When you’re lighting the barbecue for a bank-holiday cookout this weekend, or frying a full Irish for a late Sunday breakfast, what sort of sausages will you be putting on the grill or in the frying pan?
Is the SuperValu sausage, a direct descendant of the legendary Superquinn sausage, still the country’s most beloved banger? Or have things moved on?
We've compiled a list of 10 bestselling supermarket and convenience-store sausages – no fancy red-wine-and-garlic or chilli-and-herb varieties here, as the craft products are not widely enough available for a national vote – for you to pick your favourite from. You can vote below. (If you're using the Irish Times app, vote here instead.)
Arthur Mallon Foods, in Monaghan, which makes sausages sold under the Mallons, Kearns, Olhausen's and Hafner's names, has decreed Sunday to be Sausage Day. It has been taste-testing four new flavours of sausage: baked bean; pepperoni pizza; cheese and onion (which actually sounds quite tasty), and chocolate and mallow.
That last one might not be quite as crazy as it sounds – in 2017 a chocolate-chip-and-honeycomb-flavour sausage made by the Cavan butcher Barry Crowe made the cut for inclusion in Lidl's Best of Ireland promotion.
The Mallons team have been on the road with their new flavours; you might run into them today in Kilnamanagh, Dublin 24, where they will be sampling the new sausages in branches of Dunnes Stores and Tesco.
You can be in with a chance of winning a trip to New York (flights for two people and four-star hotel accommodation for five nights) by selecting your favourite of the new flavours at celebratethesausage.com. It is not a requirement to have actually tasted them, so you can spare yourself that treat and vote instead for whichever tickles your taste buds.
