How To Make Italian Sausage | Sweet Spicy Or Mild | Gourmet Woodsman

[Music] today I'm going to show you how I made this spicy Italian sausage and how I made this Italian sausage sandwich my name's Craig Welcome to The Gourmet Woodsman what I have here is a pork butt I got mine bone in cuz it's cheaper that way now pork butt's going to generally be the right fat content going for 25 to 30% fat for most sausages if you feel like your pork butt is a little lean you can always add some pork belly or some back fat this Italian sausage you could just get already ground pork as long as it's 25 to 30% fat it'll be fine just going to work my way around the bone with the tip of my knife as always work with a sharp knife the most dangerous tool out there is a dull [Music] one there's the one bow in a butt why do they call the shoulder a butt it's a long story now I'm just going to cut these into pieces that fit nicely in my grinder maybe even a little smaller so that it chills a little faster and while I'm doing that I'll just kind of be checking over make sure I didn't get any little pieces of bone fragment or anything Italian sausage is probably the most common sausage in North America it's my understanding it's probably more common in North America than it is in Italy and there's really quite a lot of variation generally they'll have some basil oregano usually going to have fennel Italian sauce that often comes mild hot or sweet it's going to have some pepper flakes for the heat obviously a mild sauce sausage will have less pepper flakes than a hot sausage and if you want to make it a sweet sausage just leave it out and you don't actually need a fancy scale it's like cooking I don't always use measuring spoons I spice things according to what I think they're going to need now Italian sausages are generally very forward they're pretty heavily spiced so just keep that in mind play around with it you can always cook up a test Patty cuz there's no curing salt in here and adjust accordingly I'm going to put this in a bowl in my freezer let it firm up a bit before I grind it see you in a minute all right I'm going to start weighing my spices for this Italian sausage fennel is always a spice you're going to see in an Italian sausage kind of a lot of it sometimes I weigh my fennel up first cuz I'm going to put it in a dry cold pan and start toasting it while I keep weighing up other spices next I'm going to weigh up some black pepper I'm also going to add some coriander Sal that's how much I'm using I'm making about 2,000 G of sausage here next I'm going to weigh my anise and anise is one of those ones that's not always going to be in there but anise goes really well with fennel compliment each other they're both kind of licoricey I'm going to put my anise in my mortar and pestl when my fennel is done toasting I'll put half of it roughly in here and have just coarsely cracked and the other half I'll grind up with my pepper corns and coriander going to add the salt I rarely use tablespoons and teaspoons when making sausage in case you want to try to make this at home and you don't have a scale I want to give you a rough idea okay so that was basically 3 tablespoons of salt for my 2,000 G of sausage however I'm using diamond crystal salt if you're using Morton salt you're probably going to want to use closer to tablespoon and a half because by volume Morton is much heavier a cup of Morton weighs almost twice as much as a cup of diamond crystal just going to put roughly half of my fennel into my mortar and pestl oh no I just spilled all my pepper corns all right I got to clean that up well I've got my coriander and black pepper corn mess cleaned up and I've got those toasting move back to spices I'm going to use oregano what I have is a pretty big leaf so it's going to be better don't want to wake these up by crushing it a little bit this does take quite a bit of spice next dried basil I'm also going to use a little bit of this whole Italian seasoning and this is got marom Sage Savory figure hey why not going to use a bunch of granulated garlic can't have an Italian sausage without some garlic in it and if you don't have granulated garlic you can use garlic powder you could also use fresh garlic you know you make it yours Italian sausage is really probably the most popular sausage in North America but probably won't find too many Grocers or butchers that make it the same feel free to experiment going to use a little part parley you know there's no cure in this so we you can cook up a little test Patty before you link them and decide if the spice is right for you we go in with some paprika for some color a little bit of mild peppery taste you're going to add some red chili red pepper flakes I'm using .5% of these which is kind of a lot so you could always dial that back if you want a more mild sausage or you could leave it out and maybe add a little more sugar if you want a sweet sausage thaan sausage usually comes either sweet mild or hot so it's up to you red pepper flakes are where I'm getting the heat from and finally some sugar my toasted black pepper corns coriander and about half the fennel and then here's the other half the fennel and my anus seeds not anus anise anus anise I guess it depends on your accent all right add those in there now if you make sausage periodically you'll know that's quite a lot of quite a lot of spice for 2,000 G of sausage especially there's no binder in here not using the binder in the sausage today I put a liot on it just mix that up real good till it's comes together into one nice powder I'm going to set that aside till I'm ready to use it had my meat in the freezer it's 30° which is just perfect for this if you can see I've got 7 mm plate on my grinder this has been in the freezer as well everything's nice and cold let's grind the meat for this Italian sausage and I try not to use the plunger you shouldn't have to just let it grind as it will [Music] and once it's done you can run a piece of bread through here I like to sometimes just take a extra little bit of the meat it runs it through it'll push out anything that's stuck in there some people use ice cubes I would not recommend that it's really hard on a grinder oh I got a piece left no pieces left behind should still be cold enough if it's warmed up more than above 35° or so stick it in your freezer till it's below 35° you do want it to be cold when you mix Italian sausage ready to mix got my meat on these individual strands it's really nicely ground cuz it was so cold my blades are sharp got my spices here now I will say if you're just making it with spoons and tablespoons I use weights cuz then I can have repeatable results for my sausage but that said there's no real wrong way no real wrong amounts if you like it then it's right but I would recommend to use about 2 teaspoons of salt for every kilo of pork if you're using Morton if you're using diamond crystal salt because of the larger flake size and you're going to want to double that to more like four teaspoons per kilo that's just my recommendation on that I'm going to go get my water out of the freezer what I have here is three parts water one part red wine it wouldn't go a whole lot more red wine than that or it will kind of take over your flavors you know you want it to add to it not overpower it at least that's what I want and now we just mix and again this sausage here has no binder you know binders they're helpful and they do help you get a nice consistent bind as the name would imply but they aren't necessary and in a sausage that might be used crumbled more like this could very well be mixed into a meatball you know Brown and put in a vinara sauce crumbled up on top of pizza that's what I'm going to do with some of it and you don't always need a binder so I'm going to mix this till I get a good amount of protein extraction start being sticky start trying to rip my gloves off it'll start lifting the bowl up this will start to look furry you'll see strands reaching out those are the strands of myosin and act in and uh yeah we'll just keep doing that till that happens okay we're about there let me show you this is kind of lifting the bowl up it's starting to want to take my gloves off I put a piece on my hand it sticks real well you look close you see it's getting a little stringy it gets these little pieces reaching out and that's how I know it's done and I will say there's a sweet spot when mixing sausage if you don't mix it enough your sausage will be crumbly if you over mix it your sausage will be a little dry unfortunately like many things in life it's the mistakes that help you realize where the right spot is you don't always figure it out when you just get it right it's by getting it wrong that you figure out where the sweet spot is this is a fresh sausage you want to just keep it like this you want to mix this in meatballs top pizza and put it in a marinara there's no need to put this in the casing because there's no curing sauce we can cook a Patty up right now and taste it for seasoning which I think I'll do not I know my seasoning is good cuz I follow the exact weights I'm going to cook a p Patty up anyway cuz I'm kind of hungry let's give this little Patty a taste and that is nice it's got a nice amount of heat if you wanted it really hot you could add more but this has a good amount of spice this is I would not call this mild if you're really into the heat you could go heavier I'll be honest uh I think I'm going to cut back the salt on my recipe you know I usually go about 1.5% salt but I also use curing salt in most of my red sausages which puts it at 1 75% salt and this has 1.8 I think I would dial it back just a little bit and that's why I like to do exact measurements cuz not only can I have repeatable results but it makes it a little easier to really tweak it how I want it next time I make this I think I'm going to dial the salt back to like 1.6% and some people put like 2% or even 2.2% in sausages but that's one of the reasons I like making it myself is I can make sausage that's as salty or not salty as I want but man it is packed full of flavor definitely getting all those Italian herbs very fenal forward really good sausage can't wait to put this on a pizza time to stuff my Italian sausage I just want to pack it in as tight as I can try to eliminate any air pockets you can see it's packed in there pretty tightly that's pretty good to go going to take my lid sometimes I like to just give it a little shot of some oil rub that around just make sure that's lubricated then I'll just thread that onto my stuffer tell when you got a little red tip at the end that the meets to the end and we're ready to put some casings on here so I like to find the end of my casing get a couple fingers in there fill that up with a little bit of water always Lube up your horn dry horn doesn't work very well and simply going to load this this up I know it's not original but I still think it's funny can I say I'm a grown adult but I have a childish sense of humor dry my table and tie a little knot on the end poke a couple holes just to let the air out and by the way I'm using 3032 casings if you're going to put them in a bun I find that to be a really good size but now we're just going to stuff them want them pretty tight but not super tight you want them loose enough that you can pinch them to link [Music] them I pull a little off give it a cut it can TI a knot still okay and when it comes to linking these there's two ways you can pinch spin that towards you give it like three or four go down about the same amount pinch now you should be able to pinch and have it stay like that if you can't you might have done it too tight but now I'm going to go away from me three or four you can go down about the same amount pinch come towards you I'll problem with this is sometimes I forget which direction I'm going and get going so fast so many of them so what I like to do as you come down and pinch instead of going towards me with that I'm going to go down to another one and pinch again and then I'm just going to go away from me same thing all right come down pinch down more and pinch and just going to spin that away from me if you really want to get uniform ones you can put a mark on your tray and then they'll all come out a little more uniform I'm not too worried about it and if it's a little loose give it an extra spin let's use shabby now anywhere you see an air pocket just want to release that air doesn't hurt to give them a few Pricks anyway don't need to go too crazy and flip it over do the same thing not too many a Pockets these are looking pretty nice and plump feeling pretty good about that so so these are a fresh sausage you can cook them up right now if you leave them in the refrigerator overnight the flavors will continue to get to know each other they'll be a little better and more importantly it's going to dry out these in between the links it's going to dry those out so we can cut them without leaking any meat out of there so I'm going to put this on a rack so air can flow underneath it and try to find room in my fridge these have dried up quite a bit they've darkened a lot but their casings are looking feeling nice and dry like they'll get a nice be nice nice and snappy so that's time to separate the links here and really drying them up dries up this part in between them probably the most important thing of it that they stay tight when we cut them apart and doesn't just leak out from the end of the sausage no one wants the Leaky sausage but these are looking great they smell delicious I think it's time to make a sandwich and I will be putting some of this Italian sausage on a pizza real soon so if you want to see that make sure to subscribe and hit the notification Bell make this Italian sausage sandwich got my sausage in a pan if I was making more I would think the grill would be really good for this I'm just going to take some of the olive oil for my roasted peppers and I'm going to brush my roll I'm going to make sure to get this top as well going to take my sausage that I've cooked up looking quite nice I must say I'm going to put some roasted peppers on that green is traditional but I went with both cuz hey why not add some color plus the red ones are a little little bit of sweetness to go with my spicy sausage and my spicy jardinera top that with some fresh mozzarella I'm going to stick that under the broiler be right back this looks and smells delicious I can't wait to dig into it let's get a look at [Music] this mhm all right folks I got to sit down eat this if you like this video If you learned anything if you found it entertaining give it a big old thumbs up consider subscribing to my channel for more of this kind of content put some love into your food peace

Channel: Gourmet Woodsman

Views: 16,247

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Id: tPoASpDluu8

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 09 2023