Ricetta per salsiccia: Recipe for Making Sausage

We had sausage every Saturday afternoon as we cooked the sauce for Sunday. We
cooked two pounds, but ate one pound for lunch with a good Italian bread and salad. We
continued with the sauce after we washed up after lunch. Dad, who had worked all
morning, went to take a nap. We continued to make the sauce.

And we always made a Grandma’s 1234 pound cake in case anyone stopped by for
coffee.

First go to Aunt Toni’s in Waterbury, whose son, Nick Padula, knows more about meat
than almost anyone on earth, including where the most humane slaughter house is in
Pennsylvania.

But if you can’t do that then you follow this recipe.

You must buy pork butt with the bone in, referred by those who know, as bone-in pork
butt. You ask for the following things:

1. you want the bone in the pork butt
2. you want to take the bone home for the sauce
3. you want the butcher to change the plate on the grinder to 3/8 th of an inch
4. you want it to be ground once and only once

You keep the meat cold until just before you start the process of making sausage—to
avoid any possibility of bacteria setting in.

Before you do anything else once you get the meat home you must wash your hands
thoroughly, again to avoid any bacteria.

You take off all jewelry and put it to one side.

You buy the intestines. They are called hog casings, mind you, not pig casings. You
should be able to buy them at any good grocers. You soak the intestines in luke-warm
water to get the salt out.

We used 12 lbs of pork. Never freeze it. It will ruin the flavor.

Wash the table thoroughly before placing the meat on the table. Aunt Toni had a plastic
table cloth on the table which was perfect.

12 lbs of ground pork
One Aunt Toni handful of kosher salt = 4 tbsps
One Aunt Toni handful of hot pepper = 4 tbsps
Four Aunt Toni handfuls of fennel seed = 16 tbsps. If you can possibly get ieri finocchio (Basilicata dialect for finocchio selvatico – wild fennel seed) from your relatives in Italy, so much the better. If not, regular fennel seed will do.

Knead this mixture all together.

If the meat feels dry to the touch, add liquid of choice, white or red wine or water. It
makes it easier to stuff into the casings.

But before you start stuffing you put some oil in the frying pan and cook some of the
stuffing out of the casings and stir so that you can taste the flavoring and see if you think
it’s right. Adjust according to your response. And of course so that you can have lunch.

You don’t overcook it or it will change the flavor. You watch Aunt Toni to learn the
rules.

Drink very good wine with lunch which Nick has procured from one of his customers, a
restaurant owner in Connecticut whose meatballs are as good as my grandmother’s and
Billy’s.

When the casings are washed clean of their salt they are ready to use. You use a wide
mouth funnel. Not that hard to buy.

You pull the casings up over the stem of the funnel so that they are pulled up over the
stem and not dangling off the end of the funnel. That would make it much harder to work
with. You keep that casing in place on the stem as you work or the whole thing gets very
awkward.

If you’ve had lunch in between preparing the sausage meat and stuffing it, wash your
hands again.

Push the sausage mixture into the funnel mouth, using your thumbs to push it down
through. You pierce the casings with a pointed object, so that no air pockets are left in the
stuffing. You stuff and pierce and stuff again so that the casings are solidly filled. Once a
piece of the stuffing has filled about four inches twist the casing good and tight to make a
link. Continue stuffing. You can tie the links off after the whole casing is finished, of
course including the end so that nothing comes out and between the links, too.

Send each person home with a Ziplock of sausage.

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Above: Aunt Toni in her garden with tomatoes, Waterbury, Connecticut. She gardened until she was 96 and passed away at the age of 101.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joanna Clapps Herman is a southern Italian woman through all four grandparents, all of whom were from Basilicata. She’s a writer who loves family, cooking, eating and very good wine. Or she’s a cook who likes to write and hang out with the people she loves. Her latest book is When I Am Italian: Quando sono italiana (SUNY Press, 2019).  www.joannaclappsherman.com

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