The heats on… how to BBQ a sausage (the right way!!)
BBQ sausages literally are one of the best summertime treats, and the smoky heat of a BBQ is one of our favourite ways to cook them! It’s a really easy way to rustle up a great weekday meal too, as they require very little preparation. You can turn them into a flavorful dinner in literally minutes. Too often though, BBQ sausages turn out dry and flavorless due to incorrect cooking; so follow our pointers to get the perfect BBQ sausage!
People tend to cook sausages for far too long. Because a sausage is a ground-meat product, it needs to be cooked to an interior temperature of 72 degrees celcius to be safe, the best way you can check this (without overcooking) is to buy a temperature probe which nowadays are very easily purchased and so useful in the kitchen for all meats!
Careful !! Direct Heat Makes the Juices Boil and the Sausages Burst
If you cook a sausage over direct heat, the heat of the flames will quickly bring the juices of the interior of the sausage past the boiling point, and this will cause the sausage to split. All of those flavorful juices will run out of the sausage and onto the flames, creating troublesome flare ups—and you’ll lose a lot of flavor.
Indirect Heat Solves This Problem
A much better way to BBQ a sausage is through indirect heat; it’s sort of a smoky way of roasting the sausages.
How to Grill Sausages Over Indirect Heat
-Give the sausages a minute or two over high heat. This is to brown them.
-After a minute or so on both sides, turn the heat on your grill down to medium (or if your cooking on coals then move them to the cooler side, ie. not directly above your coal). Arrange your sausages as far from the heat source as possible or as close the lid as you can.
-Allow the BBQ to roast the meat. The sausages will cook in 10 to 15 minutes depending on their thickness. (It’s very handy to have the instant-read thermometer here).
-Remove the meat from the grill once they reach an interior temperature of 72 Celsius.
-Serve with good rolls, lots of chopped onion, sauerkraut, a few varieties of mustard, ketchup or mayo!
-Send us your photos! We’d love to see your results… send us some photos and we’ll post them on our Facebook page!