If you mean cooking them whole, I roast Italian sausages but chunk them into quarters with quartered onions and bell peppers. Drizzle with olive oil and toss. 375 for about 30 to 40 minutes on a sheet pan. Stir halfway. If you add some chunked up potatoes to that you have a meal without having to assemble lasagna.

I also cook whole Italian sausages in a non-stick skillet on the stovetop - starting with a bit of water in the skillet about half-way up the sausages, let it simmer, turning the sausages as they cook and after the water evaporates I let the sausages brown and stick them with a fork so the fat runs out. Then I use what I need and freeze the rest.

Your method will not anyone sick, if that the result you want.....sliced cooked sausage vs crumbled browned sausage.

For lasagna, I would prefer the meat to be incorporated in the sauce vs some layered sliced turkey sausage.

Maybe call it layered sliced turkey sauce pasta instead of lasagna.

There is a lot of meat in the (homemade) sauce. I just like to add a layer of crumbled sausage. I can crumble up sausage cooked in the casing, just as well, if it's cooked correctly. Sausage doesn't have as much flavor if you cut it with a knife. Much better hand crumbled or torn.

I'm not trying to make a dish, like sausage and peppers, and if I have to tend them on the stove, I might as well open and brown them the normal way.

What I really want to do is dump them in a pan and put them in the oven or steam oven until they're done, cool and refrigerate and worry about them tomorrow.

“sausage doesn’t have as much flavor cooked in the casing”.

You reap what you sow...you eat what you cook....no assurance or encouragement from me..

I didn't say what you quoted, and I don't see that anyone else did either. I said CUT WITH A KNIFE sausage doesn't have as much flavor as crumbled, and that I would crumble it raw or cooked. No need to be snippy about a quote that was never said. Since you weren't even addressing my actual question, I really really don't understand the 'tude.

But NEVER MIND. I denuded the sausage while I was waiting for something, and I got out the pan. Later, I'll cook it my normal way, and make the lasagna tomorrow. I'm just not feeling very well and hoped someone had an idea in time for using the oven so I could do some work rather than just cooking.

Yes, it should have been “sausage doesn’t have as much flavor if you cut it with a knife”

JC: I like to take our store made brats ... and take the casing off and brown the meat, either on the stove top or in the oven. I use a potato masher to break it up ...

works well for me.

Thanks, Dave. I use a fork, but otherwise similar for the stove. What do you do when you use the oven?

The Italian sausage I buy comes either in a casing or "loose". Thank you Grazianos!!

The butcher where mine came from used to sell it loose as well. It was so convenient! But they stopped several years ago. Just now, I'm not arguing...

I don't find it terribly hard to get out of the casing, I just slit the whole length down the sausage with the tip of a sharp knife and peel it off.

Colleen, it's not hard. It's messy. With the bulk sausage, you just open the package and dump in the pan. It saves time and effort, and is less wasteful because someone had to encase all those sausages just for me to undo them. With modern packaging it isn't necessary, and the packaging materials are the same whether it's stuffed in casings or a brick of bulk, so no savings there. If I'd been able to cook them in the oven, I might have had the oomph to finish making the lasagna. ;)

Or save yourself a lot of energy if you're not feeling well and make an Italian lasagne as opposed to an American lasagne lol. They put very little in it. Much simpler. Well, the only ones I've eaten there are were made of thin layers of meat and tomato topped with bechamel and a little cheese.

But I'd still have to cook the sausage!

The Italian lasagne I've had were a ton of pasta and decoration of tiny bits of meat and sauce between sheets, very little cheese. Very tasty, but way too much pasta. The Italian-American kind I'm making is all meat and vegetables and cheeses with just enough pasta to hold it all together. I wouldn't bother for anything less. And the sauce is already defrosted. :)

I buy Italian sausages from a small mom & pop grocery that has their own butcher case and the sausages are made in-house. I have found that the sausage sold outside of the casings is coarser so I prefer to buy the sausages in their casings and take the casings off when I want ground sausage.

What do you do when you use the oven?

I use a sheet pan and cook them whole/sans casing ... and then mash it when it is done ... or put it in the FP if I want fine ground for egg rolls ... etc

Okay, I assumed the sheet pan, but how long? What temperature?

I torn up many a cooked sausage, but only tried to do the sheet pan/oven thing once and they weren't right. I get the whole YMMV thing, but I need a starting point I trust. For next time, of course. :)

So, now I can describe the point. The sausage in the sauce has lent a lot of its pow to the sauce and taken in some of the sauce's flavor. The layer of fresh sausage has a lot of punch. The flavors of lasagna meld together. The highlight of the sausage gives the focus.

Looks really good, plllog!

FWIW, I've found it less messy to remove sausage casings by first sticking them in the freezer for about 15 minutes. Then just slit and peel.