Post Punk Kitchen Forum

PPK, I did that thing you're not supposed to do. I cooked a new recipe for a Halloween potluck. I made pumpkin sausages, intending to serve little slices on toothpicks. Except they turned out pretty bland. They're not bad, but not good enough to be the star of their own show. How can I save these? I'm thinking serving them skewered with dried cranberries? Or sauerkraut? Or do I just cheat and pick something up at the deli on the way to work tomorrow?

Dried cranberries sounds good, or you could serve them with cranberry sauce for dipping. Or another kind of sauce. Or you could make them into mini tea sandwiches, if it wouldn't be too much work to add some bread and some kind of spread (maybe a walnut-based pesto of some sort, or a roasted red pepper/roasted garlic spread, or hummus?).

Or you could include them in a dish, like pumpkin baked ziti or something like that, but then you wouldn't have cute bite-sized portions.

Would it be completely awful to sauce them up? Either coat them and put on toothpicks, or make one or two really tasty dipping sauces? I'm thinking something like agave and mustard, and maybe something else that's less sweet but savory instead. Or spicy. Or BBQ sauce (I'm only slightly kidding about the bbq).

I've totally been to parties where there are little sausages simmering in bbq sauce! That was going to be my recommendation!

How about skewered with a bit of pickled red cabbage? The sharpness would contrast nicely with the sweet blandness, plus red cabbage is such a pretty colour.

Yes! Some sort of sauce that incorporates spicy mustard and sweet maple syrup would be perfect with pumpkin sausages. (Also - what recipe did you use? I'm curious!)

It's the pumpkin fauxsages from 500 Vegan Recipes. It's the most sausage-looking sausage I've ever made. They're just not pumpkiny enough to be eaten all by themselves.

Currywurst! Drench them in curry ketchup. At least that would be the perfect solution if you were in Germany. (Would ketchup with pumpkin spices instead of curry be too weird?)

It's too late now. I picked something up at the deli. There wasn't time to do anything elaborate.

Next time, or if it wasn't already too late, I was going to say that I haven't had any vegan sausages that are at a pot luck, in a crockpot with sauerkraut or with barbecue sauce, but this is something that would be excited for. And why was the barbecue sauce idea a joke anyway?

I would've said melt and mix cranberry sauce and mustard. Best of all worlds. (my mom used to do currant jelly and mustard with cocktail sausages)

I'd throw them in a pasta salad, with red food coloring, and some vinegar sugar.

That's what I got at the deli! Except they were out of the vinegar sugar kind, so I had to make due with bottled Italian dressing.

Yeah, you gotta have the Wishbone, bisques!