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Cajun and Andouille style sausages, skewered on two sword type skewers and roasted over live fire on my Santa Maria grill, although this can be done on any charcoal or gas grill. The rows of sausages are topped with cheese and either marinara or basil pesto and more cheese. The cheese is melted into a sort of pizza with a smoked sausage crust. I used Zatarain’s smoked sausage because they sponsored this post, but they are also delicious and are sold everywhere. Scroll down for Smoked Sausage Skewers!
So Zatarain’s reached out to me. Yeah, that Zatarain’s. The folks that taught me to love red beans and rice. I would chunk up some sausage to add to mine to take it from a side dish to a full meal. Well, they informed me they wanted me to develop a fun summer grilling recipe with two of their delicious smoked sausages (Cajun and Andouille). Seems like that would’ve been a perfect fit when I started eating their red beans and rice a few decades ago.
Luckily today, the sausage is available at nationally at Kroger, Walmart and Food Lion stores. I told them about this sausage thing I do with skewers and they loved it. I was giddy because while I had prepared this dish a few times for the family, I’d never documented it here at GrillinFools.com.
Smoked Sausage Skewers Ingredients:
- Enough Zatarain’s Smoked Sausages to feed everyone (for this we did them two ways and used 14 sausages)
- 5 slices of mozzarella cheese per set of skewers
- 1/2 cup favorite sauce per set of skewers (we used both marinara and basil pesto, but not together)
- 2 tbsp fresh grated cheese (think Romano, Parmesan, Asiago, etc)
- 1 bun for every sausage
- Spray oil
Zatarain’s has launched a third smoked sausage to go with the Cajun Style and Andouille. Look for a blackened chicken sausage on store shelves soon. Any of them will work here in this recipe. We used the Andouille to demonstrate the process in this cookout.
Hooray, hooray, HOORAY GRILL!
I cooked this on my Hooray Grill which is a Santa Maria style grill. If you are looking for the ultimate backyard conversation piece that also doubles as an absolute tank of a grill, this is your grill. My great, great grand kids will be fighting over this over engineered monster, which isn’t something you can say about a lot of grills these days.
If you don’t have a Hooray any basic charcoal grill will work.
Lay down a bed of charcoal to roast the sausages over:
If all you have is a gas grill, simply turn on a couple burners on one side and leave the other side off. Place the meat over the hot side and the handles of the skewers on the cool side.
Sausage Skewers Preparation
Next up grab your sword skewers. I googled “Sword Skewers for Grilling” and bought a set that are about 2 feet long. I laid out my sausages side by side. We did seven sausages on each set of skewers. Why seven? Because we had eight for each one but the crew and I were hungry and we cooked a couple to, uh, get a feel for the flavor profile. Yeah, that’s it!
Once the sausages were laid out right next to each other I ran a skewer through the middle of each end:
Don’t forget the other side:
Scroll down to the bottom and check out the video we made of this cook that I posted to our YouTube channel and please subscribe.
By having one in each side, it makes it much easier to control the sausages and flip them when the time comes:
How to Grill Sausage Skewers
As you can see in the pic above, I have all my ingredients in place. The French call this Mise En Place. This cook doesn’t take very long because I have a HOT fire and the sausages are already smoked so I’m just warming them up and adding a nice char.
I bank the coals to one side so I don’t char the handles of my skewers and concentrate the heat right under the sausages:
Once the bottoms get charred, flip them over:
Let’s get cheesy!
Now that the top of the sausages are charred, and the bottoms are over the hot coals, add some cheese and your preferred sauce:
The cheese fills the gaps between the Zatarain’s Smoked Sausages so none of that sauce falls into the coals.
Then spoon on the sauce over the cheese:
Then sprinkle that grated cheese over the top:
Once the sausages brown on the bottom, remove the skewers from the heat:
How to toast the buns
After my skewers are on the platter and resting.
I put the grill grates back over the fire and allowed them to get hot before spraying the insides of my hot dog buns with spray oil:
Without the oil, the bread burns almost instantly. Lay the oiled buns down on the grill grates and keep checking them every 20-30 seconds or so. After they get grill marks in one direction, rotate them 90 degrees and get them the other direction to cross hatch the buns.
Yeah, that’s right! I cross hatch my buns!
And I take pictures of those cross hatched buns.
My phone is in my right hand in the above pic taking the below pic:
A little Inception action there!
Now it’s time to serve. I use the back of a long knife to cut through the cheese a bit and slide each Zatarain’s smoked sausage off the skewer:
Maybe add a little extra of the grated cheese if you so desire:
And more sauce if you wish:
This says it all:
The look on my face is me imagining that they serve these in heaven!
Smoked Sausage Skewers Summary:
It was indeed heaven! The smokiness and zip of the sausage, enveloped in the savory sauce and gooey cheese all wrapped up in that toasted bun that gave a little crunch to the snap of the sausage with every bite. Yeah, that’s heaven!
I want to thank Zatarain’s for partnering with me on this recipe so I could finally bring it to you. It’s such a versatile recipe. You can do one skewer with 4 or 6 on there for a small crew or up each set of skewers to 12 or more if you wanted.
Here are some other sausage recipes on the website.
If you have any questions about these Smoked Sausage Skewers, feel free to leave them below or send me an email.
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Smoked Sausage Skewers Recipe Card:
Smoked Sausage Skewers
Equipment
- 1 Set of sword skewers
Ingredients
- 8 sausage links Zatarain's Anduille or Cajun Style Smoked Sausage
- 5 slices mozzarella cheese
- ½ cup either marinara sauce or basil pesto
- 2 tbsp fresh grated cheese think Parmesan, Romano or Asiago
- 8 hot dog buns
- spray oil
Instructions
- Light the grill by removing the grill grates and laying down a bed of hot charcoal (or on a gas grill, light the burners and set to medium to medium high)
- Lay the smoked sausages down side by side and run a skewer through one end
- Run a skewer through the other end
- Bank the coals to one side of the grill and place the skewered sausages over that coals with the meat right on top of the heat and the handles to the skewers as far away as possible from the embers
- When the bottoms of the Zatarain's Smoked Sausages get a nice char on them, flip the skewers over
- Add the sliced cheese across the tops of the sausages and spoon the sauce over the cheese
- Sprinkle the grated cheese over the sauce
- Once the bottoms of the sausages get a char, remove the skewers from the grill and allow to rest while the buns toast
- Place the grill grates back over the coals and allow a few minutes from them to built up heat
- Spray the inside of the hot dog buns with spray oil and set them on the grill grates over the coals
- Every 30 seconds or so check the underside of the bun
- Once the bun toasts a little, rotate 90 degrees to get cross hatch buns
- When the buns are toasted, remove from the grill
- Using the back of a knife, slice each sausage away from the rest and slide down the skewers and deposit onto one of the toasted buns
- Optional - add more sauce and more grated cheese as desired
Video
More Smoked Sausage Skewers Pics
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