Sausage Recipes - How to Make Sausage

fresh sausage recipes — Photo by Hank Shaw

Fresh sausages are not exactly cured meat, but they are part of a salami-maker’s repertoire; you can’t make salami if you can’t first make fresh sausages. Below are an eclectic list of fresh sausage recipes made with both wild game and domestic meats, mostly lamb and pork in that case.

Why make your own? Control.

You can add or subtract anything you’d like, adjust how coarse or fine the sausage is, make them skinny or fat, long or short, spicy or sweet. A well-made sausage is a symphony in a link, needing nothing more than a simple accompaniment to play harmony.

Note that while I am categorizing these sausages by what meat is in them, understand that you can mix and match. There is no reason you cannot use pork or duck or whatever in what’s listed as a venison sausage recipe.

Basics

If you’ve never made sausage before, I wrote a basic tutorial on how to make sausages at home on my friend Elise’s site Simply Recipes. Start there.

Venison, Beef, Lamb or Goat

Keep in mind that when I say “venison,” I am lumping in deer, elk, moose, antelope, caribou, etc…

venison sausages with porcini and sage recipe

Venison Sausages with Sage

One of my go-to venison recipes, this is a perfect recipe for a sausage made in late fall or early winter. You can use any variety of sage, and dried porcini work just as well as fresh.

Homemade British Bangers

My take on a traditional British banger sausage, made like a Gloucester style sausage. I use venison here, but pork is traditional.

Venison Merguez Sausages

This is the classic North African sausage, normally done with all lamb – casings, too. Here I go with all venison, plus sheep casings. This is a spicy sausage great for grilling.

Antelope Longaniza

A longaniza sausage is a Spanish style with lots of paprika and rosemary.

Sage and Juniper Venison Sausage

I designed this recipe after deer hunting on Catalina Island, where there is lots of wild sage and juniper growing all over the place. This makes a pretty classic “hunter’s style” venison link.

Thessaly Greek Sausage

This is a recipe from Greece, normally done with lamb. It’s flavored with cumin, chile, oregano, red wine and allspice.

Andouille Sausage Links, Cajun Style

A Cajun classic, you can use any meat. This one is spicy and smoked. A must for any Creole or Cajun gumbo, jambalaya or etouffee.

Venison Sausages with Basil and Garlic

Make this venison sausage in the summertime. Lots of fresh basil and garlic make it a great recipe for summer grilling.

Venison Sausage with Bay and Garlic

Bay leaves are the main flavor here. I love them, and if you get good ones, they smell floral and sweet. This sausage is good any time of year.

Greek Loukaniko Sausage

The quintessential Greek sausage, it has many variations. Mine is an amalgam of several classic styles.

Wild Boar or Pork

If you have bear meat, these recipes would fit well here.

Sweet Italian Sausage

This is the classic, the basic sweet Italian sausage we all know and love. I normally make this with wild pig, but really any meat will do.

Hot Italian Sausage

This would be the other classic, hot Italian sausage. You kinda need both sweet and hot in a good Italian stew, right?

Polska Kielbasa

Traditional, smoked Polish kielbasa, made with lots of garlic and a little marjoram.

Portuguese Linguica Sausages

The essential Portuguese sausage, it is to Portuguese cooking what Andouille is to Cajun cooking. It’s a spicy link with lots of paprika and garlic. My version is smoked.

Cajun Boudin Sausage

Louisiana style boudin sausage, which is more like a meat stuffing with rice in a casing than a regular sausage. Damn good eaten on crackers with Creole mustard!

South African Boerewors

A traditional South African link made with a mix of pork and beef (or wild game) and flavored aggressively with coriander and other spices. I first learned of this sausage under, well, extreme circumstances.

Herbed Wild Boar Sausages

A regular ole’ sausage link gussied up with lots of fresh herbs — enough to make the links look kinda green.

Morcilla, Sanguinaccio, Boudin Noir

Blood Sausage. Yep, the real deal. My recipe is inspired by Portuguese morcilla, but it is a combination pork meat-pork blood sausage; many blood sausages only have blood, no meat.

Hmong Sausage with Wild Boar

There is a strong sausage-making tradition in Southeast Asia, and unlike the smooth Vietnames sausages, the Hmong sausages are coarse and rustic. I prefer them. These are flavored with ginger, chiles and cilantro.

Mazzafegati — Italian Liver Sausages

An Italian sausage from Umbria that mixes liver and pork meat. This is my favorite thing to do with wild boar liver, which can be strong-tasting otherwise. In this sausage, flavored with oranges, the liver is barely noticable.