Happy Memorial Day
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Advanced Grilling Tips — From Fritz

Follow these easy tips to become the Grilling Guru of your neighborhood this summer.

When preparing sausages on the grill follow these steps to earn expert status and avoid incinerating your sausage links.

The links you will be grilling should come from the refrigerator, not rock hard directly from the freezer. All sausage should be thawed in the refrigerator prior to use.

The grill. Gas or coals, the plan is the same.  Low and slow to avoid temperature shock to the links because they will split and lots of the flavorful juices from inside the sausage will be lost. Use the grill cover to keep in the heat during the beginning.

For a gas grill, warm it up on high, then just before placing the links on the grill turn the heat to low. Start the sausages on low and every few minutes turn the links and increase the heat just a little bit. Follow this sequence for about 10 minutes. Then the next 5 minutes is where the real cooking begins and you need to baby that sausage. Bring the heat up to high, you want to brown the link and “crisp up” the outside casing and cook the link to the center.

Charcoal grill. The coals need to be completely white, then you can start. Spread the coals out. Start the links on the outer perimeter where there is less heat. Turn the links often and gradually move them to the center of the grill. Follow this sequence for about 10 minutes. The center of the grill should be the hottest and this is where “crisp up” happens during the next five minutes until the sausages are cooked through.

Once the links are well browned, you hear them hissing and sizzling they are ready to enjoy.

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Dog Daze

Longing for the “Hot Dog” daze of Summer?

 

Around here we love our brats, but there really is nothing better hot off the grill than a natural casing wiener or frank garnished with garden fresh tomato dices all packed into a fresh warm roll. Yum!

Call them what you want franks, hot dogs or wieners they’re all cousins.  We make lots of them at Usinger’s in all beef or pork and beef varieties.  Both are smoky with lots of spices working together and the all beef has a hint of fresh garlic added.  What you won’t find is MSG, Gluten, fillers or milk powder in our “dogs”.

My favorite is the curved link of a natural casing wiener that “pop” when you bite into them. The casing provides a firm bite and holds all the flavorful juices and spices inside the link during cooking.  Try to avoid splitting them while grilling, usually this is done by cooking slower over a lower heat.

If you prefer a softer bite on your hot dog, we also make them without the casing. These are called “skinless”. They are made with the same recipe; we just peel the casings off before they go in the package.  Skinless wieners are very popular with kids, so if you’re grilling out for some youngsters they make a great choice.  Look for the links that are straight without a curve.

Fritz

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February Festivities

We all know about Valentines Day and Presidents Day, but there’s another Day in February that you can really sink your teeth into… Fred Usinger Day.

In a special presentation in 2005, Mayor Tom Barrett proclaimed February 23rd as Fred Usinger Day throughout the City of Milwaukee.

This special proclamation recognized Usinger’s as a locally family owned and operated business for four generations spanning over 125 years. “The City of Milwaukee salutes Fred Usinger, Inc. for it’s long standing good corporate citizenship and commitment to the betterment of Metropolitan Milwaukee and Southeast Wisconsin area”.

To commemorate this event, our friends and the Old German Beer Hall will be offering a free Usinger brat to patrons beginning at 11am until 8pm.  I will also be on hand at OGBH to tap a keg at 2pm and there will be free beer until the keg runs out.

Take a break from our cold and snowy winter for a hot juicy Usinger brat and your favorite libation as we celebrate sausage.

It’s my favorite thing about February, hope you can join us for the party!

We’ll also be featuring several sausage specials at our retail store to honor this event.  Watch the Usinger website or Facebook for more details.

Thanks,

Fritz

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Can’t Wait for Spring

Let me start by saying thanks to all of our loyal customers for another great year at Usinger’s Sausage.  I hope your holiday season was a happy one and I hope you received everything you wanted.  You did all want sausage didn’t you?  Just kidding.  We have finished our website remodel
which many of you probably noticed during the holidays, and hope it worked well for you.  We are planning on doing more internet oriented promotions in the coming year and I invite you to sign up for the Usinger newsletter so you don’t miss any of them.  We’ll have a valuable coupon offer showing up there soon.  Scroll down to the bottom of our homepage to “Subscribe here” and click, or just click this link: Usinger newsletter.  If you’re getting tired of Winter already, try some of our Sausage Chili.  Just put it in a pan, heat and eat.  It’s that simple and it’s really good…just enough kick to warm you up without setting your tongue ablaze.  Hang in there, Spring Training starts next month and grilling season isn’t far behind.