Here's how the homemade Italian sausage gets made

Good Italian sausage begins with the right cut of meat, most often pork butt, providing the perfect ratio of meat and fat, a grind that is not too fine, and seasonings. For me, it also starts with a friend named Joe.

How many of you have a friend named Joe? I am blessed to have two friends named Joe, both with deep Italian roots who enjoy making homemade Italian sausage. To help ease any confusion, I will call one Joe Jr., and the other, Dr. Joe. They both grew up in big Italian families who gathered together to make homemade Italian sausage. A tradition passed from generation to generation.

Joe Jr. grew up in Chicago making sausage with his family and has been making sausage on his own for more than twenty-five years from an original recipe given to him by his Aunt Jenny. His recipe has changed with input from family; Aunt Mary thought he added too much black pepper and his parents wanted more fennel, but he is happy with the current version featuring fennel, caraway, crushed red pepper and coriander, along with a little sugar and garlic powder.

Joe Jr. starts with sugar, salt, fennel, caraway seeds, red pepper flakes, garlic powder and crushes whole coriander along with cracked black pepper to season freshly ground pork shoulder. He adds sugar and salt to ice water until dissolved and then mixes in the spices slowly adding the chilly mixture to the pork, mixing with his hands, until evenly distributed. Joe Jr. has an electric sausage stuffing machine (yep, that is what it is called), but it hasn't been working well lately, so his father, Joe Sr. has been helping to stuff casings by hand, a real labor of love.

In Italy, Dr. Joe's parents raised two pigs a year. Tradition is not to waste any part of an animal, so the butt and shoulder sections were used to make sausage, both fresh and dried/cured. They brought their sausage-making tradition with them to the United States where Dr. Joe's father, a carpenter, made a wooden container large enough to hold 300 pounds of ground pork shoulder, perfect for when the family would find pork butt on sale and come together to have a sausage-making party.

While he called it a party, sausage making was serious business at their house, and everyone had a job.

While Dr. Joe and his siblings don't make sausage together as often as they used to, the tradition is alive and well. Today, he and his family have their sausage-making parties, with son Eric at the helm of the hand grinder, all being helped and supervised by the very people that started the tradition, Dr. Joe's parents. He also likes to add salt, red pepper flakes and fennel - but toasts it first, along with his twist of paprika and dried oregano.

So, what if you don't have a meat grinder? The answer is easy, purchase ground pork butt, or unseasoned sausage meat, at your local grocery store or butcher. Just be careful to not buy the ground pork near the ground beef, as it is a finer grind than you want for sausage, but is great for meatloaf. Now add spices and stuff into casings.

I know what you are thinking; I know what casings are made of, but they really do make perfect little sausage packages and help sausage stay together and moist while cooking. They are readily available from Valli and Caputos or call wherever you purchase meat, and they will get them for you. Prepare by following package instructions, or ask your butcher, and they will help you.

Truthfully, I have never stuffed casings at home, but have had the opportunity to try it during a sausage-making class. It is not difficult at all and is made very easy with a KitchenAid mixer attachment or sausage stuffing gadget.

That said, you can quickly form the sausage into cylinder shapes, or patties, and gently cook in a skillet, turning, so they don't fall apart and still have great tasting sausage.

Both Joe Jr. and Dr. Joe agree on a few key steps: Keep things cold - bowls, grinding attachments, and meat should be very cold when making sausage. When things start to get warm, the fat begins to break down, which is not good for the sausage. Grind before adding spices, use a grinding plate with ¼-inch holes, and only grind once. Start with a recipe and adjust seasonings to your liking. If you want to add more heat, increase the red pepper flakes, not the black pepper.

Once you master the Italian version, consider making breakfast sausage by adding sage, maple syrup, salt, and garlic along with some salt and pepper.

I have not yet ground my own pork butt, opting for purchasing it from the grocery store. However, I do have a meat grinder attachment to my mixer and plan to invite my family to our very own sausage-making party and promise to try even stuffing the mixture into casings. The idea of sausage making becoming a "memory maker" for my family makes me want to go out and buy some pork butt right now.