Sausages, a staple in many popular British dishes, are typically cooked using a frying pan and some oil, and while the standard cooking method will give you delicious results, there is a much easier way to cook the meat that is quick, easy, and doesn’t require you to constantly turn them over.
Christine Pittman, founder of Cook the Story food blog, says that this hand-free method is not only essentially fool-proof, but it will also give you sausages that “turn brown and crispy on the outside, and juicy in the middle”. All you need to use is one appliance – an air fryer.
The recipe developer said that sausages are her favourite thing to cook in the air fryer, as they “turn out well-browned on the outside, juicy inside, and the fat drains away so the sausages don’t cook in it.”
Air fryers are great for cooking any type of sausage, including thin breakfast ones, thicker Italian ones, and already cooked sausages, to give them a little crisp.
Not only that, but you can keep the same temperature for all the sausages. Mr Pittman shared that she likes to “crank [the] air fryer all the way up to 400F when cooking sausages”, equivalent to around 200C.
She added: “That makes sure that they get a nice crispy brown crust on the outside. It also means that they won’t be in there as long, so they’re less likely to dry out.”
While the temperature remains the same, regardless of the type of sausage, the cooking time varies according to the sausage’s size.
Thinner sausages will typically require between eight and 10 minutes in the air fryer to be fully cooked and crispy on the outside. Thicker sausages will need extra time and can be cooked between nine and 12 minutes.
Ms Pittman also recommends poking the sausages before cooking them as it “helps prevent the sausages from bursting”, and “to let some fat drain out.”
She added: “It still adds flavour as it cooks, but the end result is less greasy.”
Sausages are fully-cooked when they are no longer pink in the middle, and so it is always best to cut one before serving to ensure that it is safe to eat.
