Okay, so... this isn't going to be much of a recipe. I was preparing things in a bit of a hurry and I didn't really do a great job measuring things or keeping track of what I was doing. I based the seasoning proportions on an Italian Sausage recipe that I found online, but I wasn't following his instructions at all and I didn't have the same type or amount of meat. I basically just mixed up the seasoning blend and then cooked up some ground pork, adding the other "wet" components from the recipe while it cooked along with enough of the spices to make it tasty. The problem is that I'm not sure how much pork I started with and I didn't measure to see how much of the spice blend I ended up using. So this is one of those "keep adding until it's tasty" situations. Oh well... if nothing else, this should give a general idea of what works well for seasoning sausages.

Italian Sausage

Adapted from Billy Parisi

Ingredients

All ingredients are listed in parts by volume.

• 16 parts coarse sea salt¹
• 12 parts fennel seeds
• 12 parts coriander seeds
• 12 parts sugar
• 6 parts dried basil
• 6 parts dried oregano
• 6 parts black peppercorns
• 6 parts sweet paprika
• 2 parts red pepper flakes
• 1 part ground nutmeg
• 2-4 cloves of garlic per kilo of meat, minced²
• 2-3 Tbsp. fresh minced flat-leaf parsley per kilo of meat³
• 3-4 Tbsp. white wine per kilo of meat
• ground meat (preferably pork or a mix of pork and chicken)

Directions

1. Combine all the dry ingredients -- salt, fennel, coriander, sugar, basil, oregano, peppercorns, paprika, pepper flakes, and nutmeg and also garlic powder (if using) -- and grind in a spice grinder.
2. If you're making actual sausage links, you'll want to prepare your meat at this point: grind it if it's not already ground, get your sausage casings ready, etc.
3. Mix the wet ingredients into the meat: garlic (if using fresh), parsley, and wine.
4. Sprinkle in some of the spice mix, adding it bit-by-bit until the meat seems to be well-seasoned. (I go largely by smell for this.) If you're not sure on the seasoning, cook a bit of the meat up and taste it. Start when you think it's a bit underseasoned so that you can test as you go and don't overshoot.
5. Once the seasonings are good, you can do the actual sausage stuffing. I didn't do that, so I won't go into details here. Check the link if you'd like detailed instructions on how to make sausage links.
6. Cook and enjoy!

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¹ The original recipe called for 18 parts salt. I reduced it to 16 parts, but I think that even less would've been fine. I might try it with 14 parts next time and see how it goes. ^Back
2 I think I ended up using ~1 Tbsp. of garlic paste in place of the fresh garlic for my sausage. That is largely unhelpful though as I'm not sure how much meat I had. I think I was working with ~450g, but I didn't weigh it before I started. I think that garlic powder (the granulated kind, not the floury kind) would also be acceptable. In that case, I'd mix the garlic powder in with the rest of the spices and start with 6 parts garlic. ^Back
3 I discovered at the last minute that I was out of parsley, so I ended up using a lesser amount of cilantro instead. This worked fine, but I would've preferred parsley. ^Back