How To Cook Our Sausage

In a word: gently.

There are three best ways - pan frying, grilling and poaching - to cook our sausages, all of which rely on gently heating the sausages to an internal temperature between 145 and 155 degrees fahrenheit as measured by a digital instant read thermometer. I prefer a final internal temperature of 145, which yields a very juicy, somewhat soft interior. A final temperature of 155 will yield a firmer, but still juicy interior. If you go too much above 155, your sausage will hit the “spew point”, at which time any break in the sausages’ casing will result in a jet of hot water shooting from the sausage. If you witness this type of behavior, then you know you’ve overcooked the sausage and can look forward to a dry, chewy final product.

 Click the sausage image to see the photoset of me pan frying some Kielbasa.

The “meat” in our sausages is really an emulsion of water, fat and protein. It is this emulsion that gives the sausages their juiciness. The proteins, fats and liquids held each other bound in a perfect ratio to ensure a moist, delicious product. But emulsions are fickle creatures. Mayonnaise is emulsion of oil, vinegar and egg yolk. If you’ve ever made mayonnaise then you know that the steps in creating the emulsion have to be followed very closely or the whole thing can “break” halfway through the process - the various components separate out of the emulsion leaving you with a big oily mess. If you overcook our sausages, the same thing can happen. The liquid will separate from the fat and protein and leave the sausage. This is the dreaded “spew point”, which can be quite dramatic. Up until the spew point, a small amount of fat and liquid will slowly render out of the sausage. This is normal and unavoidable, but it is a very small percentage of the sausage and there won’t be any visible shrinkage. When you hit the spew point, liquid will quickly seep out of the ends of the casing and start to boil away vigorously. You’ll say, “uh oh”, and quickly jab a fork into the sausages to get them out of the pan quickly. This will cause the whole “liquid spewing out of every break in the casing” phenomenon, which is not a happy occasion. So keep an eye on them and make sure you don’t go there.

Whether you pan fry them, grill them or poach them, the most important thing to have handy is a digital, instant read thermometer with a working battery. These are available in Ithaca at B&W Restaurant Supply, Now You’re Cooking and many grocery stores. I know that the Taylor thermometer sold at Now You’re Cooking includes two batteries and will set you back about twelve bucks.

I most commonly pan fry the sausages if I’m looking for a quick snack. I put them into a pre-warmed cast iron pan over medium low (or so - I have an old propane stove with no temperature settings - I turn it down to a quarter or so of a full flame) and cook them until they brown on one side. I flip them once and as soon as I see that the sausage is starting to look cooked on the outside I start taking the interior temperature. For a medium diameter casing, it takes about fifteen minutes total cooking time to get the interior to 145 at the thickest part of the sausage. I take them off the heat, let them rest for five minutes or so and it’s time to eat.

Grilling is much the same story. Cook them on a medium or medium low setting on a gas grill or over a gentle charcoal bed. You can also cook them over a hot charcoal bed or wood fire by moving the sausages further from the coals and relying on radiant heat to cook them rather than direct heat. Cooking times and techniques should be approximately the same as for the pan frying method.

I often poach Italian sausages in a Marinara sauce for pasta. I bring the Marinara to a gentle simmer in a cast iron frying pan (I use my cast iron frying pan a lot), submerge the sausages as much as I can in the liquid, cook them for eight minutes on one side, turn them over and let them come up to 145 degrees internal temperature. Remove them from the sauce and serve with the pasta and Marinara. Easy.

And there you have it, the whys and hows of cooking our sausages.