FOOD NEWS
16 Hacks For Cooking With Sausage You'll Wish You Knew Sooner
BY FRED DECKER
Turn Down Heat
At high temperatures, the proteins in sausage contract and toughen and the fat and juices run out, resulting in a dry and chewy sausage, not tender and juicy.
Those juices turn to high-temperature steam leading to split or burst sausages. For best results, turn down the heat to a low medium and cook sausages gently, turning them often.
Don't Pierce
Piercing sausage's casing is a dated concept from the days before food safety regulations, leading to the fat running out and making the sausage drier and less tasty.
That's partly because the balance of fat and lean is crucial to sausage and partly because it also lets the meaty, flavorful juices escape.
Warm Gently
If you don't warm the sausages before cooking, their exterior may cook faster than the interior, or they'll be perfect in the middle but overcooked at the edges.
To safely and effectively warm sausages, seal them in a bag and leave them in room-temperature water for 20 minutes, or warm them for a few minutes in a microwave at half-power.
Use Indirect Heat
Create a high heat zone and a low or no heat zone on a grill. On a charcoal grill, rake the coals to one side; on a gas grill, light the burners on just one side.
Put sausages on the low-heat side and close the lid so they cook gently and absorb smoky flavors. Once mostly cooked, move them to the hot side, turning them regularly.
Cook Sous Vide
In sous vide cooking, you seal the food into a bag and drop it in water held at a precise temperature using an immersion circulator to heat and circulate the water.
You can let the sausages sous vide for about four hours, which is great for sausages that require low-temperature cooking. Once ready, simply brown the soft and tender meat.