Homemade "Italian" Sausage- Does it get any better???
The ANNOTICO Report

You may have an especially good "store bought" sausage source, but can it come anywhere close to "homemade"??

New Jersey Star-Ledger
By Laura Schenone
Wednesday, June 30, 2004

...We are in the kitchen of Lou and Susan Palma -- unknown to the masses of fancy foodies or the Food Network, but the stuff of local culinary legend nonetheless. Anthropologists say that in every community there are cooking experts who carry forth the old methods so that we, the younger generation, may learn.

Sure. In this busy life, it can be hard to find anyone who makes fresh sausage anymore. But a few of us are lucky here in Montclair because we have Lou, our Italian-American guy. Today was our sausage lesson, and in typical Lou fashion, it would become a social event as well.

Lou's personal network is large -- overlapping business, friendship and cooking seamlessly into one semiretired life. After ending a career as a commercial printer , Lou now does carpentry and repairs amidst a rigorous cooking schedule. I met him five years ago... I needed a handyman. But soon we were talking about food.

"I do things the old way, like my mother" explains Lou, whose parents came from the countryside near Naples. The old way perhaps, and then some.

Lou's in his early seventies but more energetic than many fiftysomethings -- and a living testament to the health benefits of following your passion. On any ordinary day, you are likely to find him smoking some fish or pig in his backyard smoker, baking bread, pressing out porcini ravioli, or clabbering his own buttermilk for pancakes. Gnocchi seem to roll out by the dozen. Drop by for an impromptu hello, and you discover a fish he caught simmering in homemade fish stock, with leak and saffron, or perhaps his mama's escarole and beans on the stove.

No wonder I had to wait for months for this sausage lesson. And it turns out other friends were waiting as well. So when Lou and his wife Susan finally invited four of us apprentices, the plan was we'd come early to learn, then our lucky spouses would join for a sausage party where we'd taste the results.

Who could say no to that?

Certainly not me, but perhaps now would be a good point in this article to warn timid souls that sausage making may not be for everyone. First of all, you've got to sink your hands in a big bin of raw meat. Secondly, there are animal intestines that are involved. Quite frankly, you may need to dig down for your nerve. But hey, this is home manufacturing.

For those Italian-Americans and others who love sausage and peppers on the grill in summer, it's worth every bit of effort. This treatment of the classic will make you leave behind the all too familiar greasy version forever.

An ancient art

There are lots of reasons to make your own fresh sausage. But, hands down, first on the list is the extraordinary taste. The homemade fresh link -- made without preservatives or fillers -- embarrasses the factory product. This is mainly because you are the master, with complete control over freshness and quality.

Another reason to make your own sausage is that it's easy. If you don't have a sausage press, don't worry. Just shape the meat into patties for the grill and you'll still amaze yourself.

And finally, the last reason is that you can take pride in the fact that you're participating in a very ancient art.

The humble sausage was first invented in order to preserve meat for winter and use up all parts of the slaughtered animal, including blood and organs. Eventually, sausage making became an old world art based on flavor and infinite variety, ranging from bockwurst and keilbasa to mortadella and boudin blanc. In English, we find the word "link" as early as 1440.

Immigrants brought recipes and memories to the United States. But time and circumstances change things. In Italy, you will find no "Italian" sausage, but countless varieties according to region and village. Here in the United States, "Italian" sausage was narrowed down to one or two versions made with fennel, in mild and hot varieties. Lou's recipes are more complex and interesting with fresh greens and bits of cheeses. The heat from the red pepper is supposed to enhance but not overwhelm the sweetness of the meat.

For preservation purposes, sausage can be cured with salt or smoke or both. It can also be air dried. But for the Italian American classic with peppers and onions on the grill, you don't want to mess with any of that. You want fresh.

Tips and techniques

In order to make your own fresh sausage, here's what you need to know.

-- The meat. Be sure to use pork butt. Have it ground by a butcher rather than go through that effort yourself. Ask for a coarse grind.

-- The temperature. Keep the sausage meat very cold while working to prevent the fat from melting into the lean part of the meat. You don't want your concoction to emulsify. Put your containers and canisters in the freezer to get them cold before you begin. Sausage making was once a fall activity. But now with air conditioned kitchens, we can make it year round. Don't attempt this process in an un-air conditioned kitchen in the midst of a heatwave.

-- The seasoning. "The key to sausage making is the balance of salt," explains Lou, who swears by 25 grams (just a little under an ounce; an ounce is about 1 3/4 tablespoons) per five pounds of meat -- perhaps a little less if you're using a very salty cheese. Once your meat is shaped into patties or stuffed in casings, the deal is done. So before you take this final step, fry up a little patty and taste. Then correct the spices and flavors.

-- The links. If you do go ahead and try to make links, remember to cinch the end of each link in the opposite direction of the last. "Pete, Roy. Pete, Roy" says Lou as he does it, keeping track of whether he's twisting toward the neighbor who lives on this side or that side of him. (I find that "right and left" works just fine.)

To link or not to link

If, after making sausage patties, you want to graduate to the full blown experience of making links, shop carefully. Sausage stuffing machines range in price from less than $100 to more than $1,000, depending on capacity and quality. Don't purchase a bottom-of-the-line horizontal sausage maker, like the item I found for about $80 on the Internet -- you'll be disappointed. For a decent one, spring for about $200, such as the 5-pound capacity machine from "The Sausage Maker, Inc." available at many web sites, including www.sausagemaker.com. Lou's sausage press is professional quality, but 40 or 50 years old -- a cast off, talked away from a butcher.

Now we come to the casings. Most grocery stores do not sell them anymore. Purchase at a butcher or order them from a reputable source on line.

You can buy synthetic casings nowadays, made from cellulose, collagen, or plastic. Frankly I have no interest in eating plastic. Go the natural route and get natural casings (yes, that means intestines) from pig or sheep. They come heavily packed in salt and must soak in warm water at least 30 minutes. (Some recommend overnight.) Then connect them to the water tap at your kitchen sink and rinse by running lots of cold water through the insides. As the intestines fill with water, they will balloon up. Remind yourself that your ancestors did this all the time and that nature was once part of life and not to be shunned.

Mentor, handyman, friend

After pressing out more than two dozen sausages, the sausage lesson was coming to an end and the sausage party was beginning. The grill was hot and the Vidalia onions were already roasting away, sliced in half and laying on their backs, opening up like tulips beneath the heat. A loaf of crusty bread -- baked that morning -- sat on the cutting board. The red peppers had already been roasted and peeled, sliced, and mixed with olive oil and garlic, set out in a lovely painted dish.

We put our sausage on the grill, and reveled in the smell of the browning meat and fragrant onions.

"Is it done yet?" I insisted on a thermometer, which was ceremonially brought out to save us all from trichinosis.

The correct temperature should be 150. And so it was.

We filled our plates and quietly ate, stunned into silence by the flavors. The broccoli rabe sausage was my favorite -- mingling bitter, salty and sweet with the tingle of hot pepper. The grilled onions were the great surprise, soft, salty and bitter and sweet with herbs. The red peppers had mellowed beneath just the right amount of garlic.

We sat amidst the color of Susan's lovely garden of lilies, climbing jasmine, and other perennials coming to bud.

"Cooking is my poetry," Lou once uttered to me from atop a ladder many years ago while he was hanging a shelf in my home. This was back in our handyman-client days. And after years of talking about food, I've never gotten any better explanation than this. Lou's not prone to speeches about "slow food." From an older generation of journeymen -- he expresses himself more through the doing than the talking.

The proof is in the sausage, and the happy quiet in which we ate, the glow of awkward but pleasant communalism of having shared the effort of making something together and making new friends...

Laura Schenone is a freelance writer and author from Montclair, and a James Beard Award winner for her book, "A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances" (Norton, 2003).

The sausage apprentice -- fired up to learn
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