My grandmother gave my father this cherished family recipe for fennel-spiced pork sausage in the 1950s. We’ve succeeded numerous times. The raw links should be divided into quart-sized freezer bags and kept frozen.
| Prep Time: | 1 hr |
| Additional Time: | 8 hrs |
| Total Time: | 9 hrs |
| Servings: | 36 |
| Yield: | 9 pounds |
Ingredients
- 9 pounds pork shoulder, cut into cubes
- ¼ cup fennel seed
- 3 tablespoons garlic powder
- 2 tablespoons crushed red pepper flakes
- 2 tablespoons dried parsley
- 4 teaspoons salt
- 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
- ½ cup dry white wine
- 15 feet 1 1/2 inch diameter hog casings, rinsed
Instructions
- Combine pork, fennel seed, garlic powder, red pepper flakes, parsley, salt, and pepper in a meat grinder; grind through a coarse plate. Mix in white wine and grind again.
- Stuff mixture into rinsed hog casings, twisting into 4-inch lengths. Cover and refrigerate until flavors meld, 8 hours to overnight. Cook as desired, or portion sausages into 1-quart freezer bags and store in the freezer.
- Follow your desired recipe to boil, grill, or pan-fry the fresh or frozen sausage links. An instant-read thermometer inserted into the center should read at least 160 degrees F (70 degrees C).
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 154 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 1 g |
| Cholesterol | 45 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 12 g |
| Saturated Fat | 4 g |
| Sodium | 294 mg |
| Sugars | 0 g |
| Fat | 11 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
We loved it and had just the right amount of spice.
I tried this with turkey too and again it was perfect. This thanksgiving I will be buying extra turkeys just for this sausage
I needed a small amount of Italian sausage for another recipe and thought I would try this since it had so few ingredients and I had some ground pork. I had to scale this way down for 1/2 lb of meat and I only had crushed fennel so I reduced the amount to about 1/3. Unfortunately, I absolutely forgot the wine. Regardless, this worked great with my lean ground pork and I will use it again with a larger amount to freeze in bulk. I didn’t use casing, just crumbled and browned it.
I used an organic ground pork rather then grinding my own and cut the recipe down to only 1 pound of it. Was fresh out of hog casings so I flattened it into nickel-sized pieces to top pizza. Would be great mixed with ground beef for meatballs or an Italian-style hamburger. Really wonderful, authentic flavor and no “mystery” grissly bits 🙂
An excellent moderately hot sausage! In our family, we make sweet sausage (Salsiccia dolce), which is quite similar — instead of red pepper flakes, we add dried basil (though it has to be VERY fresh dry basil), and sometimes marjoram, and somewhat more fennel. But then the cuisine I grew up with, from the area fronting the Gulf of Salerno, tends to be sweeter rather than hotter. (The tomato sauce, which could be christened Salsa Cotta, far from todays fad for “fresh”, that is, only slightly cooked, tomato, has to cook for hours, so that the sugars in the tomato (sometimes also with added sugar) caramelize slowly, giving the sauce a deep dark-red color, and even tinting the olive oil red. This sauce is very simple: tomato paste is mixed with sugar, garlic is lightly sauteed (but not so much it browns) and the paste and sugar are slowly browned in the garlic and olive oil. To this is added water, basil, marjoram or very fresh oregano, perhaps some finely chopped rosemary, and occasionally some red wine. Then it is cooked slowly for a very long time, hours usually, just at a good simmer. (If one is frying meatballs or sausage, after pouring off the excess fat, the pan is deglazed with water, wine or sauce and this is added to flavor the sauce). The complexity and richness of the flavors in this cooked tomato sauce cannot be rivaled by the raw or near-raw tomato sauces, in my opinion. Buon appettito!
I’ve just recently started making my own sausage & was looking for another recipe to try. I am going to stick with the same instructions as my last recipe, but use these ingredients with all fresh herbs instead next time. With the other recipe which is from Emeril I think, you cube the meat & add all remaining ingredients, put in a ziplock bag for 24 hours and THEN grind. I also don’t put mine in casings, just make a bunch of patties & freeze them on a cookie sheet then transfer to freezer bags. Thanks for the great recipe!!
H MY!! Talk about home made! This is it Thank you ! This is a fantastic down home recipe.
We fine grind the pork. Then mix together “all” the ingredients in a large tub by hand. You can use dry red wine, too. Also, you can put 1 lb of unstuffed sausage into the quart freezer bags to use in other recipies later.