I love sausages and grilling them has to be
one of the best ways to cook them but so often I've been to a barbecue
party and found and absolute culinary disaster verging on a health risk
Let's get one thing straight before we go any further and that is
just because you're having a barbecue, it doesn't mean you have to
serve poor quality sausages. So many times I've heard friends say “I've
bought cheap sausages because we're only going to burn them anyway”.
Don't accept the inevitability of it, if you buy poor quality, they
will be full of fat which will spit and cause flare ups ending up with
a burnt offering. There is an alternative way.
Accept the challenge, it is possible to cook a good tasty sausage on
a barbecue grill and to make it easy for yourself you must start with a
good quality sausage. For sure one of the fundamentals of any sausage
is fat and the cooking process is effectively boiling the contents in
the fat so there's always going to be some spitting of fat but your
task is to manage this.
What makes a well cooked sausage? For me it's:-
A crispy texture to the skin
Light caramelization to sweeten the meat flavor
Succulent moist meat inside
One cooking method I have heard of is to pre-cook the sausage in
water first to help disperse the fat so there's less fat to spit (and
so burn the sausage) when grilling but I don't like this because it
means less time on the grill to get the crispy caramelized skin that
adds so much of the flavor. Maybe if you are a novice it's worth having
a pop but here's my guide to how to cook the best sausage.
If using charcoal, be patient. You need grey / white coals that have
well bedded down. If there's any sign of black on the charcoal you'll
be susceptible to flare ups. If you're cooking a number of things, put
the sausages on last when everything is starting to die down. If you've
got a gas grill then sausages should be cooked on low, in fact a low
light under the searing plate is an excellent way.
Don't prick the sausage. The whole idea is for the meat to cook in
the fat and if you prick the sausage the fat simply runs out and the
meat dries up – not to mention the fact that you're inviting the fat
onto the fire and encouraging further opportunity for flare ups and
burnt offerings.
Cook the sausages as individual units, this makes them easier to
handle and you can be sure that they cook on all sides. It may seem
easier to use a basket so that you can turn more sausages at one time
but I prefer not to because you only get to cook the sausage “top and
bottom” and I think that you miss the opportunity to crisp up the skin
all over and it's also easier to serve a sausage that appears well done
on the surface yet is undercooked inside.
To avoid an undercooked sausage you can of course use a temperature
probe, generally you're looking for an internal temperature of 165°F to
consider the sausage cooked.
Don't continually turn the sausages. Give them change to cook, take
on color and caramelize on each side. Despite a sausage being round in
cross section I typically look on a sausage as having four sides and
cook accordingly. It is however sometimes difficult to cook on “all
four” sides because your sausage is particularly bent. The best way to
straighten a sausage is to use heat so place the sausage on the grill
with the exterior curve directly over the heat first, the skin and meat
on this side of the sausage will contract and it will straighten out.
I heard one gentleman talking about frying a sausage and
recommending you place the sausage in the pan on a very low heat and
cook slowly for two hours. Whilst I'm not recommending this length of
time for the grill I hope it emphasizes the point that low and slow is
the way to go.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
The "Best Of" Lists For Prep Sports
You can’t turn around without some “Best Of”
list popping up somewhere. It’s getting a little extreme. Do we really
need a “Best of Chicken Tricks” list to go by? What exactly are
chickens good at anyway. We aim to be different with “Best Of” in the
world of Prep Sports because this material is all yours and some of you
are really funny.
Originally, it was meant to be irreverent…we were partially making fun of the best of lists. The problem is that some of you have some serious talent for nonsense. So we started compiling our favorites in house…just funny things we came across. When you get an email on technical issues from someone and you stop in your tracks at their screen name, that’s saying something. We started jotting down funny screen names. The list kept growing in our office, more for our amusement, with new nonsense every day. Then, as with the birth of most good ideas, some of the crazies in the office started thinking…we should create a best of screen names or funniest screen names list from the Prep Sport community and eventually let people vote on it. Maybe the vote should be school wide, league wide or system wide. Hey, why set limits on what people can vote on. Why not let them see who ranks best in all three settings. That’s what we started to build and the results should be out soon. What categories are we looking at?
Some were just for fun such as funniest screen names. Why stop there? With time, we knew some of the nuts in our community would start to get some really cool video footage. There’s nothing we like to see better than a bone rattling basketball block and if bounces off the shooter’s head from the block…well that bonus time, right? How about a Best of Blocks list. Of course dunks has to be up there and farthest 3 point shots is just behind that.
What about prep football “Best of” lists. Where do we start! You have to lead with the sweet catches…those one handed, out-stretch grabs that defy physics. What about the 98 yard runs with multiple tackles failing to stop forward progress. Those are always fun to watch but football has one thing the other sports don’t. Hits. When you have hit up the middle where the whole crowd sounds they just smelled 10 day old tuna, that’s football. There definitely needs to be a best of hits lists. It’s going to hurt just watching it but somehow, we’ll all manage.
Baseball definitely has it share of highlights. You’ve got the home runs where the ball just kinda disappears. There’s the best of pitches with all the voodoo inspired fast, knuckle, curve balls out there. He did what with that ball? Let’s be honest though, a lot of baseball’s highlights for a “Best of” section would be defense. The one-handed grabs. The triple-plays. The rifle to home base. He’s OUT! That’s a list worth watching.
We’re building out or current list of “Best of” pages. You’ll have a chance to vote soon but just checking out someone’s video’s footage is a vote in itself. We’re sure our freaky Prep Sport community members will come up with their own “Best of” lists. Hey, we may even need a “Best of” for “Best of” lists. Where will it ever end?
Originally, it was meant to be irreverent…we were partially making fun of the best of lists. The problem is that some of you have some serious talent for nonsense. So we started compiling our favorites in house…just funny things we came across. When you get an email on technical issues from someone and you stop in your tracks at their screen name, that’s saying something. We started jotting down funny screen names. The list kept growing in our office, more for our amusement, with new nonsense every day. Then, as with the birth of most good ideas, some of the crazies in the office started thinking…we should create a best of screen names or funniest screen names list from the Prep Sport community and eventually let people vote on it. Maybe the vote should be school wide, league wide or system wide. Hey, why set limits on what people can vote on. Why not let them see who ranks best in all three settings. That’s what we started to build and the results should be out soon. What categories are we looking at?
Some were just for fun such as funniest screen names. Why stop there? With time, we knew some of the nuts in our community would start to get some really cool video footage. There’s nothing we like to see better than a bone rattling basketball block and if bounces off the shooter’s head from the block…well that bonus time, right? How about a Best of Blocks list. Of course dunks has to be up there and farthest 3 point shots is just behind that.
What about prep football “Best of” lists. Where do we start! You have to lead with the sweet catches…those one handed, out-stretch grabs that defy physics. What about the 98 yard runs with multiple tackles failing to stop forward progress. Those are always fun to watch but football has one thing the other sports don’t. Hits. When you have hit up the middle where the whole crowd sounds they just smelled 10 day old tuna, that’s football. There definitely needs to be a best of hits lists. It’s going to hurt just watching it but somehow, we’ll all manage.
Baseball definitely has it share of highlights. You’ve got the home runs where the ball just kinda disappears. There’s the best of pitches with all the voodoo inspired fast, knuckle, curve balls out there. He did what with that ball? Let’s be honest though, a lot of baseball’s highlights for a “Best of” section would be defense. The one-handed grabs. The triple-plays. The rifle to home base. He’s OUT! That’s a list worth watching.
We’re building out or current list of “Best of” pages. You’ll have a chance to vote soon but just checking out someone’s video’s footage is a vote in itself. We’re sure our freaky Prep Sport community members will come up with their own “Best of” lists. Hey, we may even need a “Best of” for “Best of” lists. Where will it ever end?
Monday, March 5, 2012
Girl Dressup 4
Help this young little girl dress up like a real lady. Enjoy!
Games controls:
Mouse - To interact.
ZooKeeper
Same as Bejeweled. But this time you use animal faces instead.
Games controls:
The goal is to make lines, horizontally or vertically, of three or more matching gems. Swap two adjacent pieces, and if you make a line of three or more pieces, it will disappear and new pieces will fall onto the board. The more matches you make, the higher your score.
Mini-game Kaboom
Sink the 5 pirate ships you see off on the horizon. You only have 9 canon balls that you can fire.
Games controls:
Left/Right Arrow keys- to move left or right.
Up/Down Arrow keys- To adjust the angle of the canon.
Space-bar- To fire.
3D Curveball
3D Version of Pong! Try and make the ball hit the middle center and you can curve the ball!
Games controls:
Mouse - To interact.
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