Another Culinary Gala

I had another stroke of genius today as the afternoon wore on: why don’t I smoke some more brats?  Loved the way they came out before.  But this time, instead of smoking just one package of them, how ’bout I make ’em for dinner, and we’ll have a lot of ’em left for me to take for lunch?

Sounds reasonable enough, right?

Well … not everything is as it seems.

See, the problem is, last time, I was smoking one package of sausages.  That’s five total.  Today, we bought 3 packages of beer brats, one package of regular brats, and one package of hot-n-spicy Italian sausage.  That’s 26 sausages all together, because the store-brand Italian sausages were packed in a set of six.

So I happily set off to the patio with my “equipment” in hand, and cleaned the grill — which always takes longer than I expect it to — and then I started the briquettes.  Not brain surgery, so up to this point it was fine.

Now, the mistake came into play when I thought that, since I knew how long they needed to smoke and cook the last time, this time would be similar.  Sure there were more of them, but it’s about temperature and time, not quantity being cooked, right?

Wrong.

They turned out nice.  Crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside, with that beautiful pink smoke ring again.  But you know what?  It’s twenty minutes to eight, and I started cooking at 4:30 this afternoon.

And I still have the last ones out there, hoping they’ll finish cooking on the still-hot-but-dying embers in the smoker box.

-JDT-