How to Make Italian Sausages

Making Italian Sausages at home is not difficult; even stuffing them and forming sausage links falls well within the reach of all home cooks.

All it takes is a sense of adventure and no real skill, it is also a massive giggle if you are childish like me!

How to Make Italian Sausages.

The first step in making your own sausages is to ensure you have the right tools. Now, this is not an expensive task; most meat grinders will come with a sausage stuffing attachment.

You can also get manual sausage stuffing machines as well as attachments for stand mixers like the Kitchen Aid.

I personally find the meat grinder the best option; this is probably because I always grind my own meat. So, as far as I am concerned, it is an essential kitchen tool.

Don't bother with an expensive brand; I have a cheap off-brand model that I have been using for 8 years.

I went through two grinders of very well-known brands, the two years prior to that!

The Ingredients

After we have our kit, we need the ingredients!

We start with pork, I personally prefer pork blade. It is a cut of meat between the shoulder and the neck, as you can see from the image above, it has great fat content.

If you cannot find this cut of meat, then use 50% shoulder and 50% belly.

The core ingredients other than this are red wine vinegar, paprika and fennel; you can adjust the balance of these to your own taste. There is no such thing as the right balance.

Finally, we have salt. Salt plays an important part in this recipe; it is not just a seasoning, it is essential in holding the sausage together.

Unlike British sausages such as the Cumberland sausage or good old-fashioned breakfast banger, there is no 'cereal' content to hold the Italian sausage together. 

Salt fulfils this purpose, work on a tablespoon of salt per kilogram.

Then we have the casings. Buy natural casings; they typically come packed in salt and need 30 minutes soaking and then rinsing.

The technique

Once we have the toys and the ingredients, we just need the skills.

Forget the daft clips you have seen on television of the uninitiated working on industrial machines, firing sausage meat out at a rate of knots.

Your average domestic sausage stuffer works at a much more leisurely pace.

You can stop, start and work in a way you are comfortable with working. The only thing to ensure is that you have no air at the start of the sausage.

Do this by tying off the sausage after you have got the sausage meat through the stuffing machine.

That is, of course, if you want links for something like a hot dog or my sausage pasta (pictured above) recipe. If you want to make my Italian sausage ragu or a classic Italian sausage soup, you can leave it as ground meat.

They also smoke really well. I mention it in my smoked BBQ ribs recipe.