Don’t tell my husband, but I’m in love…with a spice store. Is it wrong that I get seriously jazzed up when I get the opportunity to go into a Penzey’s Spices store and smell their samples, read their recipe ideas, and (of course) walk out with a bag of loot?
One of my finds there is my Kitchen Tip for this week: Italian Sausage Seasoning.
I use this to make “homemade” turkey sausage to use in recipes that call for ground sausage, like this Sausage, Beans and Kale Soup featured this week, and a Sausage Spinach Pasta Toss coming next week.
Benefits:
- Less expensive than buying fancy turkey sausage, when I can get a roll of frozen ground turkey for $1 a pound on sale.
- Less fat than rolled pork sausage.
- Super fresh flavor, better than the cheap turkey sausage in the freezer case.
- Turkey is a Super Food! (Click here for its health benefits.)
The container says to use 1 Tbs per pound of meat, which I do, and I often add some cayenne pepper, because we like it spicy around here!
During Lent this year, I complicated things by giving up all white sugar. Imagine my dismay when I casually glanced at the ingredients j
ust before using the spice blend and saw sugar in there! Luckily, it’s pretty easy to reverse engineer if you have fennel seeds around. Did you know fennel seed is the keystone upon which sausage is built? Take one whiff of them and you’ll immediately recognize the tang of a good sausage. Here are the ingredients in the seasoning blend:
Salt, fennel seed, Tellicherry black pepper, and sugar
I used sea salt, fennel, fresh ground black pepper (lots!), a dash of molasses and cayenne right on top of the meat, sautéing until it smelled right (with a little taste to make sure), and voila! A truly homemade Italian turkey sausage.
I had to reverse engineer Italian diced tomatoes in the same meal to subtract the sugar, taking a simple 5-ingredient recipe and ending up with a ridiculous thirteen items on my counter! I was totally successful, however, because even the husband said it was as good as always (maybe better!), and he’s really picky when I mess with a good thing. What we will do to get “from scratch” and “no sugar” (and a sacrifice for the Lord).
Be sure to check out the turkey sausage recipes:
- Sausage, Beans and Kale Soup
- Sausage Spinach Pasta Toss
- Sausage Zucchini Bake
And other Kitchen Tips:
- Easy Freezer Prep Foods
- Tone Your Tummy Doing Dishes
- How to Buy Reduced Produce
- Ways to Use Broth and Beans in the Summer
And other Super Food Health Benefits:
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If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.
Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money. If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.
This post is linked to:
- Kitchen Tip Tuesday at Tammy’s Recipes
- Tightwad Tuesdays at Being Frugal
- (the final!) Talk About Tuesday at The Lazy Organizer
- Make it from Scratch Carnival at It’s Frugal Being Green
Hungry for more? Related posts:
this is something I am not sure I woudl be able to do
angie’s last blog post..Coffeemaker Cleaner
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Katie Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
You could, I promise! It’s just adding a Tbs of spice to ground meat as you brown it. Couldn’t be simpler, really. I wish I had measured what I did when I reverse engineered it so I could share the proportions, but you can probably find “Italian Sausage seasoning” elsewhere, or just order from Penzey’s.
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Thanks so much for linking. Hope to see you again next week! I am so excited this linky is growing (27 recips-yeah!). I might even get a fun little button to display on Momtrends.
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Make It From Scratch Carnival // Jul 21, 2009 at 8:33 am
[...] presents “Homemade” Turkey Sausage posted at Kitchen Stewardship. This is such a simple alternative to buying prepared [...]
I’m finally trying this tonight. I’ve been eyeing this up for a while now….
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