Making sausage can sound extremely difficult and requires expensive equipment. Sausage making can also take a considerable amount of time.
This recipe is one of my favorites because it is relatively quick for making a large batch of sausage for my family. And as a mother of four with lots of farm chores, I do not have a lot of spare time.
What equipment do you need for sausage making?
If you are processing your own meat, you will need the meat to be ground. A meat grinder is required.
If you are purchasing ground meat, you will require a large bowl or roaster pan, measuring utensils, freezer bags, parchment paper, one or two cookie sheets, and your hands.
What kind of meat can you use?
This recipe is versatile in the meats you can use! I have used beef, venison, moose, goat, or pork. It is important that it is ground.
The ratio for this recipe is 10lbs red meat and 2.5lbs pork.
This recipe can be used with 100% or 12.5lbs of red meat if you do not have any ground pork or pork trim. Or you can use 100% lean ground pork.
Where can you use uncased sausage?
Uncased sausage is super easy to use in many of your recipes. An uncased Italian sausage tastes amazing in chili, meat sauce, soups, breakfast pan scrambles, meatballs, hamburgers, meatloaf, tacos, nachos, breakfast wraps, and more.
Making Patties
If you don’t have the equipment, times, knowledge or experience to stuff casings. You can easily shape this recipe into patties instead.
I like to measure out my sausage into 1/4c amounts and shape them into patties with my hands. Once shaped into a patty, I place onto a cookie sheet (with parchment paper). I layer my patties three to four times (with parchment paper sheets in between) throughout my cookie sheet.
After I feel like I have layered enough, I place the entire cookie sheet and patties into my freezer. It may take 24-48 for all of the patties to freeze solid. I separate each patty and place into freezer bags and put back in my freezer. You can pack the patties into single meal amounts. Or you can put them into a large freezer bags and take out a couple as needed.
Taste testing your sausage
Every family like different flavors. This recipe is a great base, from there you can adjust the ingredients you like or dislike.
When we make sausage, we will fry up small amounts as we go to get the perfect flavor we want. If your family doesn’t like certain flavors, you can easily omit them.
I would adjust the salt, pepper, hot pepper flakes, and fennel seeds. And I may add paprika, garlic, parsley or red wine. Our recipe changes a bit each time we use it. But we always write down what we did differently (with the date we made it).
Italian Sausage
Ingredients
- 10 lbs ground red meat venison, beef, moose, goat
- 2.5 lbs ground pork or pork trim
- 5.5 tbsp salt
- 2 cups ice water
- 3 tbsp fennel seeds
- 4 tsp course black pepper
- 4 tbsp sugar
- 5 tsp crushed hot pepper flakes
- 4 tsp caraway seed
- 2 tbsp coriander (ground)
- 4 tbsp smoked paprika optional
Instructions
- Mix ingredient together until fully incorporated. You can run the mixture through your meat grinder on a course grind (if your have one).
- Heat up a frying pan and cook small amount (¼ cup) for you and your family to sample. Adjust flavors if needed.
- Package into appropriate freezer packaging (Ziplock freezer bags) if you are not stuffing the sausage into casing.
- Or, you can shape patties in your hands and freeze onto parchment paper and cookie sheets. We make our sausage patties approximately ¼ cup each. Layer sausage patties with sheets of parchment paper onto cookie sheets. Allow to freezer for 24-48 hours. Once frozen, separate your patties and place in freezer bags and back into your freezer.
I am really excited to try this! I raise Icelandic sheep and have been wanting to make sausage but wasn’t sure if lamb would work, but I’m going to try it!