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Making your own sausage really is easy and a great way to get the exact flavor you want. This sausage is perfect to use for making stuffing. If you can, buy a pork butt and have your butcher grind it for you, or if you have one of those cool meat grinder attachments for your Kitchen Aid mixer (hint hint), you will have a great start to sausage. I didn’t have either of those so I just picked up a couple of packages of ground pork. That worked just fine. If you do manage to get a pork butt ground you may want to make a few different flavors of sausage as you will have a large amount.
Ingredients:
10 dried sage leaves or 1 1/2 tsp ground sage
1 tsp whole peppercorns or 1/2 tsp ground pepper
1/2 tsp ground toasted onion
1/2 tsp round garlic
1 tsp course Celtic Sea Salt
1 bay leaf or 1/4 tsp ground bay leaf
1/4 cup filtered water
1-2 pounds ground organic pork
6 oz pancetta
Directions:
Add the pancetta into a food processor and grind. Be careful not to over process. Add this into the bowl of ground pork.
Prepare the spices to be added to the pork. Start with the sage and bay leaves. I like to do this with my pestle and mortar. I find the spices taste and combine with other ingredients differently and with a dramatic intensity in flavor. A pestle and mortar are great to use for spices, dressings, flavored oils, pesto and marinades. If you don’t have one you can use a processor, coffee grinder or use ground spices instead of whole.
There are two techniques used with the pestle and mortar. Bashing and then muddling for gently crushing things and fine grinding or for when you are adding oil to your dressing. Start with muddling and then bashing.
Add in the peppercorns and salt to break it down with a mixture of muddling and bashing. When bashing use your hand to cover the open area to keep your spices in your mortar.
Finish with muddling to get a fine grind on your spices. If you want to have larger pieces of the spices in your sausage skip this step.
Mix the spices and ground porks together. Now is the time to cook up a little to taste for spice balance. Remember it should taste the way you like. If you like a stronger sage taste, add more.
Adjust the seasoning and then cook off a little more for another taste test. Try not to get carried away and eat too much of the sausage. Once you are satisfied with the taste, take all of the sausage out of the bowl and wrap up in plastic. Put it in the refrigerator. If you can let this set a day before you want to cook it, this will give the spices more time to fuse with the meat and increase the intensity of flavor.
Substitutions:
You can use ground turkey in place of pork to cut down on the amount of fat. I would still include the pancetta to add a nice depth of flavor.
If you can’t find pancetta, bacon can be substituted.
You can use ground spices instead of whole ones you have to grind yourself.
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I seriously want some of this sausage right now!! I left my breakfast smoothie in the refrigerator at home. (I was carrying out too much stuff this morning and that was out of sight and out of mind.) Being able to include this sausage would be a good reason to have stuffing!
Shirley
Shirley- Well I guess now you have an afternoon snack when you get home from work. I can’t wait to make this again next week!
I’ve never made sausage, but yours looks wonderful. We generally don’t eat pork, but I do buy turkey sausage. I guess it would also work with ground turkey. I would just leave out the pancetta. I’ll have to give it a try.
That looks fantastic! I’ve always wanted to make my own, but frankly it scares me. Although, it would give me a good excuse to buy the grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid Mixer
Linda- You could use turkey or chicken. Make sure you don’t use just the breast meat. It will need more fat and moisture so add in thighs.
Cheryl- Don’t be scared, give it a go. It’s really easy. I’m hoping to get that grinder attachment for a present this year. My family has two shots, my birthday and Christmas. Hope you get one too.
This looks oh so delicious! What is pancetta?
I haven’t tried making my own sausage yet, could be fun. I might just have to try. Yours look very yummy and the pancetta is a nice touch.
Debbie- Great question. Pancetta is known as an Italian Bacon. It’s a dry cured pork and if you can’t find it you can substitute bacon.
Rachel- I was surprised how easy it really was. Surely it wasn’t just mix, rest, and cook. But it was and it tastes great. Of course this means I’ll be making many variations of my own sausage. Love the pancetta. I think I’ll make this sausage next time with ground turkey mixed with the pancetta for a lower calorie version. Can’t do that for my stuffing however.