I studied various recipes and I found a perfect one that produces a delicious Sweet Italian sausage. The recipe is very close to that for making Hot Italian Sausage, but it doesn't use any red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper. If you want the hot version then add 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper and one teaspoon of crushed hot pepper flakes to the ingredients in this recipe.
The meat to use is a boneless, skinless pork shoulder, which is sometimes labeled as a Boston Butt roast. The point is that a skin and fat trimmed, deboned pork shoulder, will usually have a near perfect ratio of meat to fat, around 20% fat. You can tell easily when you cut it up for grinding if you have to discard any excess fat. If so, do so.
My food guru, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, notes that it is essential to cut the pork into 1" chunks, mix them with the kosher salt, and then bag them and refrigerate them overnight. That gives the proteins time to break down and then crosslink. Then you can proceed to make the sausage.
I made this sausage and it is better than excellent. Try it and you will agree. It was so good that I eliminated the existing Food Nirvana recipe for Sweet Italian Sausage.
The picture shown with this recipe has the sausage in casings. I either use casings or simply make sausage patties or meatballs or skinless links. The most versatile form is the 1" diameter meatball as it is perfect for pasta sauces and hot sausage sandwiches, plus it is easily cut into perfect size pieces for pizza toppings ... and the meatballs are very easy to make, and freeze, and then vacuum seal and keep frozen until use, without later having to cook more than what is needed for a given meal.
Ingredients:
5 pounds of boned, skinless pork shoulder, about 80% lean
2 tsp. black pepper
3 tbsp. (one ounce) of kosher salt (If the salt is in large crystal form, process it in a Magic Bullet® mixer for one minute before using it)
2 tsp. of sugar
4 tsp. of fennel seed (or maybe just a bit more)
1 1/2 tsp. of coriander seed
1 1/2 tsp. of caraway seed
3/4 cup of cold water
Directions:
Cut the meat into 1" chunks, then mix them by hand with the (ground) kosher salt in a large bowl. Put the mixture into a one gallon Ziploc® freezer bag, flatten it and seal it with no air pockets, and refrigerate the meat overnight.
Chill the meat grinder in the freezer for one hour.
If necessary, cut the pieces of pork so they will easily pass through the meat grinder.
Grind the pieces of pork using the 1/4" diameter holes die ... presumably using your Kitchen-Aid® stand mixer and the meat grinding accessory.
Let the ground pork fall into a stainless steel electric mixer bowl.
Pour the water into a two cup bowl. Then add the pepper and the sugar. Stir briefly.
Put the fennel seed, coriander seed and caraway seed into a Magic Bullet® container and mix them on high speed for two minutes.
Empty the ground herbs into the bowl with the water, etc. and mix well gently.
Now add the water and herbs mixture a little at a time to the mixing bowl and use the electric mixer on low to medium speed to mix each addition into the ground pork. Do this until all of the water and herb mixture has been well incorporated into to ground pork.
Remove the bowl from the mixer and mix/knead the sausage using your hands for two minutes. That will guarantee even distribution of the seasonings. You now have sweet Italian sausage.
At this point you might make and freeze meatballs, or you might put the sausage into a one gallon Ziploc® freezer bag, squeeze out the air, seal the bag and put the bag into the refrigerator overnight.
In the morning, if you bagged the sausage, weigh out 12 ounce amounts and put each batch into a one quart vacuum sealing bag. Then vacuum seal each bag, flatten it to make the sausage thickness uniform and put it into the deep freeze. Or, if you have the equipment, make sausage links, then freeze them and vacuum seal them and keep them in the deep freeze until you use them.
For cooking, if you made sausage links, poach them at the time of use in gently simmering hot water for 15 minutes to cook them through, then fry them, with turning to brown all the surfaces, in a small amount of vegetable oil.
When you want to use some of the frozen sausage, put a bag of it into the microwave oven for roughly 30 seconds on full power. Then flip the bag over and microwave on full power for 20 seconds. Then lay the partially thawed bag of sausage on the counter to complete thawing. Flip the bag over after 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes after that the sausage should be nicely thawed.
You can shape flat sausage into skinless links or into meatballs if you want, or you can simply cut it and cook it as sausage patties.
If you are making sausage patties, put the patties into a 12" diameter non-stick thick bottom hot skillet heated with a tbsp. or two of vegetable oil in it. The patties should be pressed with an oiled spatula, if necessary, so they are no more than 1/2" thick. I actually prefer thinner patties so I flatten them to 3/8" thick when I first put them into the skillet. Cook the patties for a minute or two and flip them over to the second side. Flatten them again and cook for a minute or two. Flip the patties over a few times until they are cooked, which means nicely browned on both sides.
Enjoy the sausage pieces in any way you like. We love to make sausage links or meatballs with sautéed red and green bell peppers and onions and sliced garlic, and put those into a warmed, long sub roll.