Cooking For Engineers

[Dilbert]

Disciplining a Brat

bratwurst and kin can be frustrating undisciplined when it comes to grilling. depending on how they were made, packed - single links or in spiral link, natural casing or synthetic - they like to curl up like rolly-polly bugs. makes the creation of a reasonable even crust/color/pretty dang difficult.

once upon a day, an idea hit me. so this is my method of madness for keeping brats in line. works with pretty much any other type of link sausage as well.... note: this may not be anything original to me. it's a fair bet somebody has already invented this wheel.....

first, let them warm a bit and convert them from square sausages into round sausages. for reasons unexplained, supermarkets like to smash them flat&square before they put them out.


stab the brat down the length with a wooden/bamboo skewer. skewers come in various lengths, and a little bit of break-it-in-half works too. to use the broke off chunk for the next brat, put a semi-point on it with a sharp knife. sigh, no point, no work too good.....



these I'm doing indoors, in a pan. hence I've broken a too long skewer as short as possible so as not to interfere with pan action.



if you're going to do them on a gas/charcoal grill, leave 2-3 inches on the ends (or at least one end) so you have a built in "schquewer schpitt handhold..." - no tongs required . . .

pull out the skewers, perfectly straight brats. okay okay, nearly perfectly straight....
to accommodate that pesky sister-in-law, have a dollop of mustard at the ready to conceal any obvious holes in the ends . . . .

cook/grill as desired. for the eagle eye types, yup - these are under cooked. you can see some pink left in the middle. I cook these near done, then freeze, then microwave on crave-demand. for done&ready-to-eat, these would take another 5-7 minutes in the pan, less on the grill.




my microwave re-heat for brats is
- one minute at low power
- one minute rest
- one minute at next up power step
- one minute rest
- zap on high until you can hear them sizzle - keep your ear next to the microwave..... typically less than 30 seconds.

from frozen in my microwave, it's 20% power - then 30% power - then 100%
microwaves vary - your power settings and time will vary.
the rest period are important. heat does not move quickly thru fatty meats. lacking patience, you'll get severely dried up / shrunken brats.....

[Jim Cooley]

LOL, I saw the headline and was going to suggest just that.