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 Planning the Portuguese Sausage Punch Out required us to be a bit more creative because this was the first challenge where we had to cook up the competitors ourselves.
Challenge #1 - Do we fry, grill or broil it? We had a short-lived debate on this one cause I was the only one who wanted to broil the sausages in the oven. Then I got scoldings from everybody who said, "who the heck broils their Portuguese sausage...gotta fry em?!" Oh wow! All sassy tone and yelling too. Nevah mind then...I going fry em...was just one idea.
 Challenge #2 - We had to standardize the cooking...oh sorry FRYING process...to reduce any unfair advantages of one sausage being cooked better than another. We did some test runs frying up some pieces of sausage and determined that frying em up 2 minutes, on each side, on medium heat, would give us a properly fried Portuguese sausage. We fried about 15 pieces of each sausage, then thoroughly wiped the pan out with a wet paper towel to prevent any cross contamination of flavors. Then just before putting them out for the tasting, we finished the sausages up in the oven at 300 degrees for 5 minutes so they would all be around the same temperature.
Challenge #3 - Taste with rice or no rice? The judges voted on this one and felt that Portuguese sausage could stand on its own and that rice and eggs was not essential to the overall PS experience.
 We did the same side by side judging style as the other challenges where all the Portuguese sausages were lined up with their random letter. Then the judges served themselves in any order and scored each one. We did weighted scoring again with taste=50%, texture=30% and presentation=20%.
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