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Sausage: Hot-Sweet Italian




Source of Recipe


3men.com


Recipe Introduction


"This favorite pizza topping is a coarse pork sausage, generally sold in plump links. Italian sausage is usually flavored with garlic and fennel seed or anise seed. It comes in two styles: hot (flavored with hot, red peppers) and sweet (without the added heat). It must be well cooked before serving, and is suitable for frying, grilling or braising. The recipe below is a hybrid of hot and sweet."




List of Ingredients




15 pounds boned pork butts
2 ¾ cups very cold red wine (Cabernet Sauvignon works nicely)
7 tablespoons kosher salt
7 tablespoons fennel
6 tablespoons ground black pepper
1 tablespoon ground coriander
3 teaspoons red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons oregano
1½ teaspoons garlic powder
1½ teaspoons sugar
1½ teaspoons caraway seed
1 teaspoon MSG


Recipe



Grind all of the pork butts through a one-quarter inch or three-eighths inch plate. Refrigerate the ground pork until well chilled - ideally 32 to 34 degrees Fahrenheit.

When the meat is chilled, thoroughly mix the remaining ingredients in a bowl. In a large bowl or lug, thoroughly mix the wine and spice mixture with the ground pork. Immediately stuff into 32mm to 35mm hog casings. Hang the stuffed sausage in a cool place* until the casings are dry to the touch. Refrigerate or freeze immediately after drying.

If you do not have a sausage stuffer, you can store the sausage in patties or in bulk. Refrigerate or freeze as desired.

*After stuffing the sausage into the casings, we like to hang the sausage. This allows the casings to dry properly as well as gives the flavors in the sausage time to develop. We turn the central air conditioning up full until the house gets really cold. Cover a broom handle with aluminum foil and straddle between two chairs. Hang the fresh sausage over the broom handle until the casings are dry. Make sure that the sausage stays cool, or bacteria will develop. If the sausage has a lot of liquid it will drip from the casings as they dry, so you may want to put something down on the floor to catch the drippings.

When freezing sausage, you should place the sausage in zip-up type plastic bags. Use a straw to suck out as much of the air as possible. Seal the bag and freeze the sausage quickly to lock in the flavor. We use a vacuum sealer for this purpose which works very well, and makes for an attractive presentation if you are dishing out sausage to your friends as gifts.