Sausages with broccoli rabe, a typical Calabrian dish with roasted sausage cooked over the coals, a classic dish of Calabrian cuisine and very easy to prepare even if you don’t have the means to make a fire. Start with cooking the rabe, they can be quickly blanched if you don’t like bitterness, but the ideal way is to cook them directly in the pan, I love cooking them like this, they have an exceptional taste, blanching them in my opinion loses the best, but as always it is a matter of taste. The sausage is strictly homemade, seasoned with plenty of ground pepper both sweet and spicy, flavored with wild fennel seeds, and then once prepared, hung up and lightly smoked. The ideal cooking of Calabrian sausage is on the coals, usually, you make a fire at home with oak wood and let it burn, at the end when there are only embers you cook the sausage, not even placing it on the grill, but skewering it on a spit, a spit made from a willow branch used for wicker. So many times in the countryside at my parents’ house, we cooked it this way, even when we were older, here at my place I don’t have willow and I consider myself lucky to be able to light the bbq, often even in winter, under the balcony canopy, sheltered even on rainy days, because with the Weber barbecue it’s a snap and it doesn’t even smoke. If you can’t light the fire, you can roast the sausage in other ways, in the oven, on the grill, or simply in a pan without adding anything.
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Economical
- Preparation time: 45 Minutes
- Portions: 2
- Cooking methods: Stovetop, Coals
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Fall, Winter
Ingredients for sausages with broccoli rabe
- 2.2 lbs broccoli rabe
- 4 Calabrian sausages
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 chili pepper
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- to taste salt
- 1 glass water
Tools
- 1 Frying Pan
- 1 Barbecue
- 1 Colander
- 1 Wooden Spoon
Steps for preparing sausage with broccoli rabe
Clean the broccoli rabe, use your hands to detach the tender tops, then also take the more tender leaves that are not yellowed, break the tender ones in half, strip the tougher ones from the stem, thus discarding the tougher stems.
Wash the broccoli rabe under plenty of running water. Let it drain in a colander.
Place in a large non-stick pan a chili pepper, a clove of garlic, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil or a little more. Then adjust the broccoli rabe inside the pan, add a pinch of salt, and add a glass of water.
Cook, with a lid. At first, leave the flame high to heat the pan well, then reduce to a minimum and cook for about 20-40 minutes, depending on how tender the broccoli rabe is. At the end, when they are tender, remove the lid and let them dry well, so they will be nice and tasty.
Meanwhile, prepare to cook the sausages. As soon as you put the broccoli rabe to cook, light the coals on the bbq, let the coals be well lit, it will take 15 minutes in the specific chimney, or bbq charcoal starter.
Pour the lit coals into the bbq, distribute them, put on the grill and let it heat well, I have the Weber bbq with a lid, so I open the vents, to let in air, close with the lid, and let everything heat for 5 minutes. Then I put the sausages to cook, a few minutes on each side, it’s always best to check the cooking hand by hand, especially if the bbq is open, here there is indeed a risk that the oil falling on the coals catches fire and thus creates flames and you need to move the sausages where the flame doesn’t reach, instead with the bbq with a lid since there is little oxygen it is difficult for flames to form.
If you don’t have the opportunity to light a bbq, or a fire for the coals, then you can also grill the sausage simply in a pan, or on a grill.
Serve the grilled sausages with the stewed broccoli rabe, if you haven’t cooked them over the coals you can also put them in the pan with the broccoli rabe for 2 minutes to flavor the rabe with sausage.
