Chicken Sausage Recipe – Italian Style and Variations
- Type
- Bratwurst
- Level
- Easy
- Rating
- Rate this recipe
In this post, I’ll show you how to make chicken sausage yourself. It’s easy and super quick to make.
First I’ll show you a delicious Italian variant. I also added 2 additional recipes at the bottom.
Also, I have more sausage recipes in my book “24 Bratwurst Recipes for a Perfect Barbecue Experience”.
In my post on how to make Bratwurst I also answered some general questions about making bratwurst. Have a look there.
But now enough talking…
Here you will find the complete chicken sausage recipe as a video or to read through.
Have fun and good luck making it!
Table of Contents
Chicken Sausage – What do you need to make it?
Ingredients per 1 kg
| Ingredient | Grams | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| chicken meat with skin | 800 g | 80 % |
| pork back fat , alternatively you can replace the pork backfat with lard, cream or more chicken skin | 200 g | 20 % |
Spices per 1 kg
| Ingredient | Grams |
|---|---|
| dried tomatoes (preserved in oil) | 50 g |
| fresh basil | 20 g |
| salt | 18 g |
| fresh garlic | 15 g |
| white pepper | 3 g |
| mace | 1 g |
| dried sage | 0.75 g |
| allspice | 0.5 g |
The equipment to make chicken sausage
You need a meat grinder to “grind” the meat. The grinder chops the meat into small chunks which then can then be mixed.
You need a sausage stuffer to get your meat mass into the casing. If you are starting out you can also add an attachment to your grinder or use a modified plastic bottle or funnel.
Sausage casings
Chicken Sausage is traditionally filled into natural casings.
I recommend hog casings caliber 28 / 30. If you like to make thinner sausages, sheep casings caliber 20/22 are very good.
If you would like to prepare the sausages without casing: You can just form the mass into patties and fry them out without a casing or preserve them in a jar.
Make Chicken Sausage – Step-By-Step Instructions
Cut the chicken meat and backfat into strips which can fit into your grinder.
Add the basil, garlic and sundried tomatoes and mix.
Put the meat and the movable parts of your grinder into the freezer for 1 – 2 hours. This will help with the grinding process and the meat temperature.
Grind the spices to a fine powder.
Now it’s time to grind the meat. Depending on how coarse or fine you want your chicken sausage, you can use different perforated discs here.
To be honest, this is a complete matter of taste. I personally like chicken sausage quite fine and therefore I use the finer perforated disc (3 mm). But as I said… It must taste good to you!
Add the spices to the minced mixture and mix well.
Put the casing onto the sausage stuffer. Typically, you need to put the casings into a lukewarm water 30 min before you use them. This will ensure that they can be put onto the stuffer.
Fill the meat into the casing. Hold the casing tightly on the filling spout and let it slowly fill up more and more. This part needs some practice. Do not worry if it does not work 100%.
Important: Do not fill the casing too full, otherwise it will burst later when roasting.
Now it’s time to link the sausages. You can decide for yourself how big your Chicken sausage should be. Put the sausage between your thumb and forefinger. Rotate the sausage away from you then move to the next link and rotate it toward you.
As with the filling process you will need some practice to get it perfect.
Your italian Chicken sausage is now ready. Fry it up and enjoy.
Frequently asked questions
How do you cook chicken sausage?
How do you cook chicken sausage?
The same way you cook any fresh bratwurst, with one difference: keep the heat moderate. Poultry is lean, which is why this recipe puts back fat into the mixture in the first place, and a very hot pan or a very hot grill drives that fat straight back out and leaves you with a dry sausage.
If you would rather not judge it by eye, scald the sausages first and colour them in the pan afterwards. The shelf-life section below gives the temperature and the time I use for that, and it has the side effect of keeping them longer in the fridge. And if you shaped the mixture into patties instead of filling it into a casing, which the equipment section offers you, cook them like burgers.
What makes this an Italian chicken sausage?
What makes this an Italian chicken sausage?
The spice list, and nothing else. Underneath it this is a plain fresh chicken sausage. What turns it Italian is the dried tomatoes in oil, the fresh basil, the fresh garlic and the sage, and those four are also why the ingredient list looks nothing like a German bratwurst’s.
The tomatoes are worth a word of their own. They go in oil-packed rather than dried hard, so they bring their oil with them into a mixture that is already lean, and they stay recognisable as pieces after grinding. If Italian is not what you are after, the three variations at the end of this post swap that spice list out and leave everything else alone.
What is the shelf life of the chicken sausage?
What is the shelf life of the chicken sausage?
Depending on how you handle it after production, the chicken sausage has a different shelf life.
Raw it can be kept in the refrigerator for about 1-2 days.
If you scald it directly after production at 75 degrees Celsius for 25 minutes, it can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for about a week.
Alternatively, you can freeze it raw or poach them. They will keep for up to 6 months and will not lose any flavor.
I usually consume the chicken sausages directly or freeze them raw.
3 more chicken sausage variations for you
A classic chicken sausage flavoring
Spices per kg of meat:
- 18 g salt
- 3 g white pepper
- 1 g mace
- 1 g coriander
- 1 g marjoram
- 0.5 g allspice
A spicy take on chicken sausage
Spices per kg of meat:
- 18 g salt
- 15 g harissa paste
- 7 g garlic (approx. 2 cloves)
- 2 g black pepper
- 0.5 g allspice
- 0.5 g cumin
- 0.5 g coriander
- 1 g paprika
Tipsy chicken sausage
Spices per kg of meat:
- 18 g salt
- 20 ml red wine
- 5 g fresh parsley
- 3 g paprika
- 2 g black pepper
- 1 g mace
hi sir i need formulas of all kind of sausages