Hot Dog Distributors Discuss Ambient Sausages

As hot dog distributors in the UK you would have come across the fact that some suppliers distribute what is commonly known as 'ambient sausages'. Readers would probably be interested in knowing what this term means and what is your point of view regarding this. Could you discuss?

Yes, of course. Ambient sausages could be described as any type of sausage and/or hot dog that can be stored at room temperature for a long time. This means that the sausages/hot dogs would not require any freezing or chilling. 

Ok, it looks like this could maybe cause some problems. Please develop further.

Ambient sausages can be really convenient for some places in particular; places where they don't have sufficient chilled or frozen storage space, for example.

But this poses a big problem: the quality of the product is usually inferior to a 'normal' sausage or hot dog that does require chilling when it comes to storing. Hence the quality of a fresh hot dog and an ambient sausage cannot be compared as the freshness and taste is just not there.

Ambient storable sausages are usually full of preservatives and heavily pasteurised in order to make them last for a long time.

How does The Sausage Man deal with this problem?

We are aware of storage convenience. We already had a few different types of products produced for us with ambient properties but unfortunately we had to compromise on the quality of these products and therefore decide not stock any of these at the moment.

However, we are happy to say that we are still actively researching for possibilities to have our quality sausages available in ambient form in the future.

- Abstract on the development of shelf-stable sausages
- On ambient packaging
- On the regulatory definitions of 'ambient', 'room temperature' and 'cold chain'
- An interesting article by the FDA on storing foods safely
- Shelf-stable/Pasteurisation
- Wikipedia on shelf-stable (ambient) food