Homemade Sweet Italian Sausage Recipe

I love making this homemade sweet Italian sausage recipe! We always do it with a big group of friends. Everyone brings a large cut of pork and we do all the grinding, seasoning, and stuffing as a group. Everyone goes home with delicious sausage and the work is made easy by many hands. It's a great day and reminds me of the pioneer days when families would make a celebration out of things like the harvest or the butchering of a large animal.

I also love that I know what's in our sausages. No artificial preservatives or weird ingredients and we can control the spices and flavor amounts.

Freezing sausage

We have been making this recipe about twice a year for around 15 years and I feel like we've perfected the flavors and ratios. It's nice to make sausage in big batches and fill the freezer. We usually triple the recipe (below). When the cuts of meat are trimmed and de-boned we usually have around 12 pounds of pork (around 50 sausage links). This makes enough to fill our sausage needs for around 6 months.

We also make a batch of our maple breakfast sausage while we have all the equipment out.

Even if you buy pork roasts that have been previously frozen, according to the FDA, as long as the meat stays below 40 degrees, it can be re-frozen. So don't worry about thawing out a large pork roast, making sausage, and re-freezing the raw links.

If your roast is frozen plan ahead. Thaw your roast in the refrigerator. You will need 30 minutes per pound of thaw time in the refrigerator.

Once the sausage is made we store it in ziplock bags. It keeps well for over 6 months.

Sausage links vs ground sausage

One of the essential elements in traditional sausage-making is the use of natural casings. These casings not only provide a delightful snap and texture but also enhance the overall taste of the sausages.

You can make this sausage and stuff it into casings, or simply place the ground sausage into zip lock backs or freezer-safe containers and cook it in its crumbled state. I like to have both options on hand. We grill this sausage a lot and the links are delicious by themselves. They are also delicious smoked. But I often use this sausage for spaghetti, stuffed peppers, lasagna, and all kinds of recipes so the ground form is convenient to have on hand as well.

Where to find natural sausage casings

We are blessed to have a butcher supply company not 5 miles from our home. We ask the butcher for casings and he sells them to us by the pound. I would suggest asking your local butcher if they have casings to sell. If not, I did find some on Amazon that received excellent reviews.

Natural Hog Casings

How to use natural casings for sausage making

The casings will come salted in a sealed plastic bag. Each tube will be around 2-3 feet long (sizes vary). The casings will feel a bit stiff and rubbery. While you're preparing the sausage and equipment soak the casings in ice cold water. This will soften the casings and make them easier to use. I try to only soak as many casings as we will need. This recipe for 4 pounds of pork will use approximately 1/4 a package of pork casings. You can always soak more if you run out.

Find the end and run water through the casing.

This not only rinses the insides but helps the tube become more manageable and gets most of the twists out so the casings will slide onto the stuffing tube much easier.

What cut of meat to use for homemade pork sausages?

Traditionally sausage was made from the trimmings and bits of meat and fat that were left over from the butchered hog. If you raise your own pork (which we plan to do in the future), make use of those trimmings and make sausage.

If you don't raise pigs, any large cut of pork will work to make sausage. Some of our favorites are picnic roast and butt roast. If you are using a leaner cut of pork be sure to add some back fat or bacon to keep the sausage juicy. If you don't want your sausage to taste like tubes of sawdust.

You could also use other meat in this recipe, chicken, turkey, beef, or venison. I would still add a good amount of pork fat to each of these meats to keep the sausage juicy. A good ratio is around 1 pound of fat per 5 pounds of meat.

The recipe I give here is for 4 lbs of pork. We actually made 12 lbs total. But 4 lbs is a good manageable amount. You can double it, triple it, halve it... whatever works for you.

Seasonings for homemade sausage

Zach and I made this Italian sausage in a trial-and-error sort of way. We've tried the pre-packaged spice blends, but no matter how "all-natural" they claim to be, there's always an artificial aftertaste that sort of takes away from that homemade satisfaction. So we went online and did a recipe search for Sweet Italian Sausage, and to be honest, after tasting a few, they were quite bland. The majority of the ingredients you find in sausage recipes are parsley, salt, and fennel. So we took that and jazzed it up a bit.

I like my Sweet Italian Sausage heavy on the "sweet" and mild on the spice. The nice thing about making your own sausage is you can add whatever flavor you like! If you're a garlic lover, double the garlic. If you want to enhance the Italian flavor, chopped basil would be delicious!

This recipe is a great starting point to make your own. It tastes very similar to a typical Sweet Italian Sausage that you might find at the grocery store.

Taste before you stuff the sausage casings

When you make sausage, before you fill all your casings, take a little dab and throw it into the frying pan to see if you like it. If you think it needs something, you can still add it.

Equipment for sausage making

electric coffee/spice grinder (optional see below)

Sausage grinder or grinding attachment for Kitchenaid mixer (see below)

Sausage stuffer (see below)

Large mixing bowls

measuring cups

measuring spoons

cutting board

chopping knife

clean scissors

Electric coffee/ spice grinder

You do not need a spice grinder to make sausage, you can easily use a knife or a mortar and pestle. However, if you're making sausage a lot or in big batches, it might be something you want to consider. We happen to have an extra coffee bean grinder that we've devoted to sausage making and it makes grinding peppercorns, or chopping fennel seeds much easier.

How to set up the meat grinder for sausage making

We've always used a hand-crank meat grinder. Everyone would have a turn at the crank. But the last time we made sausage our friend brought over the meat grinding attachment for the Kitchenaid mixer and I fell in love! Grinders range from $28 to $2000 depending on your sausage-making needs.

To set up our hand crank grinder you first need to clamp it to a secure surface. Typically your kitchen counter will work great. Protect your countertop by placing a piece of wood between the grinder mount and the countertop. Don't rely on the rubber pad alone to protect your counter (ask me how I know). Once it's clamped down you should have ample room to operate the crank handle and enough room to pass a large plate or cutting board underneath to catch the ground meat as it comes out.

Your grinder will most likely come with several grinding plates and different size nozzles. The smaller the holes in the grinding plate, the finer the meat will be ground. We do the initial grind with the coarse grinding plate, mix in the seasonings, then use the finer grind to fill the casings.

Sausage stuffer?

Our meat grinder has a stuffing attachment and although it does work, we've found that we constantly needed to use a "plunger" to push the ground meat through the grinder while cranking to get it to move fast enough for our likings. After doing it this way a few times we decided to upgrade to a small, but professional sausage stuffer that is nothing more than a giant plunger with exchangeable tips. It was well worth the investment. We'll update this post with our stuffer procedure soon, but they are pretty straightforward to set up.

To set up your preferred stuffing device first feed your casing onto the 1/2" or 5/8" nozzle leaving a bit to tie off the end. If you've soaked your casings and ran cold water through them, after a bit of practice they should slide on with ease. Tie off the end after getting most of the air out and you're ready to attach it to the stuffer and fill them up.

As you press and crank the sausage it will fill the casings. Don't worry about any air pockets that form, just try and move them back over the nozzle as seen below. It helps to have someone in charge of monitoring how much each link is filled to keep things even.

The art of twisting sausage links

Twisting perfect consistent sausage links is a bit of an art. I like to try to twist as the casings are filled, but you can also fill the length of the entire casing, tiw the ends and then twist your links afterward. You will need to consistently twist the links in the same direction all the way down the length. Otherwise, your links will come untwisted.

Also, twist your links then let the sausage firm up in the refrigerator overnight. After this firming stage, it should be safe to cut your links apart without the sausage coming unstuffed.

Don't feel bad if your first attempts are a bit wonky. It will get better each time you make sausage.

Ingredients

• 1 package of natural pork casings (they usually come in lengths of 30 feet)
• 4 Lbs pork, lightly trimmed, leaving most of the soft fat
• 1/3 Tbsp brown sugar
• 3 Tbsp. kosher salt
• 1 1/2 Tbsp. fresh cracked pepper
• 1 1/2 Tbsp. chopped fennel seeds
• 3 Tbsp minced fresh parsley
• 1 1/2 Tbsp. minced garlic
• 1/2 Tbsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
• 1 tsp chopped fresh sage

The sausage-making process

1. Begin by soaking your casings in ice-cold water. For 4 lbs of pork, you will need approximately 1/4 package of casings.

2. Lightly trim your pork. Remove the silverskin and any grizzly bits and remove the bones. (Save the bones to make bone broth!)

Leave most of the soft white fat. We made the mistake of cutting all the fat off our first sausage and it cooked up dry like sawdust. Cut the pork into 1 -2 inch cubes.

3. Feed the pork through the meat grinder. You can use the coarse grinding plate for this step.

4. Add the seasonings to the meat and mix well using a kneading motion with your hands.

5. Fry up a tiny bit of sausage to check for seasoning correctness.

6. Rinse your casings (inside and out).

7. Fill the drum on the sausage stuffer with meat and feed the casing onto the stuffing nozzle. Be sure to tie the end. Begin filling the casings.

8. Twist the sausage links as they form or twist after the whole length of the casing is filled.

9. Refrigerate overnight to solidify the links.

10. Cut the links apart using clean scissors.

11. Pack into freezer bags and freeze.

12. To use, thaw overnight in the fridge and cook on the grill or in a cast iron skillet until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees.

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Natural Hog Casings

electric coffee/spice grinder

Sausage grinder

grinding attachment for Kitchenaid mixer

Sausage stuffer

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