One of the hazards of running into Costco on a busy weekend when you haven’t had time to get lunch is all of the food sampling stations.
Or, mebbe that’s a benefit?
Rich and I had been out and about for a good part of the day, and one thing led to another and lunch…just…didn’t happen – and someone was feeling quite a bit more than peckish!
Enter the nice demonstrators at Costco and their very nice sampling of Bobak’s Sausages. Rich grazed a little on a bit of everything they had to offer, and once he was happily fed, he added two packages to our cart – natural casing veal hot dogs (I know, cute baby cow, but they are s-o-o-o-o-o tasty!) and these jalapeño and cheddar cheese smoked sausage thingys.
Well, they looked interesting, and had a nice long use-by date on the package, so I figured I’d stash ’em in the cheese drawer until needed.
Bingo! Another busy day, with no real chance to plan and make dinner; it was time to take these puppies out for a test drive…
So, long story a wee, tiny bit shorter, how does trying some new sausages qualify as a Parfait! recipe? Well, because I decided to treat these sausages as if they were your normal, everyday Brats, and braise them in a mixture of beer, onion, and butter!
Nice!
INGREDIENTS
•Sausages – I used a half package of the jalapeño cheddar, so five
•One or two onions, sliced
•3 tbsp butter
•1 bottle of beer
I changed this up a bit from the traditional brats and beer recipe, only using one bottle of beer to more or less braise the sausages, and then uncovering the pan part way through to allow the liquid to cook off and the sausages to brown, thus eliminating the grilling step. Still worked a treat, but then mebbe that was just the sausages…
Anywho, add your sausages, onion and butter to a good sized pan (I used a 3 quart skillet), pour the bottle of beer over all, then cover, bring to a boil, and allow to simmer for about fifteen minutes.
Remove the cover, lower the heat a bit, and continue cooking to reduce the liquid in the pan and brown the sausages a bit.
Serve the sausages and onion on lightly toasted rolls with mustard, some home made giardiniera, and I wouldn’t say no to a dab o’ the mayonnaise – OH MY! WERE THESE GOOD!
So good, in fact, that I had one lonely leftover for lunch the next day and didn’t mind it a bit. This time, though, I was out of rolls, so used a flour tortilla. I also committed Chicago heresy and added ketchup.
So sue me – it was YUMMY!