Homemade Bulk Italian Sausage, Chicago Style

Dan-Amer #1's Note:

After having lived in Chicago for over 25 years, I crave Italian sausage and of course it is not available in Denmark, so I have adapted this recipe from one I found on grouprecipes.com. This is excellent to use on deep dish Chicago style pizzas and it also freezes well.

• Total Time: 15 mins
• Prep Time: 15 mins
• Cook Time: 0 mins

Ingredients:

Serves: 3

Yield: 3.0 pizzas

• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 3 1/2 teaspoons paprika
• 2/3 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2/3 teaspoon fennel seed
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon sage
• 1/2 teaspoon basil
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1 lb ground lean pork

Directions:

1. Blend together all of the ingredients with the exception of the ground pork until they are thoroughly and uniformly mixed.
2. With your clean hands blend the mixture of seasonings into the ground pork until it is well and uniformly blended inches
3. Place the sausage in the refrigerator overnight in a covered container so that the flavors can blend before use.
4. When I make I usually use 1/3 of it rather quickly on a deep dish pizza and freeze the rest for later use.

Reviews

[kitchenmommy]

Made this recipe spur of the moment, so was missing a couple of the seasonings. I thought the flavor created by the combination of spices was really good. (I only used about 2 tsp paprika). The salt, though was way too much! I like salty food, but I don't usually measure it when I cook. 1 1/2 tsp seemed like a lot, but since I don't usually measure on meat, I went with it. I felt it was so salty that you could almost feel the salt crunch. That said, I will probably try this recipe again with much less salt because I did like the flavor I could get until the salt took over.

[rpgaymer]

Thank you for this recipe!!! I haven't eaten sausage in a long time because it's filled with so much fat and calories, but I used lean ground turkey to make this and it tasted just like regular Italian sausage. I'm from Chicago, so the fact that this is Chicago-style sausage makes the recipe even better. I'll be making this a lot :)

[Chef #726534]

This is a tasty, savory, slightly spicy sausage.....not the sweet Italian kind, which is what I had hoped for.....but good in its own right. I'll definitely make this again when I'm in the mood for a savory sausage. Followed the directions exactly except omitted the salt since I'm on a low-sodium diet.