Recipes that call for Bulk (Italian) Sausage

a lot of holiday recipes call for sausage it is usually better just to buy plain minced sausage from the butcher then you can season to taste and you can usually choose between sweet or spicy (I usually choose sweet) you probably do not want minced pork

Our recipe called for (bulk) Italian sausage and look how that turned out!

OP, where are you located? I am able to buy sausage meat not in the casing, esp. at this time of year. What recipe are you making that calls for bulk sausage? What I would recommend might depend on what you are making.

Or just cook the sausages and cut it up out of the casings afterwards. I've never seen a recipe that calls for bulk sausage therefore never thought about its existence before.

R3 again. If you need/want a sweet Italian sausage, I prefer one with fennel seed, not a spice most have at home. Some companies that offer sweet Italian sausage don't put fennel in there sausage. But what you like is of course up to you. As for the brand pictured in the original post, I personally wouldn't use that in an Italian recipe as my Italian grandmother never did or would. That is just my taste, however. It would be wonderful in stuffing or casseroles, or for breakfast.

Is this the return of the Jimmy Dean queen trying to subtly plug his Jimmy Dean sausage lasagne???

OP, if you don't want to know how sausage is made then give Scrapple a shot. You'll LOVE it.

r7 At least it ain't Blood 'n Tongue.

Just use plain flavoured pork sausage like breakfast style sausage and remove the casing.

R4, no...you remove the meat from the casing BEFORE cooking. You just want the seasoned meat.

Cooking then dicing would be appropriate for a recipe calling for "Sausage, diced"...sorry, didn't mean to sound bitchy. :0]

I made my own bulk Italian sausage when I was a broke student.

You take the bulk ground meat of your choice, and add fennel, garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne (for hot sausage) per recipe or to taste. Taste-test by frying little bits. Notjing could be easier, and if you use post-Thanksgiving ground turkey like I did, you can hardly find cheaper protein.

NO FENNEL.

Most of the world doesn't have the aversion to licorice/fennel/anise that Americans do. Americans like to season their sausage with corn syrup, chocolate chips, vanilla and peanut butter.

R13 : I'm pretty sure the fennel started being added to the sausage mix because Greek butchers/characturie-types were handling the demand for "Italian" sausage. Well.. it's a theory. Or else it's a Sicilian thing, because Sicilian food seems to be the bridge that connects Italian and Greek food in terms of standard ingredients and Greek food is pretty liberal with the ouzo... I guess. Licorice/fennel/anise flavours aren't something that would normally go into Italian food, imho. If they do use them, I think they are used sparingly and mainly for dessert and beverage making. Italian food is simple in terms of ingredients (as in the number of different ingredients) and quality of the base ingredients comes before the need for spices/additives.

For the record, if you use a sausage that has fennel in it versus sausage that doesn't you will notice a distinct difference between the flavours in the final dish if the sausage meat is your primary ingredient. No fennel is recommended, but I don't think people are going to really complain either way.

If you can choose between fennel or no fennel, and you're cooking an Italian dish, go for the one without the fennel. If you're cooking something like Greek like Spetsofai (yummy) or however you spell that, then you are fine with the fennel one.

R14, it depends on what I am making. With most tomato sauce based dishes, I am good with fennel. As for who decided to put fennel in the sausage, when and where, all I can say is my large Italian family used sausage with fennel, if that helps.

R11, don't forget some oregano. OR, use a bit of some good Italian-blend seasoning. Sausage is not difficult to make, esp. if you don't use casings but instead just make patties or use it in a recipe.

R15 here again. And now all of you have made me hungry,very hungry. At this point, I don't care if there is fennel in that darn sausage or not, nor do I care if it is Jimmy Dean or from the local Italian Market. I'M HUNGRY....never thought I'd want to cook a batch of sausage at 10 PM.....Sigh....

Oven is going on in 2 minutes.

I could go for a bulky Italian sausage right about now ...

For instance, this recipe (which I am NOT making) calls for ground beef, ground pork... and sliced Italian sausage.

Now I realise this is an Everything But The Kitchen Sink recipe, I do not see the point of cooking up the minced meat with onions, spices and the like, AND also layering Italian sausage in the lasagna on its own...

...unless they are referring to a dried salami type sausage, like cacciatore?

I'm making ketogenic meatballs for the work potluck (5 of 10 employees in my office are on it low carb, paleo or keto diets). The not-so-secret ingredient is I get 3 links of Denmark Bratwurst from the butcher shop, remove the casings and mix the meat with the ground chicken and ground pork. I used cooked finely shredded Napa cabbage instead of bread crumbs or fillers, the the sausage really compliments it.

[quote] I could go for a bulky Italian sausage right about now ...

Fuck yeah, some nice big dangling Guido meat.

r19, that sounds amazing, pork and cabbage are a classic combination, and very filling too.

It's Italian

but is it EYETALIAN??

Does sweet as opposed to hot sausage contain grilled red capsicum or maple syrup or something?

r23 It contains red pepper flakes and usually paprika or finely ground red pepper, in a feeble attempt to hide some of the fat contained therein.

Fennel was added to sausages from antiquity to aid in digesting the notoriously difficult pig meat. Fennel, caraway and other umbellifer seeds were added to baked goods, consumed at feasts, for the same reason. The essential oils in the seeds helped the body to process all that high-caloric fatty food.

Fennel is used to cover up the taste and smell of rotting meat.

I prefer Spanish sawsage

Pork is not difficult to digest r24. It is the other white meat. Fat, no matter what kind, is difficult to digest.

There has to be a balance between easy to digest but flavorless and full flavored fat that is difficult to digest.

Since nobody really got to the bottom of the OP's questions about snausage, I'll bite:

Sausage is minced meat, fat, flavorings. Fat is important for good tasting sausage. It can be fresh, cured and/or dried. The stuff we're talking about here is of course fresh.

The flavorings in an eyetalian-american snausage are paprika, fennel, oregano, basil, fennel, garlic, salt, black pepper, sometimes citrus peel and others.

When talking sausage, "sweet" means "not spicy / not hot." It doesn't mean sweet as in sugar.

You can make sausage however you want. Mince whatever meat you want. Be sure it's at least 20% to 40% fat by weight. Add fat if you have to. The fat and the meat don't have to be from the same animal. For that matter, you can mix meats in snausage any way you care to. Season it however you like. If you live in a foreign place, use whatever seasonings are traditional and liked in your region.

And be mildly suspicious of any recipe that calls for american bulk eyetalian sausage.

r27 The current lean pork we have available is a relatively recent introduction. Well-marbled pork(long the stuff of epicurean delights), which was all that was available for millennia, fell out of favor as people became more health conscious.

This is a good basic recipe.

What does bulk mean? Does it mean you buy it in bulk like at Costco?

Stop with the European mince crap. Italian Sausage is an Italian American recipe and in America we grind our meat. No faggy mincing of meat here.

I used to make my own bulk Italian sausage when I was young and broke.

Buy ground pork, mix in garlic, salt, pepper, fennel, cayenne, whatever, and you've got bulk Italian sausage for cheap! Fry patties, or mix it into sauces, whatever.

Visual aid - bulk ground Italian sausage, hot, no casing.

Same product, with casing.

And all the other processed meats made fun of Monty because he preferred meat with stank sleeve.

Another vote for making your own. I’ve done ground pork and seasoned it myself with garlic, fennel, paprika and lots uof salt and pepper. It’s a third of the price and maybe better quality.

OP, in what country are you located?

The real question is will the pasta be sauced in the pan or the pot. How will the pasta be drained?

Do you make your casing out of used condoms?

Think bulk, or loose sausage for the most part is fresh, rather than cured: no saltpeter or nitrates.... Some other troubling additives for preservation as well, too numerous to list here are included in most of the encased variety.

Just an FYI here.... Don't really believe the "chub" packed bulked sausage savings really add up per lb, as the cuts in these cheaper varieties are excessively fatty; once rendered, one ultimately has less meat than the premium brands. My own empirical evidence. Seasonings are way off the mark too. Even those Eye-Talian wannabees still oddly taste like sage-y brekie sausage.

Agree, r42.

I buy a bulk sausage in a flat package. I turn the meat out of the package and add a little water to help break up the meat prior to browning. I am amazed at how little fat there is.

R44, is it a National US brand? Give us your recommendation please. Those chub ones sometimes even leave an almost gummy texture sticking to the bottom of the pan they're such questionable quality. Even Bob Evans breakfast sausage now seems too fatty for my liking. It wasn't always like that. I have heard the children or grandchildren are responsible for it's decline.

I buy the WinCo house bulk sweet Italian Sausage. I adjust the seasonings in the pan:

Fennel seed put through a spice grinder.

Sweet paprika

Cayenne

Granulated garlic

Black pepper

Salt

It is now good to go for making meat sauce for lasagne or mixing with rice for stuffed peppers or any other number of uses.

Jimmy Dean is a great.

R46, we don't have access to that brand in Chicago... I like the fennel pulverised into powder too!