Cooking your Links

[JerBear]

So yesterday was my first day selling directly to the public and I had a small issue and was hoping for some suggestions/feedback. A little background is that I'm selling my sausages at local brewery tasting rooms ready to eat in buns with toppings and in order to save time between order and delivery I pre-poached and chilled the sausages and they were held on ice.

So the problem began when I got an order.... I was using a griddle on a camp-stove and had more than sufficient heat available, and while the sausages were already fully cooked and only needed to be reheated I still wanted to hit my 165ºF internal temp and it was taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r (actually about 15 min give or take...but still felt like it was too long).

Attempted solution - I put a water bath on an extra burner and put two of each flavor on to pre-heat. The good part is that the sausages were coming out of the water bath perfectly hot. The bad part, the casings had seemed to soak up water like a sponge making the casing overly soft and chewy and not so much pleasent to eat and the griddle just didn't make enough of the sausage crisp up (two sides were crisp but curved link was impossible to crisp on the other two sides).

Potential solution 2 (not yet attempted) - prick additional holes in the casing to allow exess liquid to escape, however, I'm concerned about drying out the sausage.

Potential solution 2 (also not yet attempted) - use a grill with the waterbath for more overall heating of the sausage rather than direct heat from the griddle.

Thoghts?!! ... or is this a post better for the main area of the forum...

[quietwatersfarm]

we do this also (the pre-poaching bit) for markets and events etc.

We just put them on a fairly low heat in cheap large electric skillets and brown them off. Always works fine.

My only suggestion is put plenty on earlier!! as they will sit in the skillets without drying out or burning for ages

[JerBear]

I can't go too low on my heat lest my burners blow out (Was a constant problem yesterday). I'm thinking about a hot side and cool side.... that might more closely match your electric skillets (I'm running on propane)...

I was also thinking of switching out the griddle for a grill base...