Cooking with Chef Jo:Homemade Italian Sausage

We, on the homestead, like our Italian sausage between mild and hot. In the old days, prior to making our own and my pork allergy, it meant buying hot and mild sausage, and mixing them together.  Finding turkey or chicken meat Italian sausage was extremely difficult. I found that eating organically grown pork did not set off my allergies. Makes you wonder what they put in them hogs that are grown commercially, don't it?

Organic meats are expensive. So I cut pork out of my diet totally until I moved here and could get pastured raised pork at a lower price. So this recipe is not pork free. There's something about pork that makes any dis taste so much better! So I buy a small 3lb Boston butt and 3 lbs of turkey. In the days before I had a meat grinder, and even now to save my energy with using the hand crank meat grinder, I'll have the store butcher/butchershop grind the meat for me. We don't grow pigs on our homestead as yet. One day, we'll add American Guinea hogs to our menagerie of animals, but that's not now.

I make my Italian sausage in bulk. I use it in my Pasta e Fagioli Soup. If I want links, I can always make them later for sausage dogs with peppers, onion and spicy mustard yum! 

Chef Jo's Italian Sausage
Makes roughly 6 1/4 lbs of bulk sausage

What you'll need

3 lb Boston butt, boneless & ground*
3 lbs ground turkey, ground turkey thighs is best
1/2 cup red wine, dry red
2 TBS salt
2 TBS black pepper
2 1/2 TBS dried parsley*
2 TBS garlic powder*
2 TBS onion powder*
2 TBS dried basil*
1 TBS paprika
                                                                            1 TBS red pepper flakes*
                                                                            2 tsp fennel seeds*, broken
                                                                            1/4 tsp sugar
                                                                            1 tsp dried oregano*
                                                                            1 tsp dried thyme*

*Notes- Or get a bone in roast and save the bones for pork pork bone broth.
We grow, harvest, dehydrate, our own herbs and spices. I prefer using dried herbs and spices in this application.

Putting it together

• Break fennel seeds into pieces with a mortar and pestle. You don't want to grind it into powder. If you like whole fennel seeds in your sausage forego this step.
• Mix all seasonings except the red wine together in a bowl.
• Break the meat into smaller pieces and mix together.
• You'll want to mix the meat mixture and here on out with open fingers so as not to compress the meat into a solid mass.
• Add red wine to the meat mixture and mix well until combined.
• Sprinkle seasonings over the meat and mix well.
• Your mixture should resemble a coarse sausage mixture rather than a blob. All your seasonings should show it bits and pieces in the meat fairly evenly. If you have a meat grinder this would be best. The more you work the meat, the tougher it will be. There should be well distributed pieces of fat throughout as pictured.
• Let sit in the refrigerator for an hour to let the herbs and spices rehydrate and the flavors to get happpy.

Storing suggestions- You can leave this as bulk sausage and vacuum seal it for the freezer, you can raw pack can it for your dry storage.You can pipe it into uncased links, or stuff casing with it. You can form it into patties or anything you want to do with it.

If you do not have a pork allergy, feel free to make it with all pork. Remember the 15% fat to lean ratio.  Or if you are allergic to pork, use the ratio of 1/4 beef to 3/4 turkey. Remember the fat ratio. I've used beef fat and ground beef for the 25% beef (15% beef fat/ 10% lean beef) ratio to 75% turkey.
Enjoy!

Y'all have a blessed day!

Chef Jo