It’s not real easy to find true Andouille sausage up here in the winter wasteland. The Louisiana version is a pork, coarse-grained smoked sausage made using pork, garlic, pepper, onions, wine, and seasonings. It’s stuffed in a natural casing and smoked again. There are hundreds of sausage makers in Louisiana, and so there is a lot of variation in taste and texture, but most can be described as flavorful to the extreme. The French version (pictured below) is more coarse; when I lived in Paris, I ordered it at a local bistro, and the offal bits were clearly identifiable, which was a little bit of a put off for me. Most Americans are used to their sausages being made from a smooth slurry.
As is with the Johnsonville Andouille, a smoked pork/beef sausage made for the masses. Ingredients are Pork, beef, and less than 2% of blah blah blah including corn syrup, in a collagen casing.
I think Johnsonville’s New Orleans Spicy Smoked Sausage might be a closer match.
Anyway, I had a hankering to make gumbo today, and grabbed the Johnsonville Andouille. It didn’t add anything to my recipe, nor detract. Most people will find it to be an ordinary smoked sausage, and that’s OK under a lot of circumstances.
Johnsonville Andouille Review