Trader Joe's Smoked Andouille Chicken Sausage

Not exactly a health food by any means. But sometimes, you just want a bit of salty meat to go with your breakfast eggs. I've found that chicken sausage - yes it's a thing - that I find at the regular grocery store appears...undernourished (Kinda like turkey bacon. I'm not knocking turkey bacon - in fact I like turkey bacon. A, on the other hand, does not. He sees it as a severely inadequate substitute for the real thing). But at TJ's? Never a problem. So I found myself craving chicken sausage and picked up the smoked andouille version.  

Not the cheapest food. $3.99 for like 3/4 pound. But also not the most expensive - this is a pretty comparable price to regular store prices. Plus, they look nice and hefty. 

Everything looked okay except for OH MY CHICKEN check out that sodium count. It could be bad. That's a third of your daily sodium intake in ONE sausage. 

Okay - I'll admit that I probably didn't choose the best method to prepare these sausages. I chopped them up, sautéed them with kale, and dunked it in a jarred pasta sauce, which meant SALT GALORE. The saltiness is such a shame because the sausage had good flavor otherwise. It definitely had that smokiness that you might expect from something labeled "andouille" and it definitely had a nice spicy kick. But when it's too salty, it doesn't matter how good the flavors are. All you can think about is how salty this sausage is and how too much of a good thing is just...too much. Sigh. But to be fair, if I had cut this up into tiny pieces and sautéed it with peppers and onions or something without extra salt, it probably would have been fine. 

Lessons learned -

1) "Chicken" sausage doesn't mean that it's better just because it's chicken

2)  Chicken sausage is stuffed into a pork sausage casing - soooo beware if you don't eat pork.

3)  If you do choose a sodium-laden food product thingy, it's probably best to pair it with something that also isn't sodium-laden. Cuz y'know...saltiness begets saltiness. :P

TL;DR: Trader Joe's Smoked Andouille Chicken Sausage. That lovely smokiness and spiciness is totally outshined by the amount of salt in this thing. Shame. 5 out of 10.