North Carolina's Favorite Sausage Is The Secret To My Family's Thanksgiving Dressing

Every year at Thanksgiving, my family makes two proper dressings: one oyster dressing and one sausage dressing. Why we don’t combine the two into one to keep it simple (and save space at the table), I’m not sure, but I'm not mad about the abundance of dressing. It's my favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal, next to my mom's homemade cranberry sauce, and I enjoy how everything ends up mixing and mingling on the plate anyway. 

There are plenty of sausage dressing recipes out there, and the direction that we go with ours changes year by year. However, there’s one thing that never changes: No matter what sausage dressing recipe we try, we always use the same brand of sausage: Neese’s "Extra Sage."

As soon as it hits the cast-iron skillet, the familiar sage-y scent of true country sausage wafts through the kitchen as if to announce, "Thanksgiving has officially begun!"

To me, sage is the most festive of the herbs, and it’s a no-brainer to add a little more here and there to your holiday dishes to give it a little wintry, woody flair. The same goes for sausage dressing: Whether sweet or a little spicy, they very often call for sage. We’ll incorporate rubbed, dry, or fresh sage, too, but Neese’s “Extra Sage” provides just the right amount of fragrant, herbaceous sage to get the flavors and aromas going.

Neese’s sausage is also a great balance of salt and spice, and quality cuts of ham and pork are just-right for a tender sausage crumble that’s infused with sage in every bite.

Neese’s is a local country sausage producer based out of Greensboro, North Carolina. Each “flavor” of sausage comes wrapped like a present in a folded waxy square, and while it can be tricky to find at every grocery store, its distribution is fairly expansive across the South.

They also offer shipping of frozen sausage—just be sure to defrost it first! No matter how you crumble it this Thanksgiving, I guarantee that Neese’s Extra Sage Sausage will please.