There’s no doubt about it, summer took a long time to get here. Officially it’s still Spring, I know, but when you’ve had 8 months of winter you just want to say summer over and over again. So I say welcome summer, it’s been awhile, we hope you stay until December.
Grilling through the winter months is fairly easy for us – unless we hit -20 and our barbecue refuses to cooperate. When warmer weather hits barbecuing is almost a daily event. Sausage is always a reliable guest when you decide to grill so for this recipe we opted to grill our sausage about 75% of the way through. Remove it from the grill, place onto a plate and cover with aluminum foil to cool down. After all the other prep work is done it’s time to skewer and grill.
Any kind of sausage will do and of course pick your favourite vegetables or go out of your comfort zone and try something new. The kids admittedly were not thrilled with the ribbon zucchini, however the adults loved it as it retained some of its crunch. I told the kids there would be more zucchini in their life so they should probably suck it up. You can imagine how they responded of course since they are tweens.
You won’t believe how easy this is. Let’s get started.
- 5 uncooked sausage links
- 2 small zucchini
- 1 small red onion, peeled
- 1 tbsp za'atar spice
- Olive oil
- white wine vinegar
- salt and pepper
- skewers
- Soak eight wooden skewers in water for 15-30 minutes.
- Preheat your grill to medium high.
- Cut ends off zucchini. Using a vegetable peeler carefully slice lengthwise until you have several zucchini ribbons. Lay onto paper towel lined baking sheet and salt each piece well. Set aside letting them sit for at least 30 - 60m minutes turning occasionally. Wipe off excess water and salt.
- Brush grill with olive oil, and then grill the sausages until partially cooked, about 7 minutes, rotating while cooking. Remove from heat, tent and set aside to cool.
- Slice onion in half lengthwise and into four wedges. Cut the wedges in half crosswise if the onion is large and into smaller chunks roughly the same size as the other pieces going onto your skewer.
- Slice the cooled sausage into chunks about the same size as some of our skewered vegetables for even cooking.
- Meanwhile whisk together olive oil, white wine vinegar, za'atar spice and a good pinch of salt and pepper.
- Alternate sausage with zucchini and onion on your skewers. Brush with your olive oil mixture and grill, turning every couple of minutes. Do this for another 7-10 minutes, brushing with olive oil until all used, to ensure your sausages are cooked through.
- Remove from grill and serve.
