The Kirkland Signature Chicken Sausage (Parmesan and Cracked Black Pepper) being sold at Costco is a swing and a miss at our house. The sausages have a lot of good things going for them and they did find a place in our dinner rotation but this is not a product that I will be buying again.
What Comes in the Package
You get three pounds of sausage per pack with each pack containing 18 sausages. The 18 pack of sausage costs around $12 which makes the cost of each sausage about $0.70.
These are large, full sized sausages so a price of $0.70 per link is a pretty nice value.
The sausages come in three individually sealed packages of six sausages each which makes using just a few at a time quite practical. The sausages have a Use or Freeze by date that is at least 30 days from your date of purchase.
The sausages are fully cooked and can be eaten as is or diced up and used in other dishes.
Calories and Nutrition
Overall the Kirkland Chicken Sausages have more protein and less fat and calories than an equivalently sized pork sausage.
Each sausage has the following calories and nutritional information:
- Calories: 150
- Total Fat: 10g
- Cholesterol: 65mg
- Sodium: 640mg
- Carbohydrates: 1g
- Protein: 14g
The Two Problems with Kirkland’s Chicken Sausage
The first problem with these sausages is that they contain pork. This will be a non-issue for many people but a MASSIVE issue for others.
There are many people who buy chicken sausage simply because they do not eat pork. Unfortunately, these chicken sausages use a pork casing (intestine) to form the curved links. I guess you could take the sausage out of the casing and then call it “pork free” but that doesn’t quite seem right.
The second problem with the chicken sausage is the flavor profile.
This is a Parmesan and Cracked Black Pepper sausage which is extremely savory. I found the cracked black pepper profile to be wonderful but the Parmesan cheese side of the equation was a train wreck.
The sausages are loaded with what Costco calls Parmesan but the favor and texture do not resemble any Parmesan I have ever had. Parmesan is a hard cheese with a nutty, salty flavor profile. The cheese in this sausage is soft, squishy and gooey (even at refrigerated temperatures) and tastes more like a “Food Product” than what I expect from Parmesan.
The cheese content is so off-putting that I simply couldn’t eat these as a stand alone sausage.
We did end up using the sausages by dicing them up and using them in jambalaya, stir fries and other dishes where it was a complimentary ingredient and not the star of the show.
Check out the link below for a YouTube video where you can see just how weird the cheese looks in these sausages!
