17 July 2007
Barbecue Sausages
In Finland, barbecuing in the summer is very popular, but it is perhaps less of an art than in many other countries. I have no doubt that the food product that gets most outing during these sessions is the barbecue sausage. For many, they would even be the only product cooked on the barbecue. When I was a child, sausages were regularly cooked on barbecues on varying sizes and shapes (the earliest one I remember was a low rectangular structure of bricks, with a grid between them) but I don’t remember us ever cooking even any other meats that way until I was well in my teens.
These sausages differ from the popular large cold sausages sold even in the smallest supermarket in that they are raw (and therefore need to be cooked) and their skin is edible. Indeed I’m sure that many would opine that the skin is the best part of the sausage; certainly, for me, biting through the crunchy skin into the steaming softness underneath signals summer very strongly. They are much larger than people in the British isles would be used to - approximately the size of a banana. Many people would enjoy theirs with cold beer or cider. The sausages come in different varieties, you can get yours plain, or flavoured with garlic, or enhanced with cheese.
I have continued the importance of marking summer days with barbecues here in Ireland, but here we have been barbecuing all sorts and shapes of meat: burgers, chicken wings and drumsticks, steak, skewers, fish, mushrooms and vegetables, even fruit. Despite all of this, my delight was unimaginable when a friend of ours turned up in our back garden last night with actual, practicing, honest to God barbecue sausages, bought in the Lidl in the city centre on his way to us. They were German, and obviously no brand I recognised, but they cooked very well and tasted very authentic. They were plain, but I intend to make a trip to a Lidl at some point soon and find out if they come in different flavours as well. The only thing missing last night was the aforementioned beer and/or cider, but to perhaps nobody’s great surprise, red wine also worked very well.