Get Stuffed! A Hot Italian Elk Sausage Stuffing Recipe for the Ages
By Joe Sands, wildlife biologist, Pacific Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The holidays are coming. I don’t want to hear about how you’re going to buy a pre-cooked ham, put some shrimp in a cup and call it a cocktail, or drink enough eggnog so you fall asleep on the couch and miss lighting the Hanukkah candles or whatever else you do. For me, the holidays aren’t a family meet-and-greet. They’re a meat-and-eat.
If you don’t use your year’s frozen game meat for your holiday gatherings, you’re missing out. And if you’re not making your own sausage out of elk and deer, then you’re really missing out. The following recipe is relatively simple to put together, but it’s also time consuming. That said, a time-consuming meal keeps you out of having to make small talk. So, grab a glass of whatever you’re drinking, put on a Hallmark movie (or in my case, The Sopranos), and get cooking.
I have been lucky enough to kill an elk in three of the last four hunting seasons. As you can imagine, elk provide a lot of meat. This year, in northeast Oregon, my friend and I killed two six-point bulls about 45 seconds apart, even though we were a mile away from each other. Between the two animals, we packed nearly 600 pounds of meat of meat off a mountain.
When you have 600 pounds of meat, you have lot of options for how you want to cook and eat it. I butcher my own animals. I find the process relaxing and it also allows me to produce the cuts of meat I like, as well as a variety of specific sausages. As an example, this year my wife and I made about 125 pounds of sausage and ground elk, including 10 types of sausage: boudin, smoked andouille, Texas red hot, mazzafegatti, merguez, hot breakfast, maple breakfast, red wine and garlic, elk hot dogs, and hot Italian. For those of you counting, I just spoke three languages.
The hot Italian is used in this stuffing recipe, and since we’ve never provided a hot Italian sausage recipe before, you get two recipes for one here. Think of it as a late Black Friday deal.
Recipe: Hot Italian Elk Sausage Stuffing
Mise En Place*
(*French for “put in place.” In other words, get yourself organized before you start cooking)
Equipment
Sausage:
- Meat Grinder. With large and small dies for grinding. If you don’t have a grinder, you may be able to bring your meat to a local butcher and have it ground the way you want. But really, if you’re going to make sausage, just get a meat grinder.
- Two large bowls. One to hold the unground product and one to catch the ground product.
- Bowl of Ice Water. Gotta keep things cold.
- Kitchen scale. Sausage is measured by weight/volume or mass depending on your scale. There will be some math involved.
Stuffing:
- Large sauté pan.
- Chef’s knife. Sharp as always.
- Cutting board. Self-explanatory, but keep it clean.
- Large Bowls. Big enough for you to dry your bread and then also mix the stuffing together.
- Sauce pan. Large enough to hold 4–6 cups of stock.
Ingredients
Salt and seasoning amounts are given per 5 pounds of meat and fat. Adjust as necessary.
Sausage:
- Elk meat (70% by weight)
- Pork fat/shoulder (30% by weight)
- Kosher salt (3 tablespoons per 5 pounds of meat and fat (that is a basic rule of sausage making — commit it to memory).
- Granulated sugar (2 tablespoons)
- Red pepper flakes (2 teaspoons)
- Cayenne pepper (1 teaspoon)
- Paprika (3–4 tablespoons)
- Coarse ground black pepper (3 teaspoons. Grind this fresh)
- Fresh basil (1–2 teaspoons)
- Fresh oregano (1–2 teaspoons)
- Fennel seeds (2 tablespoons toasted)
- Coriander seeds OR ground coriander (1 tablespoon. If you have the seeds toast them, if not ground is ok)
- Ice water (0.75 cup)
- Red wine vinegar (0.25 cup)
Stuffing:
You can make more or less of this depending on your needs. Adjust accordingly. Feel free to adjust salt and herbs as you go here. Stuffing is kind of an art.
- Sourdough bread (one loaf)
- Wheat bread (one loaf)
- Corn bread (About one 8-by-8 baking pan)
- Sea Salt (1/2 tablespoon, or to taste. Add as necessary to taste — you can’t take salt out later)
- Black pepper (1 tablespoon or to taste)
- Celery (one head diced with the leaves. Always use the leaves!)
- Yellow onion (At least one, maybe two if they’re not big. Dice it small)
- Garlic (five cloves minimum, minced. I usually just put the whole clove in because garlic is awesome and I don’t feel like I should have to defend that).
- Parsley (0.5 cup fresh)
- Oregano (1 tablespoon fresh)
- Thyme (1 tablespoon fresh
- Sage (1 teaspoon fresh)
- Rosemary (1 teaspoon fresh)
- Red pepper flakes (0.5 teaspoon)
- Poultry seasoning (1 teaspoon dry)
- Fresh eggs (two or three)
- Hot Italian elk sausage (1 pound — see recipe below)
- Game bird or chicken stock (4–6 cups heated in a saucepan. Homemade stock is best. Don’t be lazy; make your own.)
Method
Make the sausage first.
- Hot Italian elk sausage is relatively easy, aside from actually killing an elk. You can use pork if you need to. The sausage must be 28–30% fat versus lean by weight. Cube the elk meat and pork fat. Combine into a bowl. Add the dry seasonings and herbs (not the water or vinegar) and mix in with the meat. Let this chill in the fridge for around an hour.
2. Put all grinding tools in the freezer for 30 minutes or so and get out when ready to grind. It’s very important that you keep your equipment and your sausage cold while doing this. I’ve heard one chef say that it needs to be so cold that your hands almost hurt. I agree with this.
3. Grind the mixture once through the large die, mix for a minute in the bowl. Change to small die and run through grinder again. Mix the mixture again adding the vinegar and the ice water. Continue mixing until the sausage has a consistent texture and appearance throughout. All the ingredients should be well mixed.
4. Fry a small bit up to test seasoning. If you like it, you’re done. I use about 1 pound of the loose hot Italian in my stuffing. I recommend putting the rest of your sausage into hog casings and taking care of them appropriately (by freezing them, or if you’re feeling incomprehensibly generous, giving them away. That’s crazy, though.). Otherwise you can vacuum seal the rest of the meat in portions.
Make the stuffing.
- Cube the bread and cornbread and dry in an oven on a low temperature setting. Stir the bread a few times.
- Add salt and pepper and poultry seasoning to the bread and stir.
- Brown the sausage in the sauté pan and then add the diced onion and celery. When onion and celery are translucent and the garlic. When garlic cooks for a couple of minutes add half the herbs and the red pepper flakes.
- When this mixture is cooked add the rest of the herbs, and then add this to the dried bread and stir.
- Crack the eggs and add to the stuffing mix.
- Stir in the hot stock a bit at a time. Add stock until the stuffing is a wet consistency, but not extremely liquefied. If there is leftover stock use it in the mashed potatoes or gravy or whatever you’d like.
- I use some of the stuffing to stuff the main and neck cavity of a bird being oven roasted. Note the extra cooking time for a stuffed bird. When I deep fry turkeys, they are not stuffed, so I spread the stuffing in a rectangle pan and heat all the way through until a crust forms on the top. I also save a little to form into balls, roll in panko breading and drop in the deep fry for a snack before the turkeys start frying.
Parting Thoughts
It helps to have a television in the kitchen or at least some music when doing that much work. While making sausage this year I watched about three seasons of The Sopranos. It’s still the best show ever produced and filmed in the same area of New Jersey that my dad grew up in. I’m pretty sure Tony and the rest of the crew would have enjoyed this recipe. Like Tony says: when you’re married, you’ll understand the importance of fresh produce.
