Johnsonville Breakfast Sausage link changes; all about casings

Update: 11/28/2010: I think I have spoken to soon in the post below about a change in Johnsonville's sausage casings. In fact, I experienced only one package where the casings were of the harder-to-remove variety as I wrote. Also, I did send a brief note to Johnsonville's on their web site and they responded that they hadn't changed their casings. I appreciate the fact that they took the time to respond. So the experience I had with different casings appears to have been in just a single fluke package.

Original Post from 10/16/2010:

I've been eating Johnsonville breakfast sausages (in moderation) for most of my adult life. I really like them; they're a perfect breakfast meat to complement, for example, a nice cheese and mushroom omelet. As long as I can remember, they have come in a package containing 14 links, weighing just less than a pound.

Something happened to them in the last couple months, though: first, I could swear that the links are now slightly smaller than they used to be (by maybe 10%). I don't have any of the "before" links left so I can't measure them to be certain, but I think they're slightly smaller. I don't really mind this much; serving and package sizes change all the time and we're pretty used to it.

Second, the casing has changed. The casing is the thin, semi-transparent layer of skin-like material that surrounds each link and holds the meat together while it's being made, transported, sold, and cooked. I believe that sausage casing is typically made from some part of animal intestines and is mostly fat. Without the casing, the sausage links would just be a little pile of nondescript gooey meat and would likely not retain their "link" shape.

My method of preparing these link sausages has been basically to boil them. I typically will put half a package (7 links) into a small pan containing enough water to cover them, then I bring the water to a boil, usually quite long enough to ensure the sausages are thoroughly cooked, about 17-20 minutes. I use this method instead of just frying them in their own fat because it seems to cook the sausage links' insides more thoroughly, and it creates less of a mess to clean up. As the water boils away during this process I will occasionally sear the links slightly to give an appearance of frying.

Now, while the sausage casings are edible, I don't like to eat the casings. This is because it just adds that much more fat to my diet, which I don't need, and because I don't really like the texture of them in my mouth. To me, it sort of ruins the experience of eating the actual sausage meat. Therefore, near the end of the boiling process I always remove these sausage casings from the links. By this point, the links will no longer fall apart if the casing is removed.

The way I remove the casings has always been pretty easy. The process of boiling the links has usually caused the external casings to maybe shrink up just a bit, and migrate toward one end of each link. Therefore, I could pretty easily take a fork and insert one tine of the fork underneath the casing, whose end is now easily accessible near the middle of the link, without spearing the meat itself. Then I brace the end of the sausage against a table knife, and slip the casing off the sausage quite easily. I could usually slip all the casings off of 7 links and then just throw them out within maybe 30-45 seconds or so.

However, the casings have changed, and have made the process of removing and discarding them more difficult. For the past couple months, now when I cook 7 links I have found that near the end of the boiling process when it's time to remove the link casings, the casings themselves now cover the entire sausage link, and they don't sort of shrink a bit and move toward one end of the link like they used to. In fact, the casings cover each link entirely, and the ends of the casings extrude a bit over each end and shrink up over each end. So the process of removing the casings has become much more difficult compared to the method I've used for the past few decades. Using a fork tine as before, I now need to dig around the end of the sausage link and maneuver the tine up above the meat but below the casing, then try to pull the casing off the entire length of the link instead of half. In short, it's now much more of a chore to remove these longer casings. Yes, I'm aware that I could use my fork/knife combo to actually try to cut the casings off instead of slipping them off whole, but that turns into even a messier process and causes my knife or fork to sometimes make contact with the pan, perhaps even slightly damaging it. And yes I know I could simply leave the casings on and try to remove them while they're on my plate, but that makes for messier eating as well.

Anyway, I know this may be silly to complain about, but I'm really, really curious about why, after a very long time of having shorter casing links on the breakfast sausage, that Johnsonville has made this change. Was there something wrong with the shorter, easier-to-remove casings? Have they just built a new processing plant that will only put out full-length casings? Why the change?

--SDP