One of the most popular pizzas is a meat pizza with both pepperoni and sausage. While sliced pepperoni is commonly found in groceries stores, the sausage is a little more difficult. However, there is a reason for this – sausage on pizza is best when you are making it fresh. Luckily, this is super easy to do. In fact, you only need two things to do it: ground sausage, and a frying pan.
An added bonus to making your own sausage pieces is that you get to pick how spicy you want it to be. Ground Italian sausage can come in a range of heats varying from mild to spicy. Personally, I like to stick to regular Italian sausage and I leave it up to the pizza sauce to kick the heat up.
Ingredients/Tools
1/3 pound Ground Italian Sausage
Small Frying Pan
Directions
1. Usually ground Italian sausage can only be bought in 1 pound increments. However, unless you want an extreme meat lover’s pizza, there is no need to use the whole pound at a time. I use about ⅓ pound for one pizza’s worth of sausage. I absolutely love my kitchen scale, so I do weigh the sausage ahead of time, freezing ⅔ of the pound before I start rolling out what I need for my pizza.
2. After you have weighed your sausage, the process of cooking it goes quickly. The most time consuming part of the recipe is rolling the meat into the right size balls. If you are a bit of a perfectionist, like me, this may take some time because you will want each ball to be relatively the same size and shape, but realistically, you do not have to make them all the same. I prefer my sausage bits to be on the smaller side, otherwise it seems like the sausage flavor overwhelms the rest of the pizza, so I stick to about ½ inch balls.
3. Once the sausage balls have all been formed it is time to take them to the stove. Turn the stove on medium low and warm the frying pan before putting the sausage into it. It is very important to keep the temperature at medium or lower, otherwise the outside of the balls will burn and the insides will still be raw. If you made the balls into ½ inch wide pieces they should only need to cook between 5-7 minutes. The insides may look a little pink, but this will finish cooking when they are on top of the pizza. Make sure to stir them throughout the cooking time to ensure that all the sides are cooking evenly.
4. After the sausages are cooked, transfer them to a paper towel lined plate. The towel will sop up any extra grease that comes off and prevent the grease from seeping into your pizza later.
Feel free to make the sausages up a couple of hours or even a full day before making your pizza. They will be fine to sit in the refrigerator waiting to be used.
Kitchen Tip: As an added bonus, if you make too many sausages to top your pizza, you can freeze them after they are cooked. Sometimes I like to make a batch of these up ahead of time and freeze them just in case I know I am going to have some busy nights coming up. They can work as a mini meatball to add some meat to a plate of pasta when you need to whip something up in a hurry!
Like this recipe? Check out my other pizza recipes to make a complete homemade pizza!
Fructose Friendly Marinara Sauce https://soupsonwithschallock.wordpress.com/2020/07/28/fructose-friendly-marinara-sauce/
Homemade Garlic Pizza Crust https://soupsonwithschallock.wordpress.com/2020/07/27/homemade-garlic-pizza-crust/
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