Hot Italian Sausage

I generally use Pork Butt and/or Pork Shoulder for Italian sausage.

I marinate the coarse ground meat (using my KA food grinder attachment with the large hole insert) overnight in the fridge.

I generally try to make 12 lbs at a time, as my big bowl holds that much.

I use the following:

1-2 C Red wine (drinkable red wine) (for 12lbs ground pork)
S&P (Salt about 1 tsp/lb, pepper about 1/4 tsp/lb)
Cayenne (about 1/8 tsp/lb)
Fennel Seed (about 1/4 tsp/lb)
Anise (about 1/8 tsp/lb)
Garlic (to taste - usually about 1 clove crushed/lb)
Onion powder (1/8 tsp/lb)

Measurements are rough, and can be varied according to taste and experience.

Occasionally I mix it up by adding a bit of fresh marjoram, dried basil, oregano. I don't use much if I do add these "extras" as the basic recipe above gives a nice flavorful, not too complex tasting hot sausage.

I generally grill all 12 lbs at once, whilst next burner over, I have a huge stock pot in which I am making fresh marinara/spaghetti/pizza sauce, and when the sausage is pretty much cooked through, I scoop it up and into the sauce it goes.

Simmer a couple of hours, and then we can the entire batch. Any leftovers make our meal for that evening.

It's kind of neat a year later to just make some fresh pasta (or boil some dry pasta) and open up a jar with meat already in it! I use the same sauce for pizza sauce and it's worked out pretty good too. As we've aged, we just don't seem to require as much meat in a meal to be satisfied. 12 lbs of meat stretched over 14-18 quarts of sauce really doesn't seem like all that much meat when you use it. We certainly not talking Meatsa Pizza! :)
doc