How to Cook Sausage
While some meats are best left undisturbed while cooking, sausage requires a fair amount of tossing and turning to achieve consistent browning. Opening the oven every few minutes to check on the crispiness and sizzle would be counterproductive, as your oven loses 25 degrees of heat every time it’s opened. This would mean a constantly fluctuating oven temperature and inconsistent cooking. I tried to let the sausage do its thing while cooking and held my breath for good results by the end. Method To cook sausage in the oven, here’s what I did: Results Perhaps a higher temperature would have created a better outer crust, but I feared that too long in the oven at a high heat would dry out the entire rope of sausage. The resulting dish was moist, but was missing a few distinct qualities of this particular smoked sausage: intense smoky flavor and a crispy casing. The only thing this method is best for is easy clean-up (i.e., no oil splatters everywhere). Method Here’s how I grilled a smoked sausage without the fuss of charcoal: Results Grilling the sausage definitely brought out the woodsy, smoky flavors of the smoked sausage. It was juicy, hot, and tasted like a campfire (in the best possible way). However, grilling did present a few issues, like the occasional flame flare up that caused the casing to split easily (and created inconsistent charring). If you only own a tedious charcoal grill, don’t have patience or experience with flare-ups, or don’t own a grill at all, then this probably is not the right method for you. However, if you’re a grill master attending a tailgate or making some delicious appetizers, then I highly recommend this method. Flavor- and texture-wise, grilled sausage aims to please. Method In order to have a fair, direct comparison to the other two methods, I pan-fried the full rope. Here’s how it went: However, I was curious to try the brand’s recommended medallion method so I opened another package of rope smoked sausage and started cutting and frying. Results Overall, pan-frying was a low-maintenance and delicious method for cooking sausage. This is perfect for when you don’t want to break out the grill but still want a moist, flavorful sausage. The smoky flavors were not as prominent as they were from the grill, however the sausage remained juicy, tender, and crispy. The mini medallions are a perfect bite-sized appetizer and would be even more delicious if served alongside a honey mustard dipping sauce. If you know the hot spots of your grill well and can execute a more consistent crispy crust than I did, you’re going to be successful. Even if the casing does break a bit, high-quality smoked sausage is so juicy that it’ll be hard to dry it out. If grilling is outside your cooking capacity, then pan-frying your smoked sausage on the stove will still yield a moist, crispy product in a very manageable way.
