The Underrated Deli Meat You Should Roast Over An Open Flame

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

While most deli meats are shaved off slabs into thin slices to add to your favorite sandwiches, other forms exist which lend themselves to more creative applications. To that effect, the underrated deli meat you should roast over an open flame is a smoked sausage known as cervelat.

Originating in Switzerland, cervelat is a small sausage made with a mixture of beef and pork, combined with spices like onion, garlic, paprika, coriander, pepper, and cardamom, and lightly smoked. These stubby brownish-pink sausages have a smoky, spicy, and savory flavor profile similar to semi-dry, cured summer sausage. However, the texture is more akin to the smooth interior of hot dogs or Vienna sausages. Consequently, cooking cervelat over an open flame will upgrade their smooth texture by imparting crispy edges and a more defined snap. Fire-grilling will also enhance their taste, bringing their smokiness to the forefront while also complementing the spices and umami-richness of the beef and pork.

Roasting cervelat sausages over a fire is one of the most common ways to enjoy them in Switzerland. They continue to be a mainstay for summer camp outs and family gatherings where kids and adults make a few slits on the top and bottom of each sausage, before spearing them and roasting them over an open fire or the flames of a grill.

Cervelat (also known as cervelas) is usually smoked, cured, and ready to eat out of the package, but the grill or campfire is a much tastier preperation method that's both traditionally and nostalgically close to the hearts of most German Swiss people. So you can follow their lead by swapping hot dogs for cervelat on your next camping trip or backyard barbecue. If you're using a grill, you can just use skewers (like these stainless steel skewers from Amazon) to roast them. Butterflying the meat is traditional and gives more surface area to crisp up, not to mention a better flavor experience all around. You could eat them with a drizzle of spicy brown mustard or add a few to a bun with one of our highly ranked brands of sauerkraut like this Cleveland Kraut roasted garlic.

Another traditional Swiss way to upgrade cervelat sausage over the grill is to fill the butterflied crevice with a chunk of cheese and wrap it with bacon. These delicious delicacies are known as arbeiter cordon bleu (meaning "worker's cordon bleu"), which is a blue-collar twist on the classic chicken cordon bleu recipe. Traditional types of cheese to use include gruyere and, of course, Swiss cheese.