While it might sound like a walk in the park for anyone partial to a good snag, being dubbed Sydney’s reigning Sausage Queen is no mean feat. It takes a certain level of tenaciousness, sausage-twisting panache, and a willingness to ‘grin and bear it’ through some outrageously bad puns.

Chrissy Flanagan would know – she’s the artisanal sausage-maker who’s rightfully claimed this auspicious title. “I’ve suppressed a lot of puns. It is honestly a blur,” she tells Junkee. “The wurst/worst pun is always popular.”

Flanagan is the brains behind Chrissy’s Cuts, a boutique, small-batch brand of sausages launched in 2015. Bunnings snags enthusiasts, look away now – Flanagan’s sausages are made with “actual food,” and come in flavours such as beef, brown sauce and Worcestershire, lamb sumac and mint, and kangaroo with Dorrigo pepper and aniseed myrtle.

Chrissy’s Cuts are on show at The Sausage Factory, Flanagan’s Dulwich Hill storefront that works as a sort of ‘cellar door’ for her products – customers can take a pack of sausages home, or sit in and enjoy a bite alongside a Sydney-brewed beer or an Australian wine. Just don’t expect a classic bangers and mash situation – The Sausage Factory is serving a few cuts above your classic meat and three veg meal.

“I’ve had trouble consoling people over the no potato situation,” she says. “My mother, a notorious potato lover, included. But it’s just not how we eat sausages. Jim and I have made the factory exactly like the kind of place we ourselves would want to go. When we eat sausages, we do it with fresh raw salads, full-flavoured sauces, pickles and the best bread and butter we can lay our hands on.”

An Unlikely Journey

For Flanagan, the road to Meat Monarch wasn’t necessarily a straightforward one – it included jumping ship from a career as a public servant, and even a short-lived period of vegetarianism.

“I started making sausages after a few years of all kinds of food craft, cheese, pickles, kefir, all that jazz,” she explains. “It was after I had a batch of kombucha explode and ricochet around the pantry as well as stink my partner Jim out of his studio that he gave me an ultimatum: beer or sausages.”

Needless to say, she opted for the latter. “Jim has always been a fabulous home chef, so I commissioned him to develop some recipes for me. Who knew sausages made with actual meat are totally unrecognisably delicious from the sausage quality we’re all used to in Australia?”

The pair tested their sausage recipes on friends at a party (“sausage-making for couples should only be undertaken in very stable relationships. It’s like the Ikea-visit of the cooking world”), and the rest, as they say, is history. Chrissy’s Cuts are now available in supermarkets and delis across the country, most recently Harris Farm Markets.

A Queen In A Male-Dominated Industry

For Flanagan, staying on top in a male-dominated industry is almost as challenging as resisting meat cravings whilst committing to vegetarianism (she explains it was bacon that eventually brought her back to meat-eating, because crispy bacon is a force unto itself).

Sausage jokes notwithstanding, honing her craft and making a career out of something totally unique has been about a respect for good food, a healthy dose of good humour and a near-unshakable sense of self.

“I’m not a butcher and I’m not a sausage master, she says. “I’m just someone who prizes beautiful produce and has the audacity to call herself the Sausage Queen. That said, I had a German butcher who, despite living in a butcher’s shop since the age of 13 for his apprenticeship, didn’t know how to twist sausages so that they hung in groups of three. Despite teaching myself from YouTube, I was able to teach him, so I loved myself pretty sick over that.”

Yep, She Even Knits Sausages

It’s also about looking for ways to diversify, and beating her competitors at their own display window game. The trick? Knitted sausages, obviously.

“We briefly considered having a refrigerated display case in the window at the factory, but we decided it wouldn’t work,” Flanagan says. “I looked for those imitation sausages, like the noodle soups you see in Chinese restaurants. Nothing took my fancy, so I thought ‘fuck it, I’ll knit something.’”

Knitting sausages turned out to be quite the hobby. “I’ve really gotten carried away with it, so now we have hanks of knitted sausages hanging in the window, knitted sausage edging to the shelves,” she says. There’s even a range of knitted sausage earrings and brooches coming in 2018, and ‘Sausage Floral’ aprons developed with Sydney textiles designer Jessica Lee Parker and dressmaker Made590. Flanagan really, really likes sausages.

Cute as the knitted variety are, Flanagan’s heart belongs to the real, edible thing. “I love that sensation of saying ‘I made that,’” she says.

“I don’t know if sausage making would mean I’d survive the apocalypse or be invited into the bunker, but maybe?”

If she’s bringing lamb, sumac and mint snags to the apocalypse party, we’d say the answer to that question is a resounding yes.

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