WA Bunnings sausage sizzles served on a bun instead of bread - News + Articles

by Caitlin Welsh

Nov 19, 2024

Everyone loves a bit of cheeky parochial food banter: devon or fritz, parmi or parma, cake or scallop. But this? This is all wrong.

Western Australia is blessed with pristine wilderness, stunning food, wineries churning out world-class chardonnay, beach sunsets, and a marsupial so cute and friendly it makes Disney’s woodland creatures look like the bear from The Revenant. But it’s also home to some of the most isolated cities and towns on the planet, and the tyranny of distance has the sandgropers a little muddled.

Have you seen how they serve their Bunnings snags?

On a roll. A ROLL.

A “long mac topped up”? Sure! Drive-through smoothie shops? Gotta get around somehow and refuel while you do it. That weirdly thick bacon? Hey, the Canadians do that too. Thinking DOME cafe is fancy? …You do you, kids.

But this travesty, this sausage fizzle, is all wrong. The proportions are totally off. The same kind of crusty white roll we’ll stuff to breaking point for a banh mi, wrapped around one skinny supermarket sausage? Or the plain, inferior “hot dog buns” that boast neither shattering crust nor yielding softness? There aren’t enough half-burnt-half-raw onions in the world to balance that out.

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Not only is it an inferior eating experience, and one that’s horribly evocative of childhood fast food disappointments (a snag in a roll is NOT a hot dog, Mum!) – but all that excess bread is going to muck with the time-honoured tradition of getting one snag on your way in to fuel the next hour of Googling what kind of epoxy you actually need, and then another on the way out to reward yourself. So what if you ended up buying five plants and forgetting the epoxy? Two slices of soft white bread is, well, a sandwich, and not that substantial a sandwich at that. Two whole crusty rolls is overkill.

We all love our thick-sliced, crusty bread, but there are some foods that simply demand the anaemic, processed stuff in a plastic bag. You wouldn’t make fairy bread with soy and linseed. You would be laughed out of high tea if you showed up with dainty cucumber rounds on a squashy potato roll.

And the mighty sausage sizzle? That goes diagonally on a slice of plain, bog-standard white bread, each end cupped neatly by a corner of crust, onion juice and charcoal-y drippings already soaking through while you’re still squirting on your sauce. (Red and brown only. Get that yellow American mustard out of here.) If you complain that the bread falls apart, you’re just not eating it fast enough.

@perthdudefood This tok came up again today so I thought I’d repost it #bunningssnag #bunnings #perthisok #perth #bunningssnags ♬ original sound – DUDE FOOD

And most crucially, Bunnings released a statement earlier in 2024 encouraging snag sellers to pick slices over rolls, to ensure consistency in the offering in (or outside) stores around the country.

All love and respect to the community groups who set up on Saturday mornings across the nation – whether it be outside Hammerbarns, hockey fields or polling places – and dole out delicious snags in their carby cradles of all kinds. And all love and respect to sandwich innovators, snack experimenters, and culinary mashups – we can’t get enough of them. (Devon scallop, anyone?)

Some things are just beyond the pale. WA, please end the madness. But in the meantime… we do have a recipe to help you make a bun-based snag sanga that really delivers on flavour.

Related story: West is blessed: Perth’s top five beaches

Do onions go on top of the sausage in a sausage sandwich, or underneath?

This one is a matter of personal preference – either is delicious, and both? Doubly so. But for Bunnings snag slingers, the chain kindly recommends that fundraising groups serve the onions underneath the sausage.

A spokesperson for Bunnings said: “Safety is always our number one priority and we recently introduced a suggestion that onion be placed underneath sausages to help prevent the onion from falling out and creating a slip hazard. Regardless of how you like your onion and snag, we are confident this new serving suggestion will not impact the delicious taste and great feeling you get when supporting your local community group.”