Italian Sausage – A popular and versatile fresh sausage
Fresh Italian sausage is a product that continues to increase in popularity. Italian sausage is often manufactured as; Mild Italian Sausage, Hot Italian Sausage or Sweet Italian Sausage. Every processed meat product has a traditional product characteristic.
Traditionally, Italian sausage contains fennel and black pepper. Typically the black pepper used in Italian sausage is a coarser particle size than you find in fresh pork sausage. Fennel is the spice that gives Italian sausage its Italian flavor. Often the fennel is a mixture of whole or cracked fennel seed and ground fennel. The whole or cracked fennel seed will help to give good visibility to the spice while the ground fennel will contribute a very distinctive fennel flavor. Visible spice is typically considered to be an important product characteristic in fresh Italian sausage.