Sausage and peppers | sweet vinegar pan sauce | polenta or hoagie rolls

sausage and peppers is an italian-american classic that is massively improved in my opinion via a two-stage cooking of the sausages and a heavy hand with the vinegar helps too i need my biggest pan to make four generous portions a little oil in there turn the heat on medium and in goes four big italian sausages i'm doing too hot and too sweet that's a pound and a half of meat 700 grams or thereabouts it's easily enough for four people with all the vegetables and i'm gonna need to assess the rigidity of my sausage see i want to brown these until they're most of the way cooked inside and by poking them while they're raw i get a baseline reading of what totally raw feels like i need to keep rolling these around and browning them until the inside doesn't feel completely squishy anymore i'm exchanging their places because contrary to popular belief cast iron does not actually heat that evenly the middle of the pan is way hotter while these are going i can prep all my vegetables this is a great thing to do in the summer when they have a bunch of weird sweet peppers at the farmer's market get anything that looks cool there's two ways to handle a bell pepper the first is cut it in half and then just reach in and tear out the stem ribs and seeds not because they're spicy they're not they're just fibrous not very tasty nice big slices there remember they're going to shrink a lot when they cook second way is to hold it upright by the stem and then fillet off the sides cut away the flesh that you do want the part that you don't want will be the only thing left standing i have no idea which method i prefer what i do know for sure is that when you slice them it's better to slice into the flesh side the skin side is tough and slippery the knife could easily slide off in contrast the blade bites much more readily into the flesh side plus it lays flatter this is a time when i want a real onion not a shallot i want those thicker layers these will cook in the same time as the peppers and i want a lot of onions again nice big wedges so we've got three large bell peppers and one big onion that'll give us roughly equal volume vegetables and meat once cooked speaking of which my hot sausage has exploded it happens keep rolling these around get really nice brown color on all sides gentle heat a little below medium now i don't want stuff on the bottom of the pan to burn before these are almost cooked through i can feel they're about there when i poke them they're bouncy but still a hair squishy in the center which is perfect slide the pan off the heat for a minute so nothing burns in there and out the sausages come to my board at this stage you could just cut these into little rounds maybe at an angle to make them look a little prettier but i'm going to unseam them from knave to the chaps this is a lot easier if you have an extra long carving knife right down the middle and there you can see there's still a little pink which is perfect this way they won't be overcooked by the time we're done with them pan back on the heat now and i'm going to lay these in cut side down this is one of those situations where if they don't quite fit now they will in a minute after everything cooks and shrinks some more we're going to get some beautiful brown color on the cut sides of the sausage if we had not pre-cooked them before we cut them well then the soft raw sausage would have just spilled out of its sheath but my hot italian sausage is well contained today thanks to the sponsor of this video sheath these are boxer briefs designed with special anatomical considerations for us gents they keep our gents up up and away from our meaty chicken thighs thus reducing all manner of related ailments and inconveniences three separate compartments for your sausage and peppers they were invented by a u.s army soldier marching through a rack here in the sweltering heat of macon georgia i appreciate how cool soft and breathable the fabric is sheath makes lady stuff too by the way if you find that your casings are a little too restrictive do us both a favor click my link in the description sheath underwear dot com slash ragucia use my code ragusia and get 20 off save 20 on your sheath with my link and code in the description thank you sheath now these i'm definitely going to have to juggle around the pan the ones around the edge are not nearly brown enough yet i want delicious sizzling crust on every square millimeter the thinner pieces can come out first those are done look at that am i right no real rush here we're going to reheat the sausages before we eat them so they can have all the time they require and then into all that hot fat and fond goes our vegetables at this point i'd turn the heat up a bit there's so much mass in there so much water to deglaze the bottom of the pan nothing is going to burn anytime soon you just have to keep it all moving and rotating bring stuff up from the bottom onto the top and vice versa like all vegetables these will continue to cook and noticeably soften as we're doing our final touches and scooping stuff onto plates so you want to start wrapping things up well before they are as tender as you want them in the end i'm going to deglaze with at least a quarter cup of red wine vinegar like 60 mls or any vinegar really a lot of people just use wine i think this does well with much more acidity especially if you balance it with a spoonful of sugar mix everything together and scrape off the pan you get this dark brown sweet and sour syrup coating everything it's the best grab a pepper and taste it we need a lot more salt in there and some pepper i'm tempted to add some hot sauce or chili flakes but i gotta remember i'm eating this with spicy sausages so it'll all balance out in the mouth speaking of which sausages back in it's a slightly awkward maneuver but you can get everything tossed around in that pan sauce and reheated in fact i'm going to turn the heat off there's plenty enough in the pan last thing is some fresh herb this is one of the few contexts in which i like fresh oregano the floral notes of it just work well with the peppers but thyme or basil would be great now what do you do with this i say just eat it put the pan in the middle of the table to keep everything hot give people a pair of tongs and some plates and you got a super satisfying low-carb meal if you used plant-based sausages it'd be vegan but if you must have a starch consider polenta there's like three cups of water up to a boil in there a pinch of salt to get it started and just half a cup of finely ground cornmeal you only need a little for soft polenta you gotta whisk continuously as it gelatinizes just to keep any lumps from forming and then you can just take the heat all the way down to low and let it sit for a while it's edible now but it'll get softer and creamier as it cooks for at least a half an hour i'd say you can add more water if you think it needs it when you're close to eating you can melt in as much butter as you can justify great in a little parmesan or pecorino a little goes a long way in polenta taste for seasoning and here's an easy trick to make this look sexy plop it on the plate and then tilt the plate around let the polenta run into a beautiful even layer all across the plate you don't need much it almost serves as a sauce or a gravy for everything as much as it serves as a starch that is the white tablecloth version of this dinner for the white tank top version get yourself a hoagie roll and toast it under the top element for a minute no more than that or it'll be brittle and tear another advantage of cleaving your sausages is they are now drier pleasantly drier this sandwich doesn't spurt all over your open-chested tracksuit when you bite into it doesn't even need mustard because it's got that sweet vinegar tastes like a fair to me gotta find a poorly inspected ferris wheel to climb on now

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 494,546

Rating: 4.9444423 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: NM_g4_5cnMA

Length: 7min 1sec (421 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/2Liberal4You]

oh god. hot italian sausage.

[u/TimorB1]

The YTP makers are gonna have a field day with this one

[u/Zealousideal_Emu619]

My hot Italian sausage

[u/DrDerpberg]

The double entendres in this one were off the hook. That transition to the ad was a work of art on its own.

[u/The-Bigger-Fish]

Ragusea sounded positively thrilled to be adding that sugar to his sauce....

[u/AlphaNepali]

So many dirty jokes...

[u/poopyheadthrowaway]

Relevant

[u/ThatSpyGuy]

Made this recently. Totally delicious. I love sausage and peppers but the slicing and browning innovation was a great idea. Good stuff.