The Hasselback Technique To Employ For Elevated Sausages

A sausage supper, conveniently prepared on a sheet pan, is a lifesaver for days when toiling away at the stove feels like too much of a slog. However, to elevate your humble sausage dinner to new heights, try prepping your snags in the same way as Hasselback potatoes. This simple technique, where foods are sliced almost all the way through to create an accordion-like appearance, is a baller move that requires little skill and garners delicious results.

Hasselbacking sausages, so they look much like a frozen baguette of pre-sliced garlic bread, has several scrumptious benefits. Firstly, the series of cuts running along each sausage begin to fan out when introduced to the heat of a frying pan or oven. This maximized surface area becomes invitingly crisp, giving rise to a sausage that's juicy in the center and appetizingly charred on the edges. Moreover, the sausages curl into a crescent shape as they splay open, creating a visually appealing element to your otherwise ordinary meal.

What's more, this slicing technique produces lots of precious slots for extra sauces and seasonings. Each little pocket makes the perfect reservoir for sticky glazes, allowing you to gussy up a basic sausage and transform it into a spicy little smokie. Partially sliced sausages also bake quicker because the heat from the oven can penetrate their centers with ease, which means you can cook them on top of chunks of vegetables, rice, Bulgar wheat, or even cubed potatoes because each ingredient cooks at the same rate.

To make Hasselback sausages, place your sausage on a cutting board and make a series of equally spaced cuts across its length. You're looking to cut two thirds of the way through the sausage here so the slices are still connected at the very bottom.  It should be easy to prep thicker sausages, such as Polish Kielbasa or German Bratwurst, because of their heftier girth, but it can be a fiddlier if your sausages are of the slim variety, such as a Toulouse or chipolata.

In this case it can help to place a chopstick on either side of your sausage to act as guides for your knife. The chopsticks will prevent you cutting all the way through, guaranteeing that every slice is of the same depth, resulting in a uniform appearance that gives rise to an even rate of cooking.  Once all your sausages are prepped, feel free to add extra seasonings, marinades, or glazes to your snags to boost their flavor further as they bake.

Wondering what you do with any leftovers? Slice them up into discs before tossing your chunks of sausage into New Orleans red beans or noodle casseroles.