[Sca-cooks] cooking sausage

[Stefan li Rous]

Adamantius said:
<<< Hey, for something large, like individual chickens, I'll do the  
test-
each-one, or if one area of sausage on a pan looks significantly less
done, brown, unshrunken, or otherwise indicative of something like
being partially frozen, it'll get special attention, but generally,
testing every link is silly, if for no other reason than that it
damages the links unnecessarily.

 > (For once I was on the Phlip side. Once the meat in a
 > pork sausage turns white white white, and it tastes done, it's done.

Generally, yes. Look for cool spots on your griddle or in your oven,
test there. Trichinosis and e. coli are both killed at temperatures
which leave you with rare meat.  >>>

Last weekend, our Baronial Fall Event was based on a hunting theme.  
The feast included several types of sausages as well as venison and  
some pork. This site while having wonderful items like a wooden  
timber fort and ship and a small village with wooden and stone  
bridges available to do rapier and armored combat across, and a 300  
seat replica of the Globe Theatre has no kitchen facilities.

The feast was cooked over an open fire with open grid grills and  
metal tripods. The sausages were grilled on the grill while the pork  
and the venison was grilled on rotisseries between the iron tripods.

I'm wondering if it might have been a good idea to test each sausage  
link with a meat thermometer. I know that several hanks of sausages  
had not thawed completely and were being thawed/cooked on the grill  
before the rest got cooked. They sausage train? had to be moved  
around the grill and rotated to make sure all the links cooked evenly.

At the feast the first sausage I got was rather gooey/liquidy while  
the others were okay, even close to being too dry. While it is  
possible this difference was due to differences in processing, I  
doubt it since they were made ahead of time in batches in the  
headcook's kitchen. So I suspect they were handled very similarly. So  
my suspicion is that the first link I got may not have been cooked  
sufficiently. This could have been because it was one of the sausages  
that was thawed and cooked at the same time or that getting an even  
heat to all sausages in a string was difficult or that it was  
difficult to see how well the sausages were cooking because of the  
smoke. I doubt the latter though since the sausages were cooked  
during the day, and I seem to remember the outside was browned.

 > But
 > I'm a country girl with a German background and I was cooking in New
 > Jersey. I just gave in and did it. I suffer from peculiar
 > superstitions about New Jersey foodways anyway.)

You gotta problem wid a whole, glazed, 6-pound Taylor Pork Roll with
pineapple slices?

What *is* a "Taylor Pork Roll"?  I saw something labeled as this at  
the grocery or at Sam's Warehouse recently, but since they wanted $12/ 
pound for it, I chose something cheaper. (Maybe after I get a job...)

Stefan
PS: Anyone know anything about Alpharetta, GA? I talked to a  
recruiter yesterday and today about a 9 month to year contract  
position there. It's design work I'm well qualified to do and it  
should pay well, but I know nothing of the area and the long distance  
contracting stuff has me scared of the logistics and doing it so far  
from home.
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****