{"id":1971,"date":"2017-04-28T12:17:37","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T01:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=1971"},"modified":"2017-04-27T17:56:44","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T07:26:44","slug":"sausage-sizzle-30-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2017\/04\/sausage-sizzle-30-april\/","title":{"rendered":"The sausage sizzle"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Tasting Australia upon us, we can once again consider that ongoing and highly contentious debate: does Australia have a national dish? In her history of Australia’s gastronomic heritage,\u00a0<\/em>Bold Palates<\/a>, Barbara Santich makes a case for the barbecue, more specifically the humble sausage sizzle. Howzat for gourmet?<\/em><\/p>\n

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The sausage sizzle is a uniquely Australian variant of the barbecue\u00a0and almost by definition a public event\u2014no one would ever invite\u00a0friends to a sausage sizzle at home, even if identical food were cooked\u00a0and eaten. It can be set up anywhere, from the beach to the supermarket\u00a0car park, to feed large numbers of people cheaply, free from\u00a0the annoyance of smoke. The ingredients and equipment are absolutely\u00a0basic: a large hotplate, typically gas heated, plus a vast supply of sausages,\u00a0sliced onions, sliced white bread and unlimited tomato sauce.\u00a0Offering mustard, barbecue sauce and other nods to gastronomic\u00a0fashion is considered to lift the status, but only by a notch. Although\u00a0this style of barbecue\u2014sausages cooked on a hotplate, wrapped in\u00a0bread and doused in sauce\u2014was familiar in earlier years, the particular\u00a0term seems to have come to prominence around 1980, and in the past\u00a0three decades sausage sizzles have proliferated like rabbits.<\/p>\n

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Keith Barlow, Princess Alexandra at a barbecue<\/i><\/span>. Australian Women’s Weekly <\/i>, 30 September 1959<\/p>\n

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On any weekend, all around Australia, tens of thousands of sausages\u00a0will be sizzling and spitting for hundreds of worthy causes, as well as\u00a0celebrating community camaraderie. To choose a day at random . . . let\u2019s\u00a0say Sunday, 2 August 2009, which also happens to have been National\u00a0Tree Day, an ideal occasion to reward volunteers all over the country,\u00a0in cities and suburbs and small country towns, with a free lunch. At\u00a0the same time church and school groups and a miscellany of sporting\u00a0fraternities are raising money for their own needs. The sausage sizzle is\u00a0the simple, egalitarian communion that all know and share.<\/p>\n

The sausage sizzle might be seen as catering to mass tastes at the\u00a0lowest common level, but this collective appeal is in fact its forte\u2014\u00a0casual passers-by finding the seductive scent of sausages and fried\u00a0onions irresistible. And like any simple culinary classic, it lends itself\u00a0to countless variations\u2014even soy sausages fit the standard formula.\u00a0At the 2010 Writers\u2019 Week in Adelaide, the refreshment tent offered\u00a0a sophisticated and more expensive version with kranskys plus the\u00a0usual onions and selection of sauces on a slice of wholemeal bread and,\u00a0though they didn\u2019t displace Vietnamese cold rolls in the popularity\u00a0stakes, the kranskys proved their worth over six days of readings,\u00a0debates and tall tales.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

Mark Thomas\/CIA , <\/span>Advertisement\u00a0<\/i>for Australia Day<\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>January 2010<\/p>\n

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The barbecue similarly has universal appeal, its versatility for all\u00a0occasions matched only by its adaptability to all cultures and cuisines.\u00a0Grilled meats\u2014or fish, or poultry\u2014are a feature of most cuisines, often\u00a0as street food: Malaysian satays and Indonesian sat\u00e9s, Japanese yakitori,\u00a0Turkish and Afghani kebabs, Greek souvlaki, Italian grigliata mista,\u00a0Lebanese meshwi. The barbecue spreads its arms and welcomes them\u00a0all on its multicultural table. Perhaps this is the single most important\u00a0reason for the Australian barbecue to be regarded as a national symbol.<\/p>\n

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But there is more to Australian cuisine than barbecues. Find out here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Tasting Australia upon us, we can once again consider that ongoing and highly contentious debate: does Australia have a national dish? In her history of Australia’s gastronomic heritage,\u00a0Bold Palates, Barbara Santich makes a case for the barbecue, more specifically … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[682,298,681],"class_list":["post-1971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extract","tag-barbecue","tag-sausage-sizzle","tag-tasting-australia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-vN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2096,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions\/2096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}