Spicy Hot Italian Sausage

Forget the supermarket stuff. Once you grind and stuff your own Italian sausage, there’s no going back. Pork butt and pork fat get ground together, then tossed with fennel seed, garlic, cayenne, red pepper flakes, and black pepper for a link that bites back.

The fennel is what makes it unmistakably Italian. That licorice-sweet aroma against all that heat is what separates a good sausage from a great one.

Stuffed into natural hog casings and tied at 5-inch intervals, these links are ready for the grill, the skillet, or crumbled into your Sunday red sauce.

Kitchen Tips

• Keep your pork and fat ice cold while grinding. Cold fat grinds cleanly and gives you that classic snappy bite when cooked.
• A 3/8-inch grinder plate gives the ideal coarse texture for Italian sausage. Finer plates make it too dense.
• Soak the hog casings in warm water for 30 minutes before stuffing. They’ll be pliable and slide onto the stuffing tube easily.
• These freeze beautifully. Lay the links flat on a sheet pan to freeze individually, then bag them up.