Finger Food - Italian Sausage Skewers Recipe - The Perfect Appetizer

Tis’ the season of little food on sticks – which is not so bad, as food served on sticks tends to be very tasty.

Well, if you’ve got people coming over and are wondering what kind of party food you should be making this year, here’s your answer; Spiedini. It's the perfect party food, one that takes the deliciousness of messy sausages and transforms them through some clever impaling into an easy to eat finger food!

Actually, Spiedini is just an Italian word for a grilled meat skewer and it doesn’t necessarily have to be sausage…

Italian Sausage Skewers

• Wooden skewers
• 2 lbs of an Italian sausage that you like, hot or mild, it’s up to you.

Since you are just going to be removing sausages from their casings to make this recipe, you may want to consider just mixing up a batch of Italian sausage meat yourself, and saving a little money while doing so. Making an Italian sausage meat mixture is no harder than mixing in a few spices to some ground pork and letting the flavors steep for a few hours. Here is an easy recipe for Italian sausage, if you are so inclined.

Instructions

1. Soak the skewers in water for half an hour or so
2. Preheat your BBQ to medium
3. Remove the sausage meat from the casings and form golf ball sized meatballs. Next take 2 skewers and run them through the center of a meatball. Flatten and elongate the meatball so that it is only about an inch thick and press it so that it is firmly wrapped around the skewers.
4. Repeat with remaining skewers, you should get about 20-25 skewers out of this. Try to avoid moving the meat skewers around too much before getting them on the grill. The more you move them around the more likely they are to fall apart on you. After making them, transfer them to a platter and don’t touch them again until you’re putting them on the grill.
5. Grill for about 5 or 6 minutes per side, on until just cooked through.

If it’s just too cold for you to be out in the backyard tending the grill, these can also be baked in a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes, instead.

Serve on sticks with a bowl of marinara sauce for dipping.

Although these are an Italian finger food – you could of course substitute any fresh sausage meat for the Italian sausage called for, if desired – try Mexican chorizo sausage with salsa, for a change of pace!