Well, you would've thought after two days of food food food, the last thing I’d feel like is getting a little complicated in the kitchen, especially after a five course lunch! Simple intentions, nice 100% pork sausages in a roll with some sauerkraut, easy dinner. The thought of poaching sausages in beer sounded pretty good, but that would require a too much beer for a couple of dogs, beer I had plans on drinking! So then it happened, out came the zip lock bag, couple of sausages placed in there, and half a bottle of beer, now the trick is to fill up the sink with water, do up the zip lock bag except for one corner, then submerge almost to the top, forcing out the air, then seal the corner, you should have a decent air free bag of sausage and beer.
Fill a large pot with water, larger the better, as the more thermal mass you have the easier it is to maintain a constant temperature, it’s also a good idea to fill it with hot water, I know the water out of my hot tap is about 55°C, so it’s a pretty good starting point, as I want to cook the bagged sausages at 62° for an hour, with such a short cooking period and a large enough pot, you shouldn’t have to babysit too much.
The rest of it is pretty simple, slice open a couple of rolls, toast the interior with plenty of butter in a frying pan, heat up some sauerkraut with a little butter, make a bed of cheese in the rolls, brown the now cooked sausage in a hot pan with butter, and then place it in the roll, stuff one side with sauerkraut, pipe on some sour cream and mustard, and sprinkle with a little nigella seed.
It may all seem a bit too much effort for a humble hot dog, and I guess you’d be right, if like me you were only preparing one or two, but ramp up the numbers and this method will save you a lot of time and hassle, as you could prep the sausages early, have them pre-cooked and sitting in the fridge ready to pull out and finish in the pan.
