So, a funny (scary?) story.Jesse comes home from work for lunch most days. Today was not an exception. We had a couple italian sausages in casings leftover from a dinner I made a couple nights ago, and Jesse decided to cook them on the broil setting in our toaster oven for his lunch today. He's cooked sausages in the toaster oven before. Most recently, he didn't use the drip pan, and grease from the sausages dripped down onto the heating element and caused little tiny flames. So he learned his lesson, right? And today he used the drip pan, and also used the broil setting so only the top heating element would be on.
Good thing I was standing in the kitchen working on the kids' lunches. About 10-15 minutes into broiling, suddenly there were loud sounds of dripping grease, and flames coming OUT of the toaster oven. We opened it quickly and saw the source of the flame: A tiny hole had opened in the sausage casing, and the pressure build-up from heating the sausage was causing grease to actually spray vertically into the top heating element. Even after we removed the sausage, it continued to spray grease for at least another 30 seconds. We're talking about a spray that went from the surface of the sausage to about 3-4 inches high before it started curving back down with gravity.
CRAZY!!
So, lesson #2 learned: If you're cooking sausage in its casing in a toaster oven, you should always make a few holes in the casing to allow grease and pressure to escape during cooking. Mmmkay?
2 comments:
That is a crazy story! So is the toaster thing TRASHED? Do you have to throw it away?
Oh heavens, no! Thank goodness - we just replaced our toaster oven a couple weeks ago!
No, the flames was just the grease lighting on fire, the toaster oven itself wasn't on fire. We got it out pretty quickly, no harm done as far as we can tell! Though I'm sure it would have caused a problem if we hadn't been quick to act!
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