Homemade Italian Style Beef Sausage
This Homemade Italian Style Beef Sausage post is sponsored by the New York Beef Council, but the opinions are entirely my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that support Spiced!
Seasoned with traditional Italian sausage herbs and spices, this Homemade Italian Style Beef Sausage is a fun twist – and it makes for the best meat sauce ever!
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We eat a lot of pasta around here. We also eat a lot of beef. This fun recipe for Homemade Italian Style Beef Sausage combines those two favorites into one! I’ve always wanted to learn how to make sausage, and I finally got a chance to try my hand at it. Surprisingly, making homemade sausage really isn’t that hard at all. You do need some special equipment, but aside from that it’s super easy. Let’s get started!
Last summer, a handful of bloggers joined the New York Beef Council at a house in the Catskill Mountains for a week. We ate a lot of delicious beef recipes. We had the chance to learn video techniques from expert videographers, and of course we had a lot of fun, too. As we all parted ways at the end of the week, we promised to do it again next year. Little did we know at the time, but there was a pandemic in store for us the next year. So instead of meeting for Blogger House 2.0, we decided to do some virtual events this year. And one of those was learning how to make homemade sausage via Zoom.
Homemade Italian Style Beef Sausage
In order to make homemade sausage, you’re going to need a meet grinder + sausage stuffer (aff. link). (I have the STX Megaforce Classic 3000 grinder + sausage stuffer, and it’s great.) These machines might sound complicated, but they are actually pretty easy to use. Bonus – because you start with grinding your own beef, you can buy bulk cuts at your local butcher. For this project, we actually made 3 different styles of beef sausage. Today’s post focuses on the Homemade Italian Style Beef Sausage, but we’ll briefly mention the other styles later. Since we were making 3 different types, we started with a full 10+ pounds of beef.
I went to my local butcher and purchased a 10-lb chuck eye roll. The Chuck Eye Roll comes from the chuck subprimal, and it’s where cuts like the Chuck Eye Roast and Chuck Eye Steaks come from. To be fair, the full Chuck Eye Roll was closer to 25-lb, but I just asked my butcher for half of it. Back home, that large piece of meat gets cut into smaller strips. This is the easiest part of the whole process! Aside from using normal care with your knife, you don’t need to worry about how you cut that piece of meat. You just want it small enough to go through the grinder.
Once that meat is cut, you process it through the grinder using a medium grinder plate. You’ll end up with a huge bowl of freshly ground beef. At this point, you’re going to face a tough decision. Resist all temptation to stop and make a boatload of burgers. While those burgers with freshly ground beef would be delicious, this batch is destined for sausage – although if you pull off a pound or two for burgers, I don’t think anyone will be upset!
The next step is adding the seasonings. Traditional pork-based Italian sausage is heavily seasoned with fennel, paprika and other spices. We just take that spice combination and mix it into our ground beef. Sausage making isn’t difficult, but it is a bit of a process. I like to go ahead and make a bunch at once, and then store it in the freezer for easy meals later on. At this point, I divide the ground beef into 2-lb bowls and add seasonings to each bowl.
Once those seasonings are gently mixed in, you process the ground beef back through the medium grinder plate again. This helps further mix in the seasonings, and it also gives you a bit finer grind to the beef. Sausage typically uses the medium blade, while the finest blade is used for things like hot dogs or beef jerky. At this point, you’ll have ~2 pounds of Homemade Italian Style Beef Sausage. You can stop there and use it as ground sausage, or you can take the next step and form it into links.
Ground Sausage vs. Links
If you do opt to make links out of that sausage, then you’ll need to get hog casings (or synthetic casings) from your butcher. The same butcher where I purchased the Chuck Eye Roll had hog casings that were already double-washed. Nice and easy. Back home, you’ll take off the grinder blade and add the sausage stuffer attachment. The STX Megaforce grinder (aff. link) came with great instructions for how to stuff the sausage. As you stuff the sausage, you’ll end up with one giant link. To separate it into smaller links, you just give it a couple of twists and then cut it with a sharp knife – it will stay twisted and you’ll end up with sausage in link form.
With all of this said, you can totally just buy ground beef at the store and mix in the appropriate Italian seasonings. You’ll be all set to make the most delicious meat sauce ever. Heck, you can even use your favorite store-bought pasta sauce. It will be an amazing sauce either way! We love meat sauce, and we typically make big batches of it here. Then we divide it back into jars and freeze it for easy weeknight meals. (If you go this route, just make sure to leave ~1″ of space at the top of the jars as the sauce will expand once it freezes.)
Have I convinced you to try this Homemade Italian Style Beef Sausage yet? I hope so! Whether in ground-form or link-form, it’s a tasty creation that makes for one heck of a delicious meat sauce. In fact, we made this meat sauce recently, and I used both ground beef sausage as well as links. It was the exact kind of comfort food we needed to welcome in these early Autumn days! If you’re looking to learn a new skill in the kitchen, try your hand at homemade sausage. (Even if you don’t go all in for the sausage stuffer, you can make ground sausage fairly easily.)
If you’re looking for additional flavor profiles for your beef sausage, check out these other versions. (As noted above, you can make several different styles at one time and then freeze for later.)
- Mexican Style Sausage (i.e. chorizo)
- Breakfast Sausage
- Cajun Sausage
- Polish Style Sausage
- Asian Style Sausage
- German Style Sausage
Did this post inspire you to make Homemade Italian Style Beef Sausage? Leave a comment, or snap a photo and tag me on Instagram (@Spicedblog). I’d love to see your version!
Homemade Italian Style Beef Sausage
Ingredients
- 2 pounds ground beef
- 2 tsp fennel seed
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ tsp ground coriander
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp paprika
- ½ tsp black pepper
- ½-1 tsp crushed red pepper
Instructions
- Using a large mixing bowl, add the ground beef and all of the seasonings. Gently mix until well combined. (see note)
- Place a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Once hot, add mixture and cook, stirring occasionally, for 8-10 minutes, or until beef is fully cooked. (Note: The USDA recommends ground beef to be cooked to an internal temperature of 160°F.)
Notes
Looking for other tasty beef recipes? Check out these other favorites:
Bacon Cheeseburger Monkey Bread
What a great post, David. I have a meat grinder, and I’ve always wanted to get around to making my own hamburger. So if you ever get into that, I’ll be so eager to read your recipe. I do love sausage, and in fact, I love to scramble it and add it to pasta sauce, so I think your recipe would work perfectly for me, since I’d have no need to put the sausage into casings.
Grinding meat at home is awesome, Jeff! It’s quite economical, and I find it much tastier, too. Definitely shoot me a message if you have any questions! It was fun taking those ~10-12 pounds, and breaking them into different batches and adding different seasonings. I could see you enjoying that Polish beef sausage!
I’m thinking to purchase a meat grinder and start making my own sausage blends. I’m trying to get away from eating pork. Would you be able to season the chunks of meat before grinding, so that the spice blend mixes well with the meat?
Hey Tami! I totally support your plan of buying a meat grinder and making sausage blends at home. Making loose sausage was very easy. Stuffing the sausage into casings required a bit more practice (and obviously buying the casings) – it can be done, but that part is a learning process.
With all of that said, I think you probably could season the pieces of meat before you grind them. It’s all going to end up in the same bowl. But do keep in mind that you’ll want to season the meat more than you normally would if you do that route. It’s just as easy to grind the meat and then add the seasonings to the bowl and stir.
Make sure to check out the links at the bottom of the post for other styles of beef sausage – the chorizo version worked very well! And I also linked the grinder + sausage stuffer that I use in the post – it’s a good one. Let me know if you have any questions!
I’m not much of a beef eater or pasta eater but, David, that sausage looks amazing sitting in that sauce on that plate of pasta – You’ve convinced me I need to grab a fork and head on over! 😀
So love that y’all Had a zoom class on making sausage! I recall a job with collective bias I was a CL on where bloggers were given a grinder and sausage maker and I had so much fun reading and learning from all those posts- just like i am from this!
Awesome recipe, my friend!
Haha – why thank you so much, Shashi! I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about learning how to make sausage via Zoom – but it worked out quite well! Now I want to keep practicing so that I get better at it. Do you think Laura will let me start making sausage that I can age in the basement? (You know, like salami and stuff.) I might need you to help me convince her!!
What a fun project to make your own sausage – love that you can control exactly what’s in it! We often grind our own lamb and beef, but I’ve never made sausage – now I’m inspired!
If you already grind your own lamb and beef, then you’re just a short step away from sausage! Our local butcher had casings that were already “pre-tubed” so that meant you just needed to hook them on the attachment and you were off and running. So easy! You should tackle that as a COVID project!!
David, a great sausage making tutorial. I love making sausage and have been do so for some time. But, I’ve never made beef sausage. Don’t know why, but I haven’t. As our beef is “so so” I think it’s a great candidate for sausage. I’ll have to give it a go. Thanks for sharing and I bet the zoom sausage making event was a hoot…
Ah, you should totally try your hand at beef sausage, Ron! Beef sausage isn’t as common (which is probably why you haven’t tried it yet), but we found it be quite tasty. All of the same seasonings you would use for various sausage types – just with the flavor of beef. Loved it! I’ve heard you talk about your local beef before, and I think you might be onto something there. It might not make a great smoked brisket, but I bet it would work well ground into sausage! And, yes, Zoom sausage making was pretty hilarious…but it worked well in the end. 🙂
We are a big pasta loving household too! This beef sausage looks fantastic and full of flavour. This and some pasta would be the most delicious combination!
Oh, the meat sauce that we made with this sausage was incredible, Alex! So – well – beefy and flavorful! 🙂 Thanks so much, my friend!
We eat a lot of pasta too! Love it! Huge carb and comfort food lover for sure. My parents often make their own sausage. Sounds like a fun weekend project, especially if I get to enjoy a recipe like this afterwards 😉 It’s raining here right now so comfort food is definitely in order and this looks like it would hit the spot! Happy Friday, my friend 🙂 Pinned!
Ah, a rainy day is all about comfort food! So if your parents already make their own sausage, then you should go learn some tricks from them. I have to say that it’s fun to make a huge batch of sausage and know that you have delicious meals stashed in the freezer! Plus, this meat sauce? Oh man, it’s amazing! Thanks so much, Dawn!
wow david that looks like a lot of fun to make. but i don’t think i have the patience and i definitely don’t have a meat grinder. i bet it’s tasty tho. i guess i’ll just have to keep buying my sausages:-)
Haha – you could invest in a meat grinder, Sherry! I have to say that it was a lot of fun learning how to play with seasonings and herbs to make different flavors of sausage. 🙂
My husband is a huge sausage maker and he loves trying new recipes. He’s going to be so excited to try this Italian sausage! As many different types as he has made, he’s never made an Italian sausage! I can’t wait for him to give it a go!
Ah, that doesn’t surprise me one bit that your husband makes his own sausage! You should totally try your hand at Italian sausage. And to be honest, the beef version is pretty fun. Play around with some of those links in the post for different types of sausage, too (beef chorizo, Cajun, Polish, etc.). Have fun with it…and then send me some leftovers! 🙂
Wow, that beef sausage looks so legit, David! Now I wish I had the meat grinder attachment. Looks like such a comforting meal, perfect for fall and winter 🙂
I have to say that grinding my own meat (and then making sausage) was such a fun activity! I’m hooked on it now! Plus, you can really make a bunch of sausage quickly…and then have it all stored in the freezer for easy meals. Thanks so much, Michelle!
So interesting, David! That’s a heckuva grinder you have, too! When we moved into our house many years ago, there was a hand-crank grinder attached to the cupboard next to the sink. We never used it but always wonder if Esther (the old homeowner) made her own sausage. Anyway, this sausage looks amazing! I may have to give sausage-making a whirl. (or grind)
Interesting! I’ve seen those old hand crank grinders, and come to think of it I’m pretty sure my grandparents had one. Now I’m wondering if they made their own ground meat/sausage. I dunno. However, I do know that I am hooked on making sausage now! It’s such a fun foodie skill to learn – and it’s not as hard as I thought it would be.
Will certainly make one of this soon, I use Italian beef sausage a lot in some of my recipes, now I dont need to buy them. Thanks for the wonderful recipe
Awesome! You do need a meat grinder unless you want to start with ground beef. I have to say that making homemade sausage wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it might be. You should give it a try for sure, Raymund!
I love homemade sausage. This recipes sounds wonderful!! I grew up on a farm so we butchered twice a year. We always made homemade sausages.
Ah, yes, I remember you talking about growing up on a farm – I had forgotten that! I’m sure homemade sausage was a favorite then! So I have to say using beef to make various sausages was a lot of fun – I highly recommend it, Dawn! Thanks so much!