Cooking meatballs and hot sausage in tomato sauce; should I broil the sausage first?

Yes. I either put mine in the skillet first or broil/grill them.

Definately fry it up first and drain the fat, meatballs too.

Cook the sausage first, that way you can drain off any excess fat before adding it to the sauce.

@Hain_roo As I said, i do that with the meatballs.

Thanks all – will do that will the sausage too!

You’re trying to get some of the fat out so should fry/broil the sausgage first without burning it. You don’t want to brown any type of meat too much since it will ruin the taste of the sauce. If you wern’t worried about fat too much usually I add bread and eggs to the meat with some mustard, ketchup and worcester sauce to create stability in the meatballs and then wait for the sauce to get very hot first, then add the meatballs. The sausage and meatballs will get done with no problem even if you add them cold to the sauce without precooking them. I usually make sauce in a crockpot though.

@janbb, so sorry! missed that part, multi-tasking over here.

Sure – no problem.

I used to do that with soups too, but lately I cook the meat with the onions, etc,, add the veggies and broth and at the end skim the fat to retain flavor.

Yes, you can boil the sausages in water and then when the water cooks out, brown them a little.

Or you could broil them.

I would say it depends on your diet. If you’re working hard to cut fats, brown the sausage and drain the fat. If you have the room in your fat consumption, don’t cook them in anything other than the sauce. That fat you drain when you brown the sausage also contains a lot of flavor. Throw the sausage in the sauce and letting it cook in that will give you awesome flavors.

I agree with Adirondackwannabe “Great Answer” :) why not cook it in the sauce retain all the flavors and skim your sauce as its cooking. I do this and find that there really isn’t that much oil on top a all. The flavor is incredible though….

@ArabianKnightress Another purist! GA. I got this tip from a little Italian guy that made the meanest Italian cuisine in his restuarant.

@Adirondackwannabe LOL I’m very much Italian myself :) That was one smart man you were talking too :)

I cook the sausage to get some of the fat out, but I take the skin off first and as it cooks, I add a little milk to make it more crumbly. It isn’t necessary to do this, but I like it distributed through the sauce, rather than in hunks.

I cook the sausage and linguica first, then add it to the rest.
I don’t drain the fat, though. A lot of the taste is in there.

So I parbroiled the sausage, left it pink in the middle, sliced it and boiled it in the sauce the rest of the way. Came out great.

@janbb Good for you lady. Now make parmesean sausage subs. ( how do you spell that)

I do, unless I am going to simmer it a long, long time. They have to be fully cooked.

I think it depends on the quality and type of sausage you are using. If it is a very fatty type then I would cook separately and drain. I am not fond of the taste of meat fat