Monday, February 14, 2011

Basic Sweet Sausage Mix




We order our meat from local farms and with it the most delicious sausages. They’re perfect for a quick lunch on a busy weekend, but quite tedious to use in recipes like pasta, gumbo or on top of pizza. Removing the chewy casings is just too much work!

But then I had an a-ha moment!

Somebody made these sausages with plain ground meat, and added spices. Wouldn’t it just be easier for ME to add my own spices to the meat and save myself all the work of disassembly? All I needed was to learn which spices went into sausages!

It seems that spicing sausages is really quite simple. It’s getting them into the damn casings in the first place that makes it work to make them! And since labor tends to cost money, a pound of my spiced meat for cooking costs us over $2/pound less than buying the sausages themselves.

Basic Sweet Sausage Mix

3 tablespoons cracked fennel seed
3 tablespoons black pepper
3 tablespoons salt

Use one tablespoon of seasoning for each pound of ground meat.

Tonight for Valentine’s Day I decided to make bow tie pasta with sausage, onion and red peppers.


My husband gobbled it up and begged for more. I would't say it's the most romantic thing he's ever eaten, but it did make for a nice dinner. Especially since for the first time since I've made the pasta he didn't complain about the chewy casings.

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