Five Tips for Cooking Sausages Perfectly in a Pan

Fresh sausages are delicious and easy to prepare once you know how. They are available almost everywhere and are often on sale at a grocery store near you. There are a variety of sweet and savoury flavours—bacon & cheddar, Italian, Toulouse, ham & maple, Mexican, etc.— that lend themselves to many different types of meals. They can be served as hors d’oeuvres, starters or mains, and they are just as good for lunch the next day.

To prepare sausages, you can use almost any kind of frying pan—non-stick, stainless steel or cast-iron—and the result will be more or less the same. We recommend a cast-iron pan because it distributes the heat most evenly, although it takes a little longer to warm up.

Here are our five foolproof tips for cooking sausages perfectly in a pan.

Don’t boil the sausages.

Boiling sausages before cooking them in a pan causes the aromas and flavours of the product to leak out. The sausages will become bland and you will no longer be able to taste the carefully chosen spices. The sausages don’t need to be blanched beforehand—they cook quickly in the pan.

Don’t pierce the sausages.

Use tongs or your hands to handle the sausages. Piercing the sausages with a fork or a knife creates holes, causing the flavours to leak out during the cooking process and be lost in the pan.

Don’t use grease in your pan.

You don’t need to add butter or oil to the pan before cooking. The sausage’s natural fat will be released during the cooking process, which will stop the product from sticking to the pan while preserving its flavour and giving it a pleasant golden colour.

Don’t place the sausages too close together while cooking.

It’s important to leave space between each sausage in your pan so that you can turn them over to achieve an even doneness. You want them to be nicely browned and caramelized on all sides for a better taste.

Don’t overcook the sausages.

An overcooked sausage will lose its juices and its tenderness. We recommend cooking the sausages for 10 to 15 minutes or until a meat thermometer reads an internal temperature of 60°C to 65°C (140°F to 150°F). At this temperature, the product will be tender and juicy and you will be able to taste the spices with every mouthful.

The cooking technique is shown in this video (French only) :

To summarize, when preparing sausages at home, handle them carefully before and during cooking to avoid piercing their vegetable casing and letting the flavour out. For best results, start cooking the sausages in a hot pan, without oil or butter, on medium-high heat. After one minute, lower the heat to medium and cook the product for 10 to 15 minutes, rolling it frequently in the pan. After the sausages are cooked, let them rest for around five minutes before serving—they will be juicy and full of flavour.

If you are cooking with our combo packs of two, five or six different flavours, make sure you don’t mix them up so that you can tell which is which during the meal. Or, if you prefer, you can mix them up and test your ability to recognize the different flavours by their colour, texture and taste.

Our sausages are delicious on their own, or you can add even more flavour with a sauce or dip.