A grilled beef sausage in a folded slice of white bread, loaded with fried onions and tomato or barbecue sauce — the great democratic meal of Australia's hardware store car parks.
The sausage sizzle is not a recipe so much as an institution. It exists at Bunnings hardware stores every weekend morning, at school fundraisers, at election day polling booths (where it is called a "democracy sausage" and taken very seriously), at community events, at footy club gates, and at every backyard gathering that involves a man standing near fire who has decided he is now "doing the sausages." The democracy sausage became an international sensation during the 2019 Australian federal election when a website tracking which polling booths had sausage sizzles crashed due to traffic. The ABC reported on it. Foreign correspondents wrote about it with barely concealed delight. Australians were not surprised. The rules are simple and unbreakable: the sausage must be grilled on a flat BBQ plate, not a grill. The bread must be white and soft. The onion goes under the sausage (this is the correct order, arrived at by democratic consensus). The sauce is applied after assembly. The result costs $2.50 and is one of the finest things Australia has produced.
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