Summer Sausage Medley

It’s really hard to pick favorites sometimes. When you enjoy so many things in so many different categories, someone asking what your favorite [thing] is can be a paralyzing question. Yet, I have no doubt in my mind that this first meal is by far my favorite meal of all time.

Well, during the warmer seasons. And specifically when discussing meals I make myself (versus “mom’s home cooking” or something).

I wouldn’t have eaten this 4 or 5 years ago.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t enjoy sausage, but I’d only truly sampled a tiny quantity of different sausages out there. Breakfast sausage (though only recently have I finally started eating links, having stuck to patties my whole life), italian sausage, and smoked sausage. Pre-pandemic, my wife had just started convincing me to try turkey smoked sausage in place of the usual stuff - a healthier(?) substitution in our frequent “Sausage Hash” [blog entry TBD] dinners.

So yeah, younger me would have either shied away from this entirely, or tried making it with only smoked sausage, which would be nowhere as good.

But come on, man. You like hot dogs. You like these other sausages. All sausages are just fun variants on the same idea. They’re all good. It’s worth a shot. But not those cheese-stuffed sausages. Those are gross and can stop existing any day now.

Summer Sausage Medley introduced me to new sausages that I was completely on the fence about and now adore in this meal. I’ve tried Chicken Apple Sausage, Bratwurst (after saying they were “gross” at cookouts my entire life) and some additional sausage I’ve completely forgotten about now. They each add something unique to the medley, like the individual instruments of an orchestra, all forming a beautiful symphony in my mouth. I typically like a lot of my meals to have a “same-y” taste - such as my meat-and-cheese-only sub sandwiches, but the variety of sausage flavors and the mixed textures and sensations of the peppers and potatoes with it… mmm, good things happen in my mouth.

I like to make Velveeta Shells & Cheese with this meal (2025 update: Homemade mac and cheese now). Any macaroni would probably do, but the denser texture (and something about the cheese sauce) of the Velveeta shells specifically pairs really nicely with this meal, and cross-contamination of the flavors of the meats and peppers or the cheese from the macaroni only adds to the experience, rather than distracting from it.

This blog is all about convincing my younger self to try new things through the lessons I’ve learned cooking for myself - and hopefully helping others who reached adulthood with the limited palate of a toddler along the way. This is one of the best meals to come from that process.

After spending way too much money on a new grill in 2021, I spent the summer looking for new meal ideas to get the most out of my investment, and came across a recipe similar to this. It turned out amazing and I’ve devoted many cooking sessions to refining what is now my favorite meal. Onto the informal recipe.

How to make Summer Sausage Medley meal

I’ll be dividing this recipe into 3 stages: Prep, Grill, Finish. You don’t necessarily have to do everything in each of these stages linearly, as things will not finish at the same time, and if you’re grilling it’s easier to cook the pasta as the potatoes are finishing up and everything is cooling. This is a relatively easy meal, but you are juggling 4 different things to cook.

Ingredients:

• 3 Bell Peppers, mixed colors
• 4-5 small russet potatoes or
  • 6-8 Yukon gold potatoes
• 1 box of Velveeta Shells & Cheese
• 3-4 packages of various sausages
  • Smoked Sausage
  • Turkey Smoked Sausage
  • Italian Sausage (hot or mild or both)
  • Bratwurst
  • Chicken Apple Sausage
  • Kielbasa? (haven’t tried)
• Seasoning
  • Table salt
  • Big/coarse kosher salt
  • Garlic salt
  • Black pepper
  • Smoked Paprika
  • Chili Powder
• Olive Oil
• Butter of choice

Cookware Used:

• Stovetop
  • Medium ~8 cup pot for shells & cheese on stove
  • Large pot for potatoes on stove
  • Stirring spoon
• Grill
  • Grill basket for veggies (I use a cast iron basket pan)
  • Grill tongs & spatula or spoon
• Bowl for veggies
• Trays for meat and veggies (both before and after grilling, separate trays)
• Oil brush (silicone is best)

Total Time: 45-50 minutes

Prep

Wash potatoes and cover with water in a big pot for parboiling. This recipe is best with 5-8 Yukon Gold potatoes (the yellow ones), but we usually only have Russet potatoes, so I use 4-5 small to medium Russet potatoes from one of those 10-pound bags.

Put the pot on the stove and parboil for 8 minutes (10 minutes if using bigger Russet potatoes). Parboil timer starts after water begins boiling. (Usually takes 3-4 minutes for water to get there on max heat, then turned down once boiling begins. I’m cooking on an induction stovetop these days, so your boil time may vary.)

While the potatoes are going, prep your veggies and meat.

Rinse and cut the peppers. I usually do bigger chunks here, compared to thinner slices I might do for something like fajitas. The whole point of this medley is to have a variety of tastes and sensations that play well together, so I usually like to have 3 different peppers here: Green, Red and Yellow. I typically don’t use yellow peppers for much, but they add to the variety in a good way. If picking sizes, I’d definitely make the yellow pepper the smallest of the bunch, however.

Spread out your pepper cuts in a single layer on a tray or sheet pan. Brush the peppers with olive oil (I really like using a silicon brush for this these days, it just cleans so much easier) and sprinkle with table salt and black pepper. I also like sprinkling a garlic seasoning mix I recently picked up on these - but go light on that.

Open your sausages and spread on a single layer on a tray or sheet pan (I usually use half of each package of sausage per meal, storing the rest together in the freezer for a future meal). Brush with olive oil and sprinkle black pepper, and any other seasoning you might like.

Once your potatoes are done parboiling, turn off the heat and scoop them out with a slotted spoon or spider, and briefly rinse in a bowl of cold water, and set aside to cool. Allow them to cool for about 10 minutes.

While this is happening, go ahead and preheat your grill. You want half (or a third, depending on your burner layout) set to medium-high for the potatoes, and the other half set to medium for the veggies and sausage.

If you’re using a grill basket, go on and oil it and let it preheat with the grill. I have a cast iron grill basket I use for this. Preheat for 10 to 15 minutes.

After the potatoes have cooled for 10 minutes, carefully poke holes in them with a fork (not necessary, but helps cook quicker and allows the flavor to seep inside better).

Then brush the potatoes with olive oil and season.

At minimum, you want to rub the potatoes with some coarse salt, such as Kosher salt. I also now like coating them in some smoked paprika, chili powder, black pepper, and garlic seasoning.

½ teaspoon smoked paprika, ½ teaspoon chili powder, ⅔ teaspoon garlic powder, sprinkle black pepper for the whole bunch of potatoes.

If you poked holes in them, allow the oil and seasoning to really get into the holes.

Grill

Once your grill is preheated, place the potatoes on the hotter side. These will take substantially more time (double in my case, usually) than the other ingredients to cook, so either start them early or be prepared to wait on them longer. I actually like starting them at the same time, as I can then cook the macaroni while I wait on the potatoes to finish up, without feeling the need to constantly run back and forth.

The potatoes will need to cook about 15 to 20 minutes with the grill closed, rotating occasionally. The skin will become a nice, charred crunchy boi and a knife should easily pierce through once they’re ready.

Place the sausages directly on the grill grates or on the upper “hot dog shelf”, if you have one. These cook for 8-10 minutes, flipping halfway through. If you use the lower grates (or your grill basket) be prepared for them to be done and ready to pop closer to 8 minutes.

Put your cut peppers in the grill basket. For both the sausage and peppers, I like to shake off any leftover oil or seasoning onto the food once it’s on the grill before taking the trays to the sink. Peppers will cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. How long you cook them is up to taste.

Finish

As the sausage finishes cooking, begin boiling 6 cups of water for your macaroni. Again, I prefer Velveeta Shells & Cheese with this particular meal to “complete it,” but any macaroni probably works.

Pull the sausage off the grill once it’s marked on both sides and starting to pop out of its skin and place onto a tray to cool.

Once the water is boiling, add your macaroni noodles and a pinch of salt, stir, and cook 7-8 minutes until tender.

The peppers will probably be done just before the noodles, scoop those out into a bowl or onto a tray.

Once the noodles are done, drain and mix in the cheese sauce.

By this point, your potatoes should be crisp and ready to pull. Remove from grill and allow to cool for a few minutes.

Remember to let your grill basket cool with the grill, especially if it’s cast iron.

Once your potatoes are cool enough you can bare to touch them for a moment, cut in half (or thirds) and mix with peppers, allow the juices to mix and sit together. If you didn’t poke holes, or find them looking a little too white and plain, consider applying some tub butter to the ends and letting it sit and melt for a tiny bit more flavor. Perhaps sprinkle on a little more salt.

Let everything sit and cool for a few minutes, then serve.

Some suggest serving these with BBQ sauce, I’m also considering whether some sort of bread might go with this to help absorb some of the grease. But as-is, this is a near-perfect spring/summer/fall meal, and I’m elated that it’s finally warm enough I can start making it again.