I freeze sausage all the time and have not noticed a lessening of flavour. No idea about the cooking , but sous vide then browning on the grill certainly sounds like it should work.

I get them fresh and freeze them--and I like to try a lot of various sausages.

I also get them fresh and cook them (bake, or broil, or BBQ, or boil them and then grill, etc) and freeze them. I've never used a sous vide.

Sausage freezes just fine.

Agreed. So, how to cook? The way ballparks do/did it is boil them, hold in a warmer, then grill them right before they're sold. The sous vide would work as both boil and warm. :)

I hope your purchase helps.

We freeze sausage all the time also. Bratwurst is one of my favorites but with my old brain sometimes I forget to get it out of the freezer ahead of time. What I do with it if it's still frozen is put it in a deep frying pan and cover it with water then put a lid on the pan. Once the water has boiled for at least 5 minutes I take the brats out, pour off the water, spray the pan with spray then return the brats to the pan and finish cooking them to a nice brown. So although I've never seen sous vide done I imagine it's a similar concept?

Anyway I think that's a wonderful way to support this company and I bet you will have lots of grateful friends when you get to throw your BBQ party!

We have thought to do the same with some high quality burgers from the wholesaler. They went into the freezer. Thankfully all our meats have been delivered in thick cryovac. Our local meat share came this morning all cryovaced rock solid frozen with dry ice. 3 packs of sausage. One chorizo, smoked, the others raw sausage.

Not sure we will be feeling festive for a gathering anytime soon, but proteins freezer well for easily 4-6 months without loosing quality in our freezer if packed without air, flash frozen... 9 months to a year they do start to loose some quality but not unsafe.

If they arrive cryovacked I would freeze as is and like mentioned, simmer out of package in a pasta pot or turkey roaster on the stovetop. Just to heat through, then onto the grill. If any are sausage raw style sous vide makes sense.

I have froze sausage of all kinds for years. It is just fine.

The only reason I’d try sous vide is that the dogs would marinate in their own juices (“purge” is what the cool kids call it) and then get grilled with a coating of that liquid, which I could also reduce down and spice up for a glaze . . .

I did about 30 lb of ribs for a party last year. Sous vided in gallon freezer bags with aromatics, salt, sugar, spice, all bags hanging in a cooler that I’d prefilled with hot water. if They spent 12 hours under sous vide, then when I got an “order” for ribs I just grabbed a bag and grilled for ten minutes. This worked well with my limited grill area. I might try similar with the dogs.

Hmm, will have to plan the right soundtrack. To pay homage to the Top Dog of my college days, it would be Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Talking Heads, Steely Dan, Elvis Costello, Pretenders, and the other stuff we were listening to then.

I was a Top Dog regular again in 1997-1999, when I returned to Cal for grad school. Things were different, Telegraph had been taken over by chain stores and bubble tea shops, most of the bookstores were gone, only one record shop left, maybe one head shop. The college kids, and they were kids to me, looked a lot more serious and strained. Not so much free spirited kids with sandals and philosophy books. The average kid was an Asian teen, humping a huge backpack of books like a Marine on patrol, grimly trying to maintain a “B” average against 30,000 of the smartest kids in the world. Top Dog was a little bit of the Berkeley of my youth, but I wasn’t. One night a friend and I went to Top Dog, it was about 1 am, we were both in tuxedos, someone called me “sir”, I felt old and gray :-(

freeze them individually on a sheet pan, transfer to sealable bags after frozen.

I also agree that the sausages will freeze well and be just fine. I grind my own and either freeze them bulk, in patties or stuffed into links, and then I vacuum pack them with the food saver. I've kept them as long as a year that way and they were still good, I noticed no decrease in quality. I've also frozen cooked sausages, although not as often. A local meat market had wonderful pre-cooked potato sausages that my Dad loved, so I'd stop and buy 10 pounds at a time and he'd freeze them. He was a picky man, and he never said that they were anything other than delicious. Born's Smokehouse is long gone, but remembered fondly by a lot of us.

As for cooking the dogs, a local bar used to steam them in beer, they were a big deal in my college town in the 70s.

I've mostly been writing checks for Feeding America and the local food banks and homeless shelter. I've purchased the hand sanitizer necessary for the election from the local brewery, who is now making that in lieu of distilling brandy or whatever it was they made along with their beer. I've also stocked up on Christmas gifts, buying gift cards from local restaurants. Hopefully they won't go out of business before I can give those cards away. I just bought a new printer from a local business supply store instead of Amazon and I'll have the same place print Township address labels. A local printer did the Township checks and envelopes now that the University Print Shop is closed, so I'm doing what I can to help out the small local guys and keep the local kids fed.

Have fun at your cookout, and good luck trying to eat those dogs while wearing masks, LOL.

Annie

Annie - On Tuesday we surprised my in-laws for my FIL’s birthday. We hadn’t planned to go inside, but they insisted we come in and share cake that I had baked for him. We were all handed masks to wear inside. My daughter took a forkful from her slice and... Yup, right into the mask!

OK, FOAS, that's funny, I can just see someone smearing frosting accidentally onto their mask, just from force of habit! Your poor daughter, though, she had to miss out on that anticipated bite of cake. (grin)

Annie

ice cream cone ...