Farmer H, The Insinuating Incinerator

I bought some bratwursts at Save A Lot on Friday. They make them in-house. They're big and fat and way more tasty than the Johnsonville brand that usually comes frozen and is then thawed out and put in the refrigerator case. I wanted the plain sausages, but I only saw the cheddar and the jalapeno variety. We don't like them. The other packs looked like plain, but said they were APPLE. That sounded appealing. So I got two packs, yielding 10 sausages. 

With it being the middle of winter, even though temps hit 60 degrees a couple days ago... I planned to cook the sausages in the oven. Farmer H got home later than usual. He said he might go cook them on GassyG Jr. Since it was 49 and getting dark (we DO have lights on the porch), and the wind was blowing about 15 mph, I told him no, that I would use the oven. He agreed way too easily!

The problem with cooking sausages in the oven is that I'm never quite sure when they're done. I let them cook until they get a little brown on the outside, like on the grill. But when I take them out of the oven and let them sit a few minutes, they get all crinkly and shrink. Like all the moisture has leaked out of them. Yet when I take them out just as they start to get brown, we find them not done in the middle.

Better to err on the underdone side, I think. You can always microwave, but you can't reinject them with juices. These sausages were in two glass 11 x 13 baking dishes. Plenty of room between them. They cooked for 1 hour!!! At 350 degrees. I kept checking them every 10 minutes after the first half hour. Surely that was long enough to cook them. Yet when Farmer H took the first bite, he said they were still not done! So he microwaved his, and they were fine. I put them back in for another 20 minutes. Mine were done at that point.

Anyhoo... I asked Farmer H,

"Do you think that wasn't hot enough? What temperature do you think I should cook them?"

"Well, I'd say you should have cooked them hotter. Maybe 650. I imagine that's how hot the grill gets."

"WHAT? My oven does NOT go to 650 degrees! It might go to 500 on the self-cleaning cycle, but I don't think that's for cooking!"

Heh, heh. I can't believe Farmer H thinks I should cook something at 650 degrees! Though I do admit that when he grills the sausages, they turn out simply divine.