What's Inside Chinese Red Sausage?

Chinese red sausage is a delicious and sweet variety of sausage filled with flavors of soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil. It has a rich, dense, emulsified texture and is mostly used in sautéed dishes, fried rice, and soups. The main ingredients in Chinese red sausage are pork, pork fat, sugar, soy sauce, salt, cereal alcohol, sodium nitrite, and sodium erythorbate. In the Philippines, Chinese sausage is an ingredient in some Chinese-Philippine dishes such as siopao bola-bola.

It contains 4 g of carbohydrates, 4 g of clean carbohydrates, 21 g of fat, 10 g of protein and 240 calories. Chinese sausages are generally available in Asian supermarkets outside of Asia, mostly vacuum-packed. When the sausage evaporates with rice, the rice absorbs all the sweet flavors and fats of Chinese sausage making it completely delicious. Chinese sausages are also used sparingly with other ingredients to balance the flavor.

In Vietnam, although they are often similar to the Chinese version, they may also contain ground chicken instead of pork. The most common and easiest way to cook Chinese sausages is to steam them in a rice cooker with or without rice. Lap cheong can be cooked and eaten alone but it also works well with rice and vegetables and can be used as an ingredient in other dishes such as fried rice and portions of glutinous rice. Most Asian supermarkets will sell Chinese sausages; because it is dry, seasoned and smoked, the package will last more than a year if left unopened (see also the expiration date on the package).

They are usually made locally; for example many of the Chinese sausages sold in Canada are produced by several manufacturers based in Vancouver and Toronto. While lap cheong sausages are easily found in Asian grocery stores they are even better prepared at home. Lap cheong is often eaten during the Chinese New Year with lap being the name of the winter sacrifice and the last month of the Chinese year. It was first manufactured in March 1909 by Lithuanian personnel in a Russian-owned factory called the Churin Sausage Factory located in the Daoli district of Harbin. The two main ingredients in sausages are meat and fat which means that there are very few carbohydrates in sausages.