Sausage Stress - The Scourge of Summer

The standard Jamie method of BBQ’ing sausages has always been to fire up the grill on medium or highish heat, drop off the sausages on the grill, rotate them every few minutes until they inevitably split open and spray scalding hot juice out on my hands and arms resulting in swearing and sausage resentment.  I’m pretty sure many people overcook their sausages, likely for the same reasons I did:

1.             Lack of sausage cookery knowledge
2.       Fear of eating under cooked meats, developing dysentery, getting stomach worms and dying a horribly painful death.

It’s unfortunate that until now, I never investigated the true methods to successfully cook a proper sausage.  Reason was, I never really liked them that much, probably due to the fact that they’ve always been overcooked (oh the vicious cycle).  By overcooking them at a heat that is much too high, the internal juices boil prematurely, forcing the casing to split open under the pressure and then all that amazing flavor and moisture escapes leaving you with a shriveled up piece of somewhat edible meat.

Special Note: Though the sausage on the right may look like something else,
that actually is an overcooked sausage.

So the question is, how do you cook a good sausage without boiling the inner juices to the point where you split the casing, spray your arms with scalding hot sausage juice and completely ruin the meal?  The answer is slowly and using some indirect heat. 

Let’s start with some good sausages, and I’m not talking some pre-packaged UPC code specials from the grocery store frozen food section.  When thinking of good sausage, think of your local butcher.  Many good local butchers have a lot of skills and a great deal of passion about meat.  A good butcher will often have a great personal stock of some custom sausages.  Kelly and I were in the town of Cobourg, Ontario (about an hour east of Toronto) this past weekend visiting her family and visited a great local butcher – Leclerc’s Butcher. We met with the owner, Kelly Leclerc, who makes his own sausages including some pretty flavorful varieties like maple and cranberry for example.  We picked up a selection of his sausages to take home with us when we drove back to Ottawa today.

Jamie’s Meat Tip of the Day: Always travel with a cooler for times when you come across some awesome meat at a butcher, a friend’s house or on the side of the road (I hear smoked road kill is making a big comeback these days with all this recession talk). 

Jamie's Second Meat Tip of the Day: Another great place to find some outstanding sausage is your local farmer's markets.  Here’s a link for all the Farmer’s Markets in Ontario.

OK – so now that we’ve got some good sausage, you want to set up your grill for some indirect cooking.  On the Big Green Egg, I used the place setter, but if you were on a Weber kettle grill for example, you could just set the fire on one side of the grill and a small baking stone over that side.  You can also MacGyver something so that the coals are kept on one side (ie. use an old coffee pot).  If you have a gas grill, just use one burner and keep the other off.

Heat the grill to medium and then place your sausages down on the grill in the ‘safe’ location where they get indirect heat.  I cooked mine for a total of 14 minutes, turning once and the 7 minute mark.  The key is to only cook until you get an internal meat temperature of 160 – 170 degrees Fahrenheit.
  

Remember, if you are used to cooking sausages until they explode and split, spewing all that tasty flavor, this will seem weird and you’ll be worried they won’t be cooked enough, BUT as long as you use the meat thermometer, you’ll be fine. When you are done, you should end up with sausages that look something like these.

If you have cooked them too long, they will start to split, like this one. 

 I gave this one to Kelly (my wife - not the butcher)

So, bottom line, if you are like me, you’ve most likely been overcooking your sausages and completely ruining your summers, clearly taking years off your life due to sausage stress.  Rest easy, you can reverse this trend. Do them with indirect heat, take your time, use the meat thermometer and really...just enjoy your sausage (that’s what she said)!  Sorry, couldn’t resist.