What Is Beyond Sausage?
Beyond Sausage is the plant-based sausage line from Beyond Meat, the same company behind the Beyond Burger and Beyond Steak. Unlike Beyond Meat's ground and patty products, Beyond Sausage is sold as fully formed links designed to mimic the snap and juiciness of pork sausage — no casing-stuffing or shaping required on your end. The line comes in several flavors, most commonly Hot Italian, Sweet Italian, Mild Italian, and Brat Original, all built around the same pea-and-rice protein base that Beyond Meat uses across its lineup.
The pitch is straightforward: give people who grew up on Italian sausage sandwiches, brats, and grilled links a product that slots into the exact same recipes — sausage and peppers, pasta with sausage, backyard grilling — without requiring them to rethink how they cook. That's a different lane than, say, a seitan-based sausage like Field Roast, which leans into its own texture rather than chasing a 1:1 meat match.
Beyond Sausage first launched in 2019 and has stayed in regular rotation at most major grocery chains since, usually stocked in the refrigerated meat case rather than the frozen aisle or the "healthy" section — a placement decision that's part of Beyond Meat's broader strategy of sitting next to the animal product it's replacing.
Ingredients
The ingredient list for Beyond Sausage (Hot Italian) reads like this:
Water, pea protein isolate, refined coconut oil, sunflower oil, natural flavor, and then, at 2% or less: rice protein, faba bean protein, potato starch, salt, fruit juice (for color), vegetable juice (for color), apple fiber, methylcellulose, citrus extract (to protect quality), and calcium alginate casing.
A few things stand out. First, there's no soy and no gluten in this formulation — Beyond Meat builds its protein base from peas, rice, and faba beans instead, which is part of why the product is labeled non-GMO and allergen-friendly relative to soy-heavy competitors like Impossible Foods. Second, the "casing" isn't animal intestine or collagen — it's calcium alginate, a plant-derived gel made from brown seaweed extract that's commonly used in vegan sausage and hot dog casings to get that characteristic snap when you bite in. Third, the color comes from fruit and vegetable juice concentrates rather than synthetic dyes, and methylcellulose (derived from plant cellulose) is doing the binding work that egg or animal fat would do in a conventional sausage.
Fat comes primarily from refined coconut oil and sunflower oil, which is standard across the plant-based meat category — it's what gives these products a meat-like mouthfeel and helps them render and brown in a pan.
If you want to double-check any packaged product's ingredient list against a vegan-safe standard yourself, the spvegan.com ingredient checker is a fast way to scan for anything questionable before you buy.
Is Beyond Sausage Vegan?
Yes — Beyond Sausage is 100% vegan. Beyond Meat is an entirely plant-based company; it doesn't manufacture any animal-derived products, so there's no cross-formulation risk the way there sometimes is with brands that make both vegan and conventional versions of the same item. Every ingredient in the list above — the pea and rice proteins, the coconut and sunflower oils, the alginate casing, the fruit and vegetable juice coloring — is plant-derived. There's no dairy, no egg, no honey, no gelatin, no carmine, and no animal-derived natural flavor.
The product is also labeled Kosher and Halal, which is a reasonable secondary signal (though not a substitute for checking ingredients yourself) that no animal-derived components are hiding in the formulation. If you're newly vegan and still building the habit of reading labels, Beyond Sausage is one of the more straightforward products in the meat case — there's no fine print to worry about here.
Nutrition Facts: How Beyond Sausage Compares
Here's how one cooked Hot Italian link stacks up against the two most obvious plant-based competitors — Impossible's Italian sausage and Field Roast's seitan-based Italian sausage, which takes a very different approach to protein.
| Product (per link/serving) | Calories | Protein | Total Fat | Saturated Fat | Sodium | Carbs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beyond Sausage (Hot Italian) | 210 | 17g | 13g | 2g | 480mg | 8g |
| Impossible Italian Sausage | 230 | 14g | 16g | 7g | 590mg | 8g |
| Field Roast Italian Sausage | 220 | 25g | 8g | N/A | N/A | 13g |
A few takeaways. Beyond Sausage lands in the middle on calories but comes out ahead of Impossible's version on saturated fat by a wide margin — 2g versus 7g per link — largely because Impossible leans more heavily on coconut oil in its fat blend. Field Roast is the outlier of the three: because it's built on vital wheat gluten (seitan) rather than isolated pea or soy protein, it packs noticeably more protein per link and less total fat, but it's not gluten-free the way Beyond Sausage is, which matters if you're avoiding gluten for any reason.
None of these are "health foods" in the leafy-greens sense — they're processed meat substitutes, and sodium is the number worth watching across the whole category if you're managing blood pressure. Beyond Sausage's 480mg per link is roughly 20% of a day's recommended sodium intake, so it's not a product to eat two or three links of without accounting for the rest of your day.
Taste and Texture
Cooked in a skillet or on a grill, Beyond Sausage browns and develops grill marks the way a real pork sausage does, and the alginate casing genuinely delivers a snap when you bite into it — this is one of the more convincing textural details in the plant-based meat category. The interior is dense and slightly springy rather than crumbly, closer to a bratwurst than to ground sausage.
Flavor-wise, the Hot Italian leans on fennel, garlic, and a real chili kick that comes through clearly rather than being an afterthought — it's not shy about the heat. The Sweet Italian trades the chili for more fennel and a touch of sweetness, and reads closer to a classic Italian-American sausage sandwich filling. Where the product falls slightly short of the real thing is in fat rendering: pork sausage releases visible fat as it cooks that bastes the meat and adds richness, and Beyond Sausage's coconut-and-sunflower-oil fat blend doesn't render out the same way, so the texture can read as slightly drier if you overcook it. Keeping it to a shorter sear rather than a long simmer helps.
In dishes where sausage is one ingredient among several — pasta, sausage and peppers, a sheet-pan dinner — the flavor holds up well and most people wouldn't clock it as a substitute. Eaten plain on its own, straight off the grill, it's a slightly more noticeable stand-in, though still one of the better options in the category.
How It Compares to Alternatives
| Product | Protein base | Gluten-free? | Texture style | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beyond Sausage | Pea, rice, faba bean | Yes | Snappy casing, dense interior | Grilling, sausage-and-peppers, direct swaps |
| Impossible Italian Sausage | Soy | No (check current formulation) | Softer, moister crumble | Pasta sauces, crumbled dishes |
| Field Roast Italian Sausage | Wheat gluten (seitan) | No | Firm, chewy, high-protein | Those prioritizing protein over macros elsewhere |
If gluten is a concern, Beyond Sausage is the clear pick of these three since both Impossible and Field Roast build in wheat- or soy-based structure. If maximizing protein per link is the priority, Field Roast's seitan base wins on paper, though its texture is noticeably chewier and less "sausage-like" than Beyond's. Impossible's version sits texturally between the two — softer than Beyond, less chewy than Field Roast — and tends to work better crumbled into a sauce than grilled whole as a link.
Price and Availability
Beyond Sausage is widely available in the refrigerated meat aisle at most major U.S. grocery chains, including Kroger-owned stores, Walmart, Target, Safeway/Albertsons, Publix, Whole Foods, and regional chains, plus delivery through Instacart. A 14-ounce package (four links) generally falls in the same premium-but-not-outrageous price bracket as other Beyond Meat products — expect to pay noticeably more per pound than conventional pork sausage, which is the norm across the plant-based meat category rather than something specific to this product. Prices vary meaningfully by region and retailer, so it's worth checking your local store's current price rather than assuming a fixed number.
Who Should Buy Beyond Sausage?
Beyond Sausage makes the most sense for people who already cook with pork or chicken sausage regularly and want a plant-based swap that behaves the same way in the pan — sausage and peppers, pasta bakes, grilled links at a cookout where other people are eating the real thing. It's also a reasonable pick if you're specifically avoiding gluten, since it's one of the few widely available sausage-style plant proteins that doesn't rely on wheat gluten for structure.
It's a less obvious choice if your main goal is maximizing protein-for-calories (Field Roast wins there) or minimizing sodium and processing (a bean- or lentil-based homemade sausage would beat all three of these products on that front). And if you've never liked the taste of processed meat substitutes generally, this isn't going to be the product that changes your mind — it's a very competent version of the category, not a reinvention of it.
Final Verdict
Beyond Sausage does what it sets out to do: it slots into existing sausage recipes with minimal adjustment, delivers a genuinely convincing snap-and-sear experience, and comes out ahead of its closest plant-based competitor on saturated fat. It's not a health food, and the sodium content is worth keeping an eye on if you're eating it regularly, but as a direct swap for conventional sausage in everyday cooking, it's one of the more reliable options on the market.
Rating: 8/10 — Excellent texture and flavor for cooked applications, clean allergen profile (no soy, no gluten), unambiguously vegan. Loses points for sodium content and for slightly underdelivering on rendered-fat richness compared to real pork sausage.
