My husband takes full credit for this recipe. Back when he started filling the freezer for himself, his goal was always to make wild game taste really good. This recipe was basically everything he wanted in an Italian sausage. Fennel, red wine vinegar, etc – he amplified the things he liked. Well, even though he set out to please his own taste buds, this one quickly became a crowd pleaser among all of our friends and family.
The Process
This is the perfect medium heat Italian sausage recipe. If you want to make this mild, you can pull back on the red pepper flakes and the cayenne pepper. Or you can increase them for a hotter sausage.
Our recipe has been shared with dozens of our friends, and it’s the thing that everyone asks for and raves about. When making any Italian dish, you basically can let the meat season the dish without a bunch of additional spices. It’s that good.
Cooking with Italian sausage
This is something Jimmy and I disagree on… I prefer to do 50% Italian sausage and 50% ground meat in many recipes. And I prefer to bulk up the protein, so if a recipe calls for a pound of ground meat, I’ll use two. I’ll use 1 pound of sausage and 1 pound of plain ground meat. Jimmy prefers to do all sausage. I like sausage, but just not as much as Jimmy I guess! Choose your own adventure!
Below are a couple recipes that I have made multiple times and like putting this sausage in.
Breakfast Sausage?
Another thing Jimmy and I have differing opinions on is using Italian sausage for breakfast. He loves to patty this up and use it as a breakfast sausage. That’s a no thanks from me! I prefer the more traditional maple syrup type of breakfast sausage. But, depending on your preferences, this could be a versatile sausage!
Ingredients
We make 80lbs of this sausage at a time so we need to acquire seasoning in bulk! Grocery store seasonings for $10 a jar – no thank you. Azure Standard is one of my favorite places to get high quality bulk spices for our sausage recipes. They have organic options for a fair price too.
My favorite salt is Redmond Real Salt. It has over 60 trace minerals and it tastes amazing. I buy this 10lb tub (lasts me roughly 18 months) but they have various sizes. Code HAPPYHOME will save you some money!
Equipment and Packaging
We personally don’t stuff this sausage into casing, but you totally could! We use it as ground meat, so we don’t go through the effort. We freeze in one pound bags and chamber seal.
When I post about processing meat, I always get asked about our tools. We use the Cabela’s 1 horse grinder. We use the VacMaster VP215 to package all our ground meat. We’ve had both machines for over 6 years and haven’t had any issues!
If you’re interested in how we get our moose and process it, check out this post. It has links to everything we use.
The Best Italian Sausage (Wild Game) Recipe
Equipment
- 1 meat grinder
Ingredients
- 5 lbs wild game
- 5 lbs pork shoulder
- 3 tbsp minced garlic
- 1/4 c salt
- 1/4 + 1/8 c fennel seeds
- 2.5 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1/4 c paprika
- 2.5 tbsp black pepper
- 1/3 c parsley
- 1/2 tsp oregano
- 1/2 tsp thyme
- 1/2 c red wine vinegar
- 2/3 c cold water
Instructions
- In a large bowl combine all dry ingredients, mix well.
- Add wet ingredients and mix well.
- Cube up wild game and pork shoulder into 1-2 inch cubes (or whatever will accomodate your grinder).
- Combine cubed up meat with spices in a large bowl and mix well.
- Grind mixture with a course attachment.
- Grind mixture again with a fine attachment.
- Weigh out meat into 1lb portions, package to your liking, and freeze.
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