Grilled Italian Sausages with Caramelized Onions and Shallots

We vary our grilled sausage and onion sandwiches by first cooking the sausage links and vegetables in a covered pan on top of the grill to steam-cook, and then moving the links to the hot grill grate to brown. This recipe is based on an article in the current Cooks Illustrated Magazine.

We start by turning on our gas grill.

Next, we prepare the vegetables. The onion is halved, peeled, and sliced into quarter inch pieces. We repeat for the shallot. We put the onion and shallot into a microwave safe bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and cook for two minutes. Careful with the steam, we stir, add the thyme leaves and cook in the microwave for another minute. We add salt and pepper and dump into a disposable aluminum cake pan.

The sausage links are placed on top of the onions and shallot and the pan covered with foil.

The pan is cooked in the center of the hot grill, covered, for 15 minutes. This will steam-cook the links.

Then, we move the pan to one side of the grill, carefully remove the foil with tongs, and place each link on the grate. We continue to cook the sausages, uncovered, turning them as necessary, for 5 minutes. We also continue to cook the onions and shallot on the side of the grill in the cake pan until most of the liquid evaporates.

When the sausages are nicely browned and the onions and shallot caramelized, we move them to a platter.

We cut the loaf of bread into thirds and slice open. We toast the bread a few minutes with some sliced mozzarella and then top with the cooked onions, shallot, and sausage. This could have been done on the grill, but we use our toaster oven today.