Three Cheese Smoked Sausage Dogs
September 19, 2026
Serve with chips, fries, or baked beans.
There is a particular kind of Wednesday where the answer is sausage on a bun and nobody needs to discuss it further. This is that recipe. It is four ingredients and about fifteen minutes, and the only thing standing between you and a very good sandwich is the burner knob.
Because this is not plain smoked sausage. It is our 3 Cheese, and cheese sausage cooks differently than the original. If you have ever had cheese sausage weld itself to a skillet, that is what this section is about.
Cheese renders before pork fat does, so the heat has to come down
In a cheese sausage the cheese is emulsified into the meat before it is stuffed. It is not pockets of cheese sitting in a matrix of pork. It is mixed through, held in suspension, and it stays put as long as the temperature stays reasonable.
The trouble is that cheese fat gives up at a lower temperature than pork fat does. Put a cheese sausage in a ripping hot skillet and the cheese breaks out through the casing before the outside has browned, and what you get is a pan full of scorched cheese, a sausage that never got a crust, and a cleanup job. High heat is not faster here. It is just louder.
Medium is the answer. Medium gives the pork fat time to render and brown the outside while the cheese stays where it belongs.
The recipe offers you coins or a lengthwise split, and for a bun the split is the better call. A split link lies flat, so the whole cut face is in contact with the pan and you get one wide browned surface instead of a dozen small ones. It also fits a hot dog bun like it was designed to, which coins do not.
Smoked sausage is already cooked — you are cooking for snap, not doneness
“Cook the sausage until browned and heated through” is the recipe’s instruction and it is the right one, but it is worth saying why it does not say “until done.” It is already done. Smoked sausage went through the smokehouse fully cooked, and there is no internal temperature you are chasing.
What you are actually after is the casing. A good natural casing snaps when you bite it, and that snap comes from dry heat drawing the surface tight. Which leads to the single most common mistake with smoked sausage: adding oil to the pan at the start. Fat in the pan surrounds the casing and steams it instead of crisping it, and a steamed casing goes soft and leathery. You get a warm sausage with a chewy skin.
Start it in a dry pan. It has plenty of its own fat and it will render enough within two minutes to cook itself. The butter or oil in the ingredient list is for the onions, which go in after the sausage comes out and will be very glad to have all that rendered sausage fat to work with.
Give the onions longer than you think. Eight to ten minutes on medium, not three. Soft and golden is a different food than warm and raw, and it is most of what makes this sandwich good.
One scheduling note: we are closed on Wednesdays. If Three Cheese dogs are the Wednesday plan, pick the sausage up Tuesday (or any day but Wednesday and Sunday). Smoked sausage keeps beautifully in the refrigerator, so buying ahead costs you nothing.
Three Cheese Sausage Dogs
Prep: 5 minutes · Cook: 15 minutes · Serves: 4
You’ll Need
- Lil Butcher Shoppe Three Cheese Smoked Sausage
- Hot dog buns
- 1 yellow onion
- Butter or oil
- Mustard, optional
Let’s Cook
Slice the sausage into pieces or split each link lengthwise.
Cook the sausage in a skillet until browned and heated through. Remove it from the pan, then add sliced yellow onion and sauté until soft and golden.
Place the sausage in the hot dog buns and pile the sautéed onions on top. Add mustard if you like.
Serve with chips, fries, or baked beans.
What Else Is in the Case
Three Cheese is one of eleven smoked sausage flavors we make, and swapping the flavor is the easiest way to make this sandwich a different dinner. Jalapeño & Cheddar is the obvious next step up. Original pork, beef and Sweet Fire all work on a bun. The fruit-forward ones — apple, blueberry, pineapple and maple — are better with mustard than most people expect. And if you want to make a point of it, there is alligator and pork and red deer.
Buying more than one flavor at a time is what the 7-pack and 14-pack coolers are for. They ship nationwide.
Tips from Behind the Counter
- Dry pan, medium heat, cut side down. No oil at the start. The sausage brings its own and adding more steams the casing.
- Do not move it for the first three minutes. Crust forms when the surface stays in contact with the pan. Flipping it every thirty seconds gives you gray sausage.
- Cook the onions in the sausage fat. Do not wipe the pan out. That rendered fat is seasoned with everything that came off the sausage.
- Slice the onion pole to pole, not across. Cut that way it holds its shape through a long sauté instead of falling into mush.
- Toast the buns in the same pan. Thirty seconds, cut side down, after the onions come out. A toasted bun holds up under hot sausage; an untoasted one gives up.
- A pinch of salt on the onions early draws water out and speeds the browning. Add it once they start to soften, not before they hit the pan.
Ways to Change It Up
- Add sliced bell pepper with the onions and take it in a sausage-and-peppers direction.
- Swap the bun for a hoagie roll and make it a full-size sub with provolone melted over the top.
- Griddle the onions with a splash of beer or broth at the end to deglaze and get them jammy.
- Put a spoon of coleslaw on top. Cold and crunchy against hot and rich is never wrong.
- Skip the bun and serve the split sausage and onions over rice or grits.
One Stop for Wednesday Dinner in Hattiesburg
Family owned and operated in Hattiesburg since 1991. Hours: Monday–Tuesday and Thursday–Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Closed Wednesday and Sunday. Phone: 601-261-2765. Address: 1910 Broadway Drive, Hattiesburg, MS 39401. Smoked sausage ships nationwide; also on shelves across Mississippi and the Gulf South.
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