Hot Sausage Dinner

The nice thing about getting off of work early is that I have plenty of time to go to the grocery store and make dinner. Sometimes, that means planning an elaborate dinner, three courses or some such, going to the store to get the fixings, and going at it. This time, it meant going to the store and seeing what looked good and/or was on sale.

It so happened that they had really good looking hot Italian sausage. It was a nice day, so I figured I could grill it, have a nice meal outdoors, and enjoy the bottle of Brewer's Art Green Peppercorn Trippel I had picked up. But I wanted a meal a bit more complicated than just sausage on a bun. Preferably involving vegetables. I grabbed some jalapeño for spice and some onion. I wanted something green, so I grabbed some cabbage. I thought maybe I could make some sauerkraut, but that was too complicated, long, and involved ingredients I didn't have. Or at least two of the three, depending on the recipe. So I made German coleslaw.

After starting up the grill, I put the sausage on the grill to cook a little while I cut up the onion and jalapeño. I sliced each in half and brushed some olive oil on the end. I set the onion on the grill, flipped the sausage, and a bit later, set the pepper on the grill. I wasn't going to, but looking at the way the jalapeño was cooking, I flipped them over before I took them off. Everything cooked up fine, but I wish I had sliced the onion before cooking, rather than cutting in half. The caramelized bits were great, but the caramelization didn't penetrate very far.

Once everything was cooked, I piled it on toasted buns. Sausage, coleslaw, jalapeño, mustard, and onion on a bun. It wasn't bad. Stone-ground mustard would have been better, but I only had Dijon. I had the aforementioned problem with the onions. The jalapeños were great though, and the coleslaw gave the contraption a really satisfying crunch.