The latest edition of Cook’s Illustrated arrive through the letterbox this week, full as always of lots of useful tips and inspiring recipes. One of those recipes was for Sausage with Grapes  & Balsamic Vinegar, which struck me as unusual, so I’ve decided to do it for tonight’s dinner, along with some mashed sweet potato with ginger to round out the meal.

One interesting feature of the cooking method is how the sausages get fried. I’ve never managed to fry sausages properly, as you always end up with burnt bits and/or uncooked bits. I normally end up grilling/broiling, but that has similar issues. This recipe first fries off the sausages to get some nice colour, but then finishes by steaming them: add some water to the frying pan and cover to cook the sausages through. If this works, I think I’ll be cooking all sausages like this from now on!

First things first: get the sweet potatoes chopped.

Then brown off the sausages.

 

Add onion, grapes & seasoning. Oh and some bacon…

Add a couple of tablespoons of water, cover, and steam.

After checking the sausages are at least 72C (yeah… slightly over…) they come out and get tented.

The onion mix continues to cook until nicely browned, then wine, oregano and balsamic before serving.

Sweet potato gets microwaved then mashed with butter, ginger, ground coriander & cumin, plus seasoning.

 

Then it’s time to serve.

First things first: this is definitely the way to cook sausages. They might have been slightly over, but even so it’s so easy to brown then steam them — I just need to check temperature earlier.

The rest of it is really good too: lovely heat from the spicy mash, and fresh vibrant flavours from the onions & grape mix.

If you got good at this it could easily be a 30 minute weeknight meal – and it would definitely be worth it!