How to Grill Sausages | Kenji’s Cooking Show

hey Brent its Kenji today I'm going to show you how to grill some sausages so these are sausages that sous-chef Eric made from my restaurant I'm actually gonna get rid of these buns these are so these these sausages I think we're good probably gonna sell them Inc it's like this for Independence Day and beyond but you get four sausages like this then these are our bratwurst beer bratwurst so which want to do is you want to take sauerkraut about a pound of sauerkraut spread it out in a in a disposable aluminum tray like this this is our house-made sauerkraut we ferment it for a month but you can you can use store-bought sauerkraut and then beer is about 12 ounces of beer so like one bottle basically this is I'm using a Czech fire maybe this is trimmer but now this trimmer pills which is a local beer trimmer pills some salt the sauce the sausages are about two to three percent salt by weight that's actually where the word for sausage comes from sausage salt same route is the word salt and so if you were to just simmer them in plain beer which some people do what ends up happening is that salt bleaches out and your sausages end up bland so you do want to add salt to your to your searing you're braising liquid or you're simmering liquid and then I'm going to take my sausages [Applause] you don't them right on in there and this of course works doesn't have to be doesn't have to be bratwurst it can be any kind of sausage you want and you can do as many as you want in here as many as you can sort of fit in a single layer so if you want to really get a you know get a nicely tucked in all the way around that works really well and if you don't want to do you know if you're doing something like say an Italian sausage for instance you can also omit the sauerkraut and do something like you know saute some saute up some peppers and onions get them in there in place of the get them in there in place of the absent ease the other great thing get them in there in place of the sauerkraut and that works well that works well too all right and so what I've done here is I've created what's called a modified 2 zone fires so I've got most of the coal this is one chimney full of charcoals I've got most of the coals along one side and then just a few on the other side and the reason you do that is because you want a sort of moderate heat to bring the sausage see these are raw sausages and you want to get them up to around 145 degrees or so before you sear them so we're gonna use moderate heat and let them simmer bring that up to a simmer I'm on the cooler side of the grill and then afterwards we're gonna finish him on the hot side of the grill to give them a nice sear mmm I'm gonna adjust these grades so that they're then so that they're about half open up.these about half open as well and now there's sausage I basically just gonna cook in there I will I'll do it jump I'll do a little jump cut because we're not gonna sit here while they cook but they're probably gonna take about 20 minutes or so at one point in the middle I'm gonna flip them over so I will come back after the sausages I've been cooking for about 10 minutes and that liquid is at a simmer and then we'll flip them over and yeah so I will be back in five seconds because I forgot to add the mustard okay I forgot to add the mustard then I added the mustard added some mustard and realize my camera wasn't rolling so I've now reading a little bit more of a cert so having a couple tablespoons total of whole-grain mustard into here you don't need to add mustard but I do like the flavor it has to sauerkraut so just get it in there mix it around a little bit you can also feel free to get creative you know what's really good in here is if you add some like sliced onions into that sauerkraut and let them simmer down as well sliced apples like granny smith apples any kind of sour apple are really nice in there nice a nice tart acidic apples are nice in there you can also do herbs like fresh thyme or rosemary or sage spices like juniper berries or black peppercorns they're nice you know get as creative or as uncreate 'iv as you'd like all right so now I'm gonna cover these and let them start to come up to temp I'm so I will be back now in six minutes so I actually decided to come back a little bit early because I realize this grill was running a little bit hotter than I normally run it so these I think we'll probably get yeah these are definitely gonna be done faster than 20 minutes um the idea here by the way is that you know if you've ever tried cooking sausages over direct heat you know right on a grill you always on you you you frequently end up with a couple of different problems so one of them is that it could be too hot and your sausage ends up kind of burning on the outside while it's still raw in the middle and then frequently also what happens then is that the sausage bursts open because the outside contracts so fast that the inside doesn't have time to catch up with it and so you know sausage is just like a steak or just like chicken like you'd say they're sensitive to heat you know they have to be cooked to the right temperature and a sausage well you know technically they're done at 165 degrees which is what the government will tell you um I like to take them a little bit lower so I'm gonna get them up to around 145 degrees on the in the center and then I'm gonna finish them on the hot part of the grill and that should get them up to around that should get them up to around 155 degrees which is what I consider to be done if you have a sous-vide machine also you don't have to do this on the grill you can do this you can do this in the oven first of all you can you can or the stove top simmer them in beer and sauerkraut like that on the stovetop or if you have a sous-vide machine you can cook your style kraut with the beers to get rid of that you know the excess alcohol kind of reduce it down and then put that all in a bag with your sausages cook it at 145 degrees for a couple hours take it out dry your sausages and finish them on the in a pan on the stovetop all right so I'm gonna be back probably in another six more minutes all right so all right these are definitely looking like they're done maybe even overdone let's see so you can see how they've firmed up the liquid is simmering which is what we want we temp one of these in the center here 130 degrees all right now we'll let it go for another no not quite done probably another just another two more minutes all right we've got to be done by now all right yeah 146 degrees perfect all right so now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take these sausages oops gonna pick them up I'm gonna I'm straight over the hot side of the grill also gonna open up those vents all the way because we want to basically what we're trying to do now is add some color to them it's gonna be that aside just a little bit so that I can that toast up my buns so these are top split New England style buns we get these from but we used to get them from place called la boulangerie which unfortunately due to the shelter in place and the shutdowns they severely limited their their selection of breads so they no longer make these top slip buns that we loved but we now get them from a place called panorama bakery which also makes excellent bread the classic New England style hot dog bun is made by pepperidge farm you can find that in you can certainly find it in you know supermarkets in New England it's probably a little harder to find in other parts of the country but then again you don't need top split hot-plug buns for sausages we just we just do them because it's kind of a nod to my well it's kind of a nod to my New England heritage and also we like them because you know this cuts this this surface the fact that they're split on the top instead of on the side the way a normal hot dog bun is means that the this surface in between you can butter it and griddle it so you can add you know get a lot of nice buttery griddle flavor onto them in this case I'm doing it on the grill so it doesn't really matter too much in fact look at that beautiful color so once they're almost cooked through like that you know once they're cooked through like that basically all we're trying to do is add some color and take them just those last 10 degrees till they're all the way cooked through and the color of course is just for flavor and a little bit of texture you're gonna get a nice and crispy on the outside this is a really nice technique to have when you're doing like you know when you've a cookout with a lot of people that are kind of milling around and you're not going to sort of just sitting down to dinner because what you can do is you can finish cooking the sausages like this or hot dogs or whatever put them right back in the tray and put the tray over on the coolest side of the grill and with the lid off by the time you know by the time the sausages are all done cooking with the and you have the lid off on the grill those coals are going to be cool enough that the saw the liquid is not really going to be simmering shouldn't be swimming much a simmering much anymore a little grease increase spurt all right the liquids not going to end up simmering anymore so you can put those sausages basically right like this back in there and they're going to stay warm until you're ready to serve them they're gonna say more importantly stay warm without overcooking that's what that's what I meant to say okay so I'm just gonna finish toasting up these grills toasting up these buns maybe I'll speed it up we will speed it up in fast motion now all right so now we got our sausages by the way a well-made sausage even if it rips open like that even if the casing rips open a little bit of well-made sausage should stay nice and juicy because the sausage that's you know properly emulsified and where the meat is properly mixed the fat gets sort of bound into the protein you know through that protein matrix that you make by mixing salt with meat and kneading it the way of good sausage is made a bad sausage the fat will kind of run out and it'll end up sort of pooling up inside the sausage so that when you prick it you know you get those like little grease fountains that spurt out so a bad sausage if you prick it all the fat will run out or if you bite it all the fat will sort of run out into your mouth but a good sausage even if the skin even if the casing pops like that it should stay nice and super juicy all right now we're just gonna get tough and with a little bit of our braised sauerkraut here and this is way too many sausages for me and my wife were the only people home right now but I think my neighbor has some guys working on her fence right now so maybe I'll go go feed those guys lunch all right right that my friends my pals that's how you knock over a stack of sausages that is how you do robbers on the grill hmm sous-chef Eric makes an excellent sausage all right everyone happy Independence Day you can get these sausages from worst allcom hey you going one it's between your feet buddy right back here right here um and I hope you all have wonderful cookouts okay see you later guys Galvin non-binary top [Music] you

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 318,803

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Id: 4aVS-QWoWlw

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020