Cooking Italian sausage in the oven

If you’ve ever been to Jasper’s in Kansas City and had one of their grilled Italian sausage sandwiches, you may be asking yourself why anyone would want to cook Italian sausages in the oven. While there is something to flame kissing an Italian sausage, I kind of prefer cooking Italian sausages in the oven. For my money, cooking Italian sausages in the oven is faster, there’s less clean up than cooking Italian sausages on the grill, and they still taste delicious.
Of course, like with most things, there’s an art to cooking Italian sausage in the oven and a method that will get you better results every time. Of course, that method takes longer than just cooking the Italian sausages in the oven, so we’ll talk both methods.

Cooking Italian sausages in the oven

You will need:

• 8 Italian sausages
• Enough vegetable oil to cover the bottom of baking dish
• Salt and pepper to taste

Italian sausage method #1: Quick and tasty

1. Preheat your oven to 350.
2. Grease the bottom of a baking dish with the vegetable oil and arrange the sausages so that they don’t touch.
3. Use a sharp knife to cut small holes in the top only of the sausage.
4. Sprinkle with salt and liberally coat with black pepper
5. Bake until the sausage is cooked all the way through, about 12-15 minutes.

Note: In case you are wondering, normally you would want to pair Italian (olive) oil with Italian sausages, but I prefer vegetable oil in this case because it won’t burn.

Italian sausage method #2: More steps, but tasty

1. Preheat your oven to 450.
2. Grease the baking dish with a thin layer of vegetable oil.
3. Put the baking dish into the oven and let it get very hot for 10 minutes.
4. While the baking dish is charging, use a sharp knife to cut small holes in the top only of the sausages.
5. Sprinkle both sides with salt and liberally cover with black pepper.
6. After ten minutes, use an oven mitt or hot pan holder to open the oven and pull out the dish.
7. Arrange the Italian sausages cut side down and cook for one minute. This should give you similar browning to a grill.
8. Flip the sausages and reduce the heat to 350.
9. Cook for 12 minutes or until done all the way through.

Slap on a bun, toss into a sauce or eat as is. Whatever you do, enjoy!