Polish-Style Posh Dog Sausage Skewers

These are my Polish-style Posh Dog sausage kebabs. My preferred sausages are M&S Posh Dogs. I cook them first, line several up side by side, and push cocktail sticks through their long sides, right across the group. Then I bury the lot in melted cheese, onion and harissa ketchup and cut across the sausages between the sticks. What I’m left with is a row of little, cheesy, tomatoey sausage kebabs, each stick holding pieces from several sausages. It’s messy, slightly ridiculous, and absolutely worth doing.

The order is cook → line them up → skewer across several sausages → cheese, onion and harissa ketchup → cut crosswise into kebabs. I don’t split the sausages lengthways or thread an individual sausage down its centre. The cocktail sticks hold multiple sausage pieces together, rather like a tiny sausage kebab.

Serves: 4 as a sharing snack, depending on how many sausages I do · Prep: about 10–15 minutes · Cook: according to the sausage pack, plus a brief finish to melt the cheese. The suggested amounts below are practical repeat estimates; I didn’t weigh the toppings on the original cook.

Ingredients

• 4 M&S Posh Dogs, my preferred sausages for this, or enough to feed the table
• 100–150g cheese, grated or sliced so it melts nicely over the hot sausages (working quantity)
• 1 onion, finely chopped or thinly sliced (working quantity)
• 3–4 tbsp harissa ketchup, or enough to give each sausage a generous coating (working quantity)
• 12–20 wooden cocktail sticks, depending on sausage length and how small I want the portions
• A little oil if I’m cooking the onion first
• A cast-iron or stainless-steel pan, baking tray, sharp knife, tongs and an instant-read thermometer if the sausages are raw

Method

1. Get everything ready. I lay out the M&S Posh Dogs, onion, cheese, harissa ketchup, cocktail sticks and a very sharp knife. A large board and a tray make this a lot easier. Check the Posh Dog packaging so you know whether they’re ready-cooked or need cooking from raw.
2. Cook the sausages completely first. I cook them according to their pack instructions until hot and properly cooked. If they’re raw pork sausages, I check the centre reaches a safe endpoint, such as 75°C for 30 seconds. The cocktail sticks go in after cooking, so they don’t interfere with browning.
3. Prepare the onion and topping. Finely chop or thinly slice the onion. I can soften it gently in a little oil if I want it sweeter. Have the cheese ready to melt and the harissa ketchup close to hand.
4. Lay several whole sausages side by side. On the board, I line up two or more cooked Posh Dogs parallel, with their long sides against each other. I work in groups small enough for a cocktail stick to pass through all the sausages, with a good length of stick left sticking out as a handle.
5. Impale them through the long sides. Here’s the important bit: I push each cocktail stick sideways through the row of sausages, from the long side of the first sausage through the next, so one stick holds pieces of several different sausages. I put a series of these sticks at regular intervals along the length of the sausages. I’m not running a stick lengthways down the middle of one sausage, and I’m not making single-sausage bites.
6. Cover the connected sausages in cheese. Keeping the sausage group together, I pile on a generous layer of cheese. Enough to melt across the sausages and help bind the little kebabs together.
7. Add onions and harissa ketchup. Scatter the onion over the cheese and spoon or squeeze the harissa ketchup generously across the top. I want the finished pieces to be cheesy, oniony, tomatoey and a little spicy, with the toppings going across all the sausages.
8. Give the cheese a quick melt. If the sausages aren’t hot enough to melt it on their own, I move the assembled group to a heatproof tray for a brief oven finish. Keep wooden cocktail-stick ends away from direct flame or a hot grill element; don’t dry the sausages out.
9. Cut across the sausages between the sticks. Now I slice the topped sausage group crosswise, between each pair of cocktail sticks. Each cut goes through all the parallel sausages, turning the row into separate small kebabs. Every stick should end up holding multiple sausage pieces next to one another, not a single sausage with a stick up its middle. A sharp knife and gentle pressure keep the cheese-and-onion topping in place.
10. Serve the little sausage kebabs. Onto a serving board while they’re hot, with all that melted cheese, onion and harissa ketchup clinging to them. They are finger food, so everyone needs to know there are wooden sticks in each portion.

I prefer M&S Posh Dogs for this. The whole point is to get several sausage sections on each little skewer, covered in a properly generous amount of cheese, onion and harissa ketchup. They’re not traditional Polish kielbasa, and they aren’t my Borniak smoked sausages. This is a different, very good way of turning a few cooked sausages into a sharing plate.