairy-free, and many varieties contain no MSG. The brand has a butcher shop with a small deli on-site in Florence, selling hot food and top-quality, whole hog meat cuts. Country Pleasin' sausages are used in homecooked Mississippi meals every day; the brand is so popular it's even the official sausage of the Mississippi State University Bulldogs, where its sausages are a mainstay at every sports event.

The herb and spice blend Country Pleasin' uses for its original hickory 80/20 smoked pork sausage is a well-kept secret. The ingredient label lists unspecified spices, sugar, monosodium glutamate, sodium phosphate, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite, water, salt, and pork in a hog casing. The rest of Country Pleasin's line of smoked sausages likewise doesn't offer any clues as to that secret spice blend; there are 15 varieties for sale online in flavors like maple blueberry pork, crawfish and pork, and pork and alligator. On the brand's website, you can pick up a version of its spice blend called Country Pleasin' Specialty Seasoning — but of course, the ingredients listed include unnamed "spices." 

The company's special blend of spices may be proprietary, but its website is loaded with recipes for using its sausage in an array of dishes like pigs in a blanket and blueberry and maple monkey bread. Of course, those are just two of the hundreds of ways that people in Mississippi and all over the U.S. use Country Pleasin' sausage. Throw any variety in your smoker or on the grill, or use Country Pleasin' in your buttermilk biscuits and sausage cream gravy, butterfly it for a sausage sandwich, or feature it in a spicy, smoky, mustardy kielbasa pasta.