Recipe
🥙 LUNCH
Sausage Sizzle
A barbecued sausage on white bread with soft grilled onions and sauce, the fundraiser lunch of every Australian car park.
Australian · easy · serves 8
prep 10 min · cook 20 min
~345 cal · 12g protein · 19g carbs · 25g fat · 1g fiber · 4g sugars · 8g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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The sausage sizzle is less a recipe than a national ritual. Set up a barbecue in a hardware-store car park, a school fete, or a polling place on election day, and Australians will queue for a snag on bread in the name of raising a few dollars for the club.
The format never changes: a thin beef sausage, browned on a flat grill, laid diagonally on a single slice of soft white bread with a heap of slow-cooked onions and a squiggle of tomato or barbecue sauce. Folded, not in a bun, and eaten standing up.
The one genuine point of order is the onions. After a spate of slips, the hardware chain Bunnings famously ruled that onions must go under the sausage, not on top, so they cannot slide out and send a customer flying. It remains the closest thing the dish has to a recipe.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally dairy-, egg-, nut- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 8
8 thin beef sausages
8 slices white bread
2 large onions, sliced
2 tbsp oil
to taste tomato sauce (ketchup), to serve
to taste barbecue sauce, to serve
Instructions
1
Cook the sliced onions slowly in the oil on a barbecue flat plate or in a pan until soft and golden, then push to one side.
✎ Chef’s note
Start the onions well before the sausages. They take far longer, and the point is to have them meltingly soft and sweet.
2
Grill the sausages, turning, until browned all over and cooked through, about 10 minutes.
3
Lay a sausage diagonally across a slice of white bread and top with a spoonful of the onions.
4
Add tomato or barbecue sauce, fold the bread around the sausage, and eat immediately.
Australian community-fundraiser tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
New South Wales (Sydney). Sydney eats along its coastline and toward Asia. The fish market moves a great deal of seafood before dawn, Cabramatta and Ashfield are Vietnamese and Chinese eating destinations in their own right, and the Lebanese bakeries of the western suburbs are turning out manoush from early morning.
🗺️
Australia. The macadamia is the one Australian native plant to have become a global food commodity, and it did so having largely lost its Aboriginal names and the knowledge attached to them along the way. Finger lime, Kakadu plum, lemon myrtle and wattleseed are now travelling the same road, which is why who benefits from them is an active question.
🌍
Oceania. Oceania spans Australia, New Zealand, and thousands of Pacific islands, where the ocean and the coconut palm define the pantry. Traditional Polynesian and Melanesian cooking centers on root crops, taro, yam, cassava, and sweet potato, slow-cooked in earth ovens (the umu or mumu) alongside fresh reef fish and rich coconut cream. Modern Australian and Māori kitchens blend these deep roots with waves of Asian and European influence.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Australia
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Aussie Meat PieA hand-sized pie of rich, gravy-thick minced beef in flaky pastry, the sauce-topped icon of every footy match and servo.
Browse all Australia recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Grill or barbecue.
Storing it: Best straight off the heat. Leftovers keep 2 to 3 days refrigerated and reheat well in a hot oven rather than the microwave.
Make it a Australia meal
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Anzac BiscuitsDessert
Aussie Meat PieDinner
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Frequently asked questions
What is Sausage Sizzle?
A barbecued sausage on white bread with soft grilled onions and sauce, the fundraiser lunch of every Australian car park.
Where does Sausage Sizzle come from?
Sausage Sizzle is a Australian dish from New South Wales (Sydney), Australia.
Can Sausage Sizzle be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Sausage Sizzle recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Sausage Sizzle safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Sausage Sizzle take to make?
About 30 minutes total (10 minutes prep, 20 minutes cooking), serving 8.
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