Mama Alfieri’s Italian Sausage 

The Italian sausage I typically find in grocery stores is too fatty and bland. But perhaps my childhood just spoiled me. My grandmother Genoeffa Alfieri (1898-1967) brought this recipe with her from Molise, Italy, and taught my dad, Dominic Alfieri, how to make it. This was one of the most requested items at Alfieri’s Food Market, the signature meat item with a package name the same as the title of this recipe.

My grandmother, the eponymous Mama Alfieri, and my father, her son Dominic

Near the end of his life, my dad passed the recipe on to my uncles Vincent and Alex. Because my dad, the grocery butcher, prepared it more by feel than by measurement at this point, it took some trial and error before my uncles closed in on the original recipe. They continued to sell four variations of the sausage (mild, hot, sweet, and Abruzzese) in our hometown for twenty years after the grocery store closed down. I joined them once at Grandma Alfieri’s and carefully weighed the ingredients. After some trial and error of my own, I’ve been able to provide a precise set of measurements here. This recipe requires special equipment and ingredients and is a lot of work, but the results are great. The sausage can be used in my mother’s meat-flavored sauce recipe or in Grandma Alfieri’s recipe with shell macaroni and broccoli. It’s also great simply grilled and served on Italian bread. In passing this recipe along, I hope to keep the specialty of our East Rochester, New York, family grocery alive.

Before we get to the recipe, let’s talk about what you may see as obstacles: choosing a meat grinder and buying and measuring this quantity of pork butts, hog casings, and spices.

 

Choosing a Meat Grinder

Initially I thought I could avoid buying a separate machine by using my wife’s fancy KitchenAid Professional Stand Mixer with a meat-grinder attachment. This attempt destroyed my wife’s fancy KitchenAid Professional Stand Mixer. It wasn’t working well, and then it wasn’t working at all. Lesson learned, amends made, and sausage making postponed.

 

Many years of not making sausage ensued, but I try not to dwell on that period and what could have been. Finally, I treated myself to a Weston #32 Stainless Steel Pro with a 1.5-horsepower motor. It’s overkill. The 1.0-horsepower model would have been just fine, but I didn’t want to leave any doubt. I call my meat grinder “The Beast.” It’s built like a tank and could have been used in the movie Fargo (spoiler alert!) to grind up Steve Buscemi’s character.

With this grinder, I opt for a 10-millimeter (3/8-inch) plate rather than the 8-millimeter one that came with it (which ground the sausage a little too finely). I purchased a set of metal nozzles (also called stuffing funnels); however, I now think plastic ones might work better because the casings slip off them more easily.

 

 

Keep the grinder plate and grinding knife sharp.

 

Buying Pork Butts, Casings, and Spices

You can get pork butts and casings at a meat wholesaler for a great price, but, alas, my wife makes me purchase all meat at Whole Foods. I normally call ahead to order the casings and about 14 pounds of pork butts with bone (cheaper this way). I’ll end up with 10 pounds after trimming and deboning.

 

Buying spices at local groceries can be expensive. I try to purchase as many spices as possible from Amazon and Costco. I tend to pick a brand (per spice) and stick with it. It’s just easier to make adjustments that way.

 

Measuring Ingredients

 

You will need two scales: a small one (100-gram capacity) to weigh the spices and a larger to weigh the pork cubes.

 

 

Mama Alfieri’s Italian Sausage: Mild, Hot, Sweet, and Abruzzese Varieties

Note that the latter three versions are presented below as variations of the mild. At our grocery, the mild and hot proved the most popular; in my kitchen now, I only make the mild. I include the others here more for archival purposes. They are recipes I was given, but not ones I’ve executed and refined. (Actually, I did make the Abruzzese once, but it wasn’t as I remembered it.) Because I prefer the mild, that’s where I’ve focused my efforts.

Mild

10 pounds boned, trimmed, and cubed pork butts or shoulder (weight is for resultant cubes, so need about 14 pounds before trimming)

Hog casings

2 oz salt, carefully weighed, and additional salt for soaking casings

1 cup water, and additional water for soaking casings

2.3 oz paprika, carefully weighed

0.5 oz black pepper, carefully weighed

0.5 oz crushed red pepper, carefully weighed

0.7 oz fennel seed, carefully weighed (I’ve found this amount to be the maximum!)

 

The Untested Variations:

                        Hot

                        Same as Mild version above, except:

                        1.5 oz crushed red pepper (or to taste)

 

                        Sweet

                        Same as Mild version above, except:

                        NO crushed red pepper

                        NO fennel

                        Note: the ingredients on the package label shown at the top of this page are incorrect for Sweet!

 

                        Abruzzese (ah-broot-TSAY-zay)

                        (This came from my mother’s father, who was from Abruzzo, Italy.)

                        Same as Mild version above, except:

                        NO paprika

                        NO crushed red pepper

 

 

1.     Strong suggestion: get as much set up and ready in these next steps BEFORE touching any raw meat. In particular, weigh all of your spices into zip-lock bags and get all of your trays and bowls in place.

2.     Presoak the casings in cold salted water and store in the refrigerator for 30 to 45 minutes. Rinse and transfer these to a bowl of cold (unsalted) water. You can then store this bowl of casings in the refrigerator until you’re ready to start grinding the meat.

2.    Debone pork butts, carefully removing gristle around the bone as well. Trim off most of the exterior fat. Cut meat into one-inch cubes, removing anything yucky like veins. (The size of the cubes actually depends on the power of your meat grinder. Adjust for your machine.) You want to retain as much fat marbling as possible for moisture and flavor, but you can remove some of the fat-only areas. If you trim too much, though, the sausage could end up not only drier than you’d like but hotter, because fat typically absorbs some spiciness. As I mentioned above, about 14 pounds of pork butts with bone should yield about 10 pounds of boned, trimmed, and cubed pork. If you end up with fewer pounds than that, you may have trimmed too much and might consider adding some back in. (So, don’t throw out the scraps until you’ve weighed!)

3.    Once you have your 10 pounds of pork cubes, put on some gloves and start mixing in spices with your hands. To ensure the stronger spices have extra time to get evenly distributed, I add them in this order:

i)     Salt and water, then mix very well

ii)   Crushed red pepper, then mix very well

iii)  Black pepper, then mix very well

iv)  Paprika, then mix very well

v)    Fennel, then mix very well

4.    Before grinding the seasoned pork, you have to use cold water to rinse and untangle the casing you’re immediately going to use. (Doing multiple to get ahead doesn’t work here—they’ll just get tangled or stick to themselves again.) You are trying to clean out and unkink the entire tube of the casing. I typically keep the bowl of cold water with the casings under the grinder nozzle for this purpose. For the first of two “rinse cycles,” dunk the casing in the water as many times as needed to nearly fill it up, and then squeeze the water through and back into the bowl. If the casing is so tangled you can’t do this, cut it into shorter casings and try again. Wet the grinder nozzle and then begin the second rinse: fill up the casing with water as you did before, but this time, let the water come out on its own as you put the casing on the nozzle. The wetter the casing and the nozzle, the less sticking you’ll have. If the casing sticks going on the nozzle, it will also stick coming off, which means it will break. Add more water around the casing as it’s going on to reduce this friction. (Note: Sometimes a casing may have little pustules on it that cause it to grip the nozzle; in this case, you may want to discard it for another.) After you get the casing on, try to slide it toward the front, or tip, of the nozzle. Twist the front end of the casing to close it off.

5.    Load up the meat grinder’s tray with as much meat as it can hold. Ideally, that would be at least as much as you’ll need to fill one casing. (The Beast can hold all 10 pounds!) Set the bowl of cold water and casings off to the side for now. Place under the nozzle, instead, a big rectangular baking pan for catching the long sausage link that will be extruded very soon.

6.    Turn on the meat grinder while holding onto the twisted end of the casing. Let the girth of the casing dictate the thickness of the sausage: the ground pork should fill up the casing without breaking it. Obvious advice, I know, but it’s tricky if you have a powerful grinder. You need to keep a light-to-moderate grip on the casing close to the tip of the nozzle to slow the movement of the casing, or else you’ll get sausages only half an inch in diameter. Allow the growing sausage link to fall into the tin. When you are finished grinding a batch, put the unused casing back into the water.

[Note: Sometimes the meat grinder clogs. You’ll see a difference in the appearance of the ground meat, with the typical streaks and specks being replaced by a more homogenous mass. If this happens, stop the machine, and remove and clean the star piece, grinder plate, and grinding knife. I try to be proactive by keeping the plate and the knife’s blades sharp and by removing and cleaning them after every two batches.]

7.     Repeat Steps 4-6 until you’ve used up your pork cubes. When you are finished, cut the stuffed casings into links about 5-6 inches long. I group the sausage into five-link bundles, double-wrapped in aluminum foil, and freeze whatever I don’t intend to cook immediately. [I am in the process of switching to wrapping the five links in parchment paper, followed by using the vacuum sealer, so stay tuned for an update here.] Often times, I need to clean the blade between these mini-batches, and the way I know it's time is when the sausage starts coming out too homogeneous or the machine seems to be struggling.

8.    If you want to enjoy the sausage by itself, rather than incorporated into another recipe, try this method:

i)     Over lower heat, grill the five links, still in their double-layer packet of aluminum foil, for 24 minutes, turning the packet over and moving it around every 6 minutes. Even this may be too long, but you want them cooked through.

ii)   Remove the links from their foil packets and finish browning them off for 1to 2 minutes. Serve on Italian bread.

 

 

Step 1: Presoak, rinse, and store casings.

 

 

 

Step 2: Cut out bones, gristle, anything ugly, such as a vein (shown on right), and only some fat.

 

 

 

 

End of Step 2: Admire your ten pounds of pork cubes. (These photos should also give you an idea of the amount of fat to leave.)

 

 

 

Step 3: Season your pork. Add salt and water, and mix well. Then add these spices one at a time, in this order, mixing well after each:

 

 

 

 

Step 4: Untangle and “load” a casing using the two-rinse-cycle method I’ve detailed.

(Notice how wet the casing is to prevent its sticking to the nozzle.)

 

 

 

 

Step 5: Put as much meat as possible into the grinder’s tray. It’s getting real now.

 

 

 

 

Step 6: Grind the meat and fill the casing. With one hand, maintain pressure on the casing at the nozzle tip to get the desired thickness; with the other, push meat into the chute using a stomper.

(My machine has a safety guard to keep my digits intact, so no stomper here.)

 

 

 

Step 7: Cut stuffed casings into links and double-wrap groups of five in foil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

 

The following table contains measurements for various attempts I’ve made for the Mild variety. Experiment F is the closest to what I remember, and what I have specified above.  You can see that I’m still struggling with the amount of paprika and fennel. The other ingredients have stabilized.