Italian Sausage Stuffed Calamari on the Big Green Egg

As with many of the meals I "attempt", I look in the freezer to see what we've got that might just go together. Today I saw a bag of 5 squid left from a previous Friday night Calamari and finger food party and some Italian Sausages. Shell has a great contact in the seafood business so we've usually got something kicking around. I'm thinking that if I remove the sausage from the casings and use the squid as the eventual "sausage casing" this could be pretty tasty. So here we go. Oh, and yes, Louie gets to play a part in this experiment.

Ingredients:
5 Whole Squid
3 Italian Sausages, casings removed
3-4 Tbsp of Olive Oil
1 Tbsp Butter
2 Garlic Cloves
Kosher Salt
Fresh Ground Pepper

Assemble and Cook:
If you are using charcoal to cook these, and I suggest you do, get your BBQ lit and the grill nice and hot.

Meanwhile, remove the sausages from the casings into a Ziplock bag and mush it all together. Wash out the squid and set the extra bits aside....tentacles I mean. We'll do something with those later. Cut a hole in a corner of the Ziplock (think piping bag) and squeeze the sausage into the squid "casings". Leave about a 1/2" at the top of the squid. Repeat with the remaining squid. Using a round toothpick, sew the top of the squid closed. They seal very nicely on the BBQ. Finished product will look something like the picture.

Stabilize your BBQ around 400 degrees. Clean the grate and brush with olive oil. Brush olive oil on one side of the calamari, salt and pepper them. Place on the BBQ prepped side down and repeat the oil, salt and pepper on the undressed side.

Continue grilling and rolling these around to brown them up on all sides.

20 minutes into the cook I moved the stuffed calamari around so I could fit a small iron frying pan on the BBQ to heat up. Once heated I added the butter and about 1 Tbsp of oil. When the butter melted, I dropped in the tentacles (I know, sounds gross) and added the garlic, and some salt and pepper. These will cook fully in just minutes, 5 max.

I grilled the sausage stuffed calamari for a total of 30 minutes to completion. Check the internal temperature of the sausage, look for about 160 degrees in the middle of your largest.

I thought these were magnificent tasting. Shell thought they were tasty as well, with the following quid pro quo: "You know, these would be awesome if I was blind...you know, like Jeff Healey would think these were marvelous."

Not sure if I take that as a compliment or buy her a blindfold for Christmas.