I ranked every sausage I could find at Trader Joe's, and I think the best could be used in almost any recipe

I thought the sweet-apple chicken sausage was too sweet. The apple flavor didn't come through nearly as strongly as the Vermont maple syrup that was also in there. I thought the maple flavor was a bit cloying, like in maple candy.

I thought the maple syrup made it taste more like a breakfast sausage.

I tried to balance out the sweetness with pickles, fresh jalapeños, and barbecue sauce.

The spice and vinegar successfully cut the sweetness and made for a good sandwich, if not an especially good sausage.

I thought Trader Joe's roasted-garlic chicken sausage was flavorful, but had too much going on. I love garlic and usually add way more to my dishes than any recipe calls for, but in this case, its flavor was very assertive.

In my opinion, it tasted more like a meatball than a sausage, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The roasted-garlic sausage also proved to be divisive in my house: My wife hated it but my kids loved it.

To distract from the garlicky flavor, I had the sausage with sriracha and fresh basil. I thought the freshness of the basil balanced things a bit more.

The maple chicken breakfast sausage was fine, but underwhelming.

The maple flavor felt a bit more subtle than in the sweet-apple chicken sausage and had a somewhat unpleasant chewiness that the others lacked. I thought they bordered on spongy.

My favorite way to eat the maple chicken sausage was as part of a balanced breakfast.

I guess you could use these like cocktail franks, but I think the texture would become overbearing in a pig-in-blanket scenario.

Trader Joe's uncured Bavarian brats tasted like traditional bratwurst, which it is.

This was the only pork sausage among the many chicken-sausage options I saw at Trader Joe's. I half expected to like it better based on that alone, like, presumably, Ron Swanson would.

But bratwurst has never been my favorite sausage and there was nothing exceptional about this one. I'd buy it again if I needed bratwurst, but I wouldn't seek it out over other options.

I liked the Bavarian bratwurst with sauerkraut and mustard, which seemed like the obvious way. Both toppings went well with the richer, meatier pork flavor.

This option was a little bit smoky and a little bit sweet, a lot like something smoked over applewood.

Unlike many of the chicken sausages from Trader Joe's, the smoked, apple-chardonnay one features a natural pork casing, which gave it a bit more snap than some of the others. It also allowed for a higher cooking temperature in my skillet.

My favorite way to enjoy the smoked, apple-chardonnay sausage was with relish and peri-peri sauce, which looked and sounded strange but was very good.

The acid and spice from the peri-peri sauce nicely complemented the sweet flavor of the sausage. I suspect it would also pair really well with a spicy slaw.

The sweet Italian-style sausage tasted a lot like the familiar, fennel-laden, pork sausage I regularly use in my home cooking.

Even though this version was made out of chicken, my kids didn't seem to notice any difference at all.

My favorite way to enjoy the sweet Italian-style sausage was on a homemade pizza, which I forgot to photograph. The Italian flavor profile was delicious.

However, I also tried to craft a sandwich out of it (I was short on ideas) and though I feel topping a sausage with cut corn, mozzarella, and hot sauce was inspired, I don't think this right sausage for it.

I thought Trader Joe's spicy Italian chicken sausage was a lot like the sweet Italian sausage, but a bit spicier.

Again, it seemed like a viable alternative to the pork version I usually cook, with the only difference being that my kids were into it. Normally, they don't touch anything dubbed "spicy."

I had the spicy Italian sausage with pizza sauce, Parmesan cheese, and crunchy jalapeños, which made for an excellent sandwich. 

The pizza sauce and Parmesan complemented the sausage's own flavor profile and the jalapeños added an interesting touch.

I thought the Unexpected Cheddar sausage was very good. I also liked that it had hints of onion and red pepper.

Because the sausage was made with the chain's award-winning Unexpected Cheddar, I hoped for the type of experience where molten cheese fires out from the inside on first bite and scalds the mouth (a truly unexpected cheddar), but this wasn't that.

Still, the cheese flavor was there, there was a creaminess to the texture, and the natural pork casing gave it the best snap of all of the options I tried.

Though it might sound unconventional, I thought the cheesiness of the sausage went best with crumbled Carolina Gold barbecue potato chips and some ketchup.

I thought the spicy jalapeño sausage was perfectly peppery and truly lived up to its name – "jalapeño" wasn't used as just a stand-in for spicy.

There wasn't a ton of spice, maybe at a medium level on the standard Buffalo-wing scale, but it came on late and amplified the flavors of garlic and onion. It felt versatile, like a sausage you can keep on hand to use for lots of different dishes.

My favorite way to have Trader Joe's spicy jalapeño sausage was with my beloved elote corn-chip dippers, guajillo salsa, and sour cream.

It was phenomenal and I'll be making this sandwich more often. 

This story was originally published on August 21, 2023, and most recently updated on August 13, 2024.