Duke's Original Recipe Smoked Shorty Sausages, Keto Friendly, 16 oz.

Duke’s Hot & Spicy Pork Sausages, 16 Ounce pkg

meats are not inherently unhealthy.

what ruins the healthiness of meats are: inhumane industrual livestocking, the use of hormones to increase mass (sacrificing wholesomeness) & antiobiotics (to sustain inhumane conditions &/or increase mass), the use of nitrates & nitrites as dirt cheap (& carcinogen pre-cursor) preservatives. & we haven’t even gone into feed.

guess what? across the Duke’s line, none of those are present. gluten-free, too.

naturally anti-oxident, healthy spices, even vitamin C, can fully replace nitrates & nitrites as preservatives, eliminating human gut conversion to carcinogenic nitrosamines. (drinking a vitamin C citrus juice also prevents human gut conversion of consumed nitrates & nitrites to nitrosamines. look it up.) humane & sanitary slaughter also helps.

but, health skeptics might say, celery powder = MSG!

celery contains very small amounts of MSG vs refined MSG, orders of magnitude less. so, less likely to cause glutamate flooding than pure MSG.

the body manufactures the glutamate it needs, but if you are in anyway sensitive to dietary flooding of glutamate, drinking natural green tea introduces a competing glutamate variant, that inhibits glutamate re-uptake.

a green tea molecule (theanine) safely occupies glutamate receptors. dietary flooding mitigated. if you want/need low caffine green tea, drink peony tea. more anti-oxidants & 1/5th the caffeine.

so, celery powder is a non-issue.

Duke’s makes these in artisinal, small batches. across dozens & dozens of 16oz pouches, variously sourced, flavor, aroma, heat, taste, chew are remarkably consistent.

suggested serving size is two short links.

whenever I snack on these, my body says don’t stop until at least 6 are savored & slowly chewed, in 1/2in bites, just to make the sheer satisfaction last longer.

that’s why these continuously go out of stock.

if you can’t tolerate any heat, then try the original Duke’s pork links. exact same process, minus the serranos.

enjoy!

RE: occasional presence of white powdery substance on skins of links in RARE batches of Duke’s.

anytime you doubt the safety of food sold to consumers, you can submit a suspect purchase to your local county’s health department. they will gladly test for food safety and report back the findings.

spoilage is always a possibility, anywhere in USA food supply chain. the single greatest problem is with improper/improperly maintained COLD CHAIN.

years ago, I bought a 16oz bag of Duke’s original short links from a retailer. i examined, through the clear pane, for anything that even remotely looked wrong.

after opening & then refrigerating remainder of a pristine pouch, a week later, some of the links developed an hard clinging, snow white powder on their skins. i extracted 3 dusty links & sent the rest of the pouch to public health for testing.

I took one of the 3 saved white dusted links, rinsed it clean in cold distilled water (saving the rinse off in a clean, clear, glass jar). I patted the link dry & cut it open, lengthwise & then across the diameter. everything looked & smelled normal for Duke’s. I rinsed clean the remaining links, saving the rinse water in the same glass jar, patted them dry & then wrapped them, separately, in small ziplok snack bags, rolling out all the air. I then rubberbanded the sealed ziploks to prevent air re-entry (ziploks are water tight, but not vapor & gas tight). I hard froze 1 wrapped link to 0°F & refrigerated the remaining wrapped link @38°F. I put a water-tight lid on the rinse runoff water jar & let it sit exposed to sunlight on a window sill.

public health got back to me in a week. the white powder was celery salt that extruded from the links’ interior, depositing on the outside of the link skins. the celery salt clung to the skins because of meat oils/fats. nothing was spoiled or moldy or in any other way unsafe to eat. I didn’t get the Duke’s bag back (& never expected to).

I checked the rinse-off water jar. the water was as clear as on the day I sealed the jar. no gases built up inside & there was no particular odor. I transferred the hard frozen ziplok-ed link to fridge to thaw. I removed the never frozen 38°F ziplok-ed link for examination. no new white powder on the skin, no disagreeable aromas. I cut it open, saw nothing wrong & ate a piece. It tasted bland, because the meat was less celery salted than normal. it didn’t smell or taste rancid. it was just bland. the exact same results from the hard frozen link, after it was thawed.

so, what happened?

have you ever bought uber expensive, sunlight aged, artisinal salami?

the outside skin is encrusted in a snow white, hard clinging powder/dust. that dust isn’t mold or any other kind of food poisoning. it’s salt & fat that has extruded from the interior of the salami, with help from the sun. that white powder is prized as a symbol of proper aging. it’s an ancient, food safe, gourmet process. the salami was made with a small surplus of salt, with the expectation that it will extrude during the aging.

the aged salami will still taste great, because of it’s overall size/mass, relative to its skin surface area. it didn’t lose that much salt.

the celery salt extruded Duke’s links will be blander, because they are small, with more surface area, relative to total mass/size.

unless you send your suspect links in for safety testing, you cannot automatically assume it must be mold. the white dust is far more likely to be extruded celery salt. (excluding obvious signs of rancidity &/or biologic off-gassing.)

if you rinse the celery salt off, the remaning link will taste less meaty, due to the loss of salt & celery powder. celery powder has naturally small amounts of MSG. eat the powdered link, as-is/dusty, & it will likely taste normal. salt & celery powder bring out the pork flavor.

live & learn & enjoy.

You can’t beat the deal on this item, they’re very good snacks. I’ll be buying again.

When my keto-committed step-daughter came to visit a few months ago, she brought a bag of these Duke’s green Chile sausages with her. My husband and I tried them and I loved them. I am a huge fan of green Chile flavor and while they had a little heat, they were not overly spicy and even my husband enjoyed them and he can’t handle much spiciness in anything he eats. I added them to our monthly “subscribe and save”. We didn’t eat the second bag as quickly as the first and at the two week mark, I opened them to find mold on the remaining sausages. This was completely my fault as it states on the bag that they should be refrigerated and I didn’t see it. I thought they were shelf stable like beef jerky usually is. No problem. I started keeping them in the fridge but since they are NOT nearly as good cold, I’d take a couple out and leave them on the counter for 20 minutes or so before eating them. My husband got clever and would chop them up and add them to the pan when scrambling eggs. Very tasty! So, a few months into our “subscribe and save”, we received a new bag and we each grabbed a couple to eat before putting them in the fridge. My husband began eating his first and immediately said, “They sent the wrong ones!” He was choking and grabbed his water bottle. He said his mouth was on fire. I know how delicate he is when it comes to spicy stuff and thought he was exaggerating so I bit into mine and sure enough, they were WAY spicier than they had ever been before. Over the next few days, he tried to eat another but couldn’t do it. I just figured we got a hotter-than-usual batch so it’d be up to me to eat them. I was cool with that as I didn’t mind the extra heat. Our next delivery came and not only could he not eat them, I couldn’t eat them either. I know there can be variations in the hotness of chiles but I can toss back jalapenos without breaking a sweat. The bag was still in the fridge when our next order was due to ship so I canceled the order and instead ordered Duke’s plain version. Unfortunately, they were a huge disappointment. They were so bland they seemed to lack any seasoning at all. If you like SPICY, by all means, order the green chile version. (But don’t forget to refrigerate them so you don’t have a mold issue.)

I’m giving 4 out of 5 stars because of the packaging. This was supposed to be a gift. A single package shipment arrived by itself with no outer packaging. The shipping label was placed on the product, and the label and plastic product bag had scuff marks all over it, probably from being bounced around in a delivery truck. Otherwise, the product is delicious tasting with minimal ingredients.

Very good. Crispy and with good flavor.