Grilled Italian Sausages With Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Shallots

I'm a big fan of America's Test Kitchen. I'm a subscriber to their website and an avid consumer of their videos on YouTube. My favorite series are when they pick a product category and conduct extensive taste tests to determine which product is best. This last week, I got sucked in and had to try out one of their recommendations.

The product category was hot dogs.....something that I am not very fond of. They proclaimed "Nathan's" as the best all-beef hot dog. So I made them for dinner last night and Becky and I were underwhelmed...to say the least. Tasteless little tubes of sodium.

Hot dogs are the shape-sharing cousins of sausages. But that's where the commonality ends. Sausages are rich and complex...hot dogs not so much. If hot dogs and sausages were beverages, hot dogs would be diet grape Kool Aid and sausages would be a big bold Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley. So don't make the same mistake I did. Forego the hot dogs and grill up some sausages instead. A meal is a terrible thing to waste.


Ingredients
3 pints cherry tomatoes
4 shallots, peeled and halved
8 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons butter, thinly sliced
5 hot Italian sausage links
Crusty bread, for serving


Directions

1. Prepare your grill for direct cooking over high heat and preheat your oven to 400º.
2. Scatter the tomatoes, shallots and garlic cloves in a 9" X 13" baking dish. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Top with the butter slices, distributing them around the pan.
3. Bake for 30 minutes.
4. Grill the sausages, turning them every minute until they are well seared (about 5 minutes).
5. Remove the tomatoes and stir briefly. Transfer the sausages to the pan with the tomatoes, nestling them in slightly. Serve with crusty bread.

Wine pairing: Chianti Classico

Grogs and Goldie, 1956