Cooking Italian Sausages

[momoftwo]

HI All, you've been so generous with your advice, I thought I would share. We have a foolproof way to make perfect sausages every time. Bake them. I put the sausages in a baking dish (either 9 by 9 or 9 by 15, depending upon the quanitity of sausages). Cover tightly with foil. Bake them in a 325 oven for atleast two hours but they can go up to 4 with no ill affects. Do not touch them during the first two hours of cooking. If you are going longer, you might want to turn them over. They come out creamy, melt in your mouth, the skins must dissolve and the fat inside dissolves and you are left with creamy tasty meat. My sister in law loves sausages but thought the only way to cook them was to char the heck out of them on the grill. She tasted mine a week or so ago and flipped out! (she almost wouldn;t try them becuase they had no "black" on them so they "could not be cooked")

[Will Owen]

I want that char on the skin. I used to fry sausages before I cooked them with peppers and onions or whatever, but now that I have a gas grill I give them just long enough on each side to crisp the skins and get some browning, and then bury them in the other ingredients and do a slow braise. There's an old Sicilian guy around the corner, polite but distant, who makes sausages fresh every day, and when I told him how I was cooking them he gave me a huge smile and told me what a smart guy I was.

[hotoynoodle]

count me as a char fan too. i like the contrast of crispy skin with fatty goodness within. :)

[Norm Man]

momoftwo, after cooking in the oven for 2 hours covered, are the sausages browned at all or do they resembled boiled sauasges?

[TongoRad]

I did something like that a few years ago, mostly by accident. I had too much meat for my braising pot and the sausage wouldn't fit so I put them into the smallish pyrex with a ladle or two of sauce, covered them with foil and cooked them in the oven for several hours. By the time they were finished they were almost completely submerged in their own fat- the texture is how you described, very luscious, moist and almost velvety meat. I jokingly referred to it as my confit of sausage at the time. It's a great way to cook them if you've got the time.

[pdxgastro]

I do that too, but on the stove top. First I poke holes in them. Put them in a pot of water. Boil first, then reduce to a simmer for about 20 minutes. Then I take them out of the water and put them into my pot of tomato sauce. I let the sauce simmer an hour or longer. The sausages come out so tender. The sauce flavors the sausages, the sausages flavor the sauce. Yum.

[greedygirl]

You prick your sausages? Doesn't that mean the lovely juices leach out?

I always make my sausages in a cast-iron pan on the stove top. Simply place them in the pan over a low heat with a smidgeon of olive oil. Leave undisturbed for around 40 minutes. They swell up and become juicy and fat and delicious.

[pdxgastro]

I may prick them, but because they're cooked in liquid (both steps), yes, they're still juicy.

[cheesemaestro]

"Creamy" is not a word I would normally associate with sausages, but this sounds intriguing. I wonder if this method would work with chicken or turkey sausages. I'm guessing it would be less successful, since they have less fat.

[momoftwo]

you are right, it does not work with the leaner meat sausages, it is all about the rendering of the fat, I'm guessing. The other sausages, burst and get really dried out :( yes I have tried it.

[JEN10]

My Mom roasts them in the oven, not sure she covers them though. I will have to pass this on to her.