Why You Should Never Prick Sausages Before Cooking Them

There's a common misconception when it comes to cooking sausages. Somewhere along the road, someone decided it would be a good idea to start poking holes in them before cooking. This advice sits among a litany of tips and tricks to improve your sausages, but beware: This particular pointer isn't your friend. Exactly what this was supposed to achieve is as much of a mystery as who invented the technique. Perhaps it was meant to stop sausages from exploding in the pan. Some say it's supposed to let fat out of the sausages as they cook — but there's nothing wrong with fat! In fact, as the old adage among cooks goes: fat means flavor.

Consider this a public service announcement: Stop pricking your sausages! It won't stop them from exploding, and it will cause them to dry out as they cook. That fat will run out of them, too, but all that'll do is leave you with a dry sausage that's lacking in both texture and flavor. Instead, leave those sausages intact for delicious, juicy insides, a taut, golden-brown outside, and that perfect snap.

Many people think pricking prevents the buildup of pressure inside sausages, which supposedly causes them to burst out of their casings. But this isn't really the case. In fact, the real reason sausages tend to burst has to do with the temperature they're cooked at. The instinct when frying sausages might be to drop them into a ripping-hot, well-oiled skillet to get them nicely browned. However, the name of the game when it comes to sausages is cooking them low and slow.

The perfect sausage is achieved at a temperature of around 150 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit. To get there, try starting your sausages in a cold pan and gradually bringing them up to temperature, adding lots of butter along the way to keep things nice and fatty. When they reach 145 to 150 degrees, pull them from the heat and let carryover cooking do its job.

For the most precise method, though, turn to the Germans. From knackwurst (which fed revelers at the very first Oktoberfest) to Berlin's iconic currywurst, the Germans have turned sausage-making into an art. For the most precisely cooked sausages, you're going to want to par-poach them before frying them off to finish in butter. That butter, mixed with the juices that naturally leave the sausages as they cook, will develop a beautiful fond on the bottom of the pan — the ideal starting point for a delicious meal of bangers and mash with onion gravy.