Julie Clark
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Italian Sausage Seasoning
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Make your own Italian sausage at home with this homemade Italian sausage seasoning recipe. Add these savory spices to turkey, pork or beef and have delicious Italian sausage ready for pizzas, meatballs, spaghetti or your favorite Italian dish.
Do you like making homemade spice mixes? It can be cost effective to whip up your own seasoning blends at home with spices that you may already have in your cupboard. Italian seasoning, fajita seasoning, taco seasoning and pasta salad seasoning are 4 of our favorites.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Reader Irene says, “Thank you for this recipe. I love it. I can’t have processed foods any more as I’m a dialysis patient, so this hit the spot for me. I make sausage rolls and it works great. I use ground pork. So yummy. Thank you.”
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Reader Sandy says, “I recently used this recipe to make homemade Italian sausage. I’m very picky and my favorite store bought brand is Dinos. It’s no longer sold in my area. I can say without a doubt this recipe rivals Dinos. I let it sit in the fridge 24 hours to let the ingredients meld into the pork sausage. You must try this recipe with confidence that the flavors are just right.”
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Reader Dina says, “I made this recipe and it was amazing and flavorful! I used ground turkey and I put it in a sausage mold and it was the perfect healthy sausage! I served it with peppers and had a healthy nutritious dinner without all of the sodium.”
Why make seasoning blends at home?
When we started watching our sugar intake, we realized that so many of our favorite foods had sugar in them. Sausage was one of those things.
Now let me tell you. I love my sugar. But if I’m going to make the decision to have sugar, I’ll take a donut, please. I don’t want sugar in my sausage.
This homemade Italian sausage seasoning solves that problem and lets you know exactly what you’re putting in to your food to season it.
What is the distinctive flavor in Italian Sausage?
Italian sausage has many herbs and spices, but fennel seed is what gives it its distinct flavor. Don’t skip it. I buy whole fennel seed and crush it slightly when making this seasoning mix.
- parsley
- Italian seasoning
- black pepper
- fennel seed
- paprika
- red pepper flakes
- salt
- onion
- garlic
Pro Tip
It may seem like we’re cheating by adding in pre-mixed Italian seasoning. We find that most people have this in their spice cupboard already. If you don’t, you can use our recipe to mix up some of your own.
Sweet Italian Sausage
If you really want a sweet Italian sausage, add a touch of brown sugar to this spice mix.
How much Italian sausage seasoning to add to meat?
This homemade Italian sausage seasoning makes enough to season two pounds of ground meat. You can use more or less, depending on how flavorful you like your food. We recommend starting by using this whole recipe in two pounds of meat and adjusting from there.
What meat do you use for sausage?
Use ground pork, ground beef, ground chicken or ground turkey, which is our preference. If you’re a hunter, even venison is a great option.
Italian Sausage Recipes
I use this Italian sausage in soup, meatballs, spaghetti sauce and lasagna. Anytime you have an Italian dish, you can substitute Italian sausage for the ground beef to give it an extra zip of flavor.
It’s also great as a rub for pork shoulder.
How to Store Bulk Sausage Seasoning
I often make up a big batch of this savory sausage. You form it into sausage patties or roll it into sausage links and freeze to cook later (I actually like having an Italian sausage patty for breakfast alongside some veggies), or you can cook them right away.
You can also brown the meat and freeze it. This makes it super easy to pull out and use in sauces and all of your savory Italian dishes!
Otherwise you can store the seasoning mix in an airtight container and keep it at room temperature.
pro tip
If we make up a big batch of this, we used dried onions and garlic (or onion powder and garlic powder). If we make up a single batch, we use fresh onion and garlic. Use it in our sausage breakfast pie!
Italian Sausage Seasoning Recipe
Make your own Italian sausage at home with this homemade italian sausage seasoning recipe. Add these savory spices to turkey, pork or beef.
Servings 8
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 teaspoons dried parsley
- 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
- 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon fennel seed (we use whole, but you can crush the ½ teaspoon of whole seeds or use ground fennel if you'd like)
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic (we use fresh if not making a big batch)
- 1 teaspoon minced onions (we use fresh if not making a big batch)
- 2 pounds ground beef (or turkey, chicken or pork)
Instructions
- In a small bowl, combine all of the seasonings. Add the seasonings to 2 pounds of ground beef. Brown or cook as desired in a large skillet.
- Store any leftovers in the refrigerator in an airtight container.
- The seasoning mix itself can be stored at room temperature, in an airtight container in the pantry.
Notes
*If you’d like, you can use all dried seasonings and make up a big batch of seasoning to store in your pantry. Be sure not to use fresh onion and garlic if you do this. Use all dried seasonings (same amounts).
Nutrition
Calories: 292kcal | Carbohydrates: 1g | Protein: 19g | Fat: 22g | Saturated Fat: 8g | Cholesterol: 80mg | Sodium: 662mg | Potassium: 322mg | Vitamin A: 145IU | Vitamin C: 0.3mg | Calcium: 32mg | Iron: 2.5mg
I’m looking forward to using this to make a keto version of Tuscana soup from Olive Garden! I replace the potatoes with kohlrabi or zucchini but the Italian sausage is a pretty integral part of the flavour! Thanks for this! 🙂
Not only did I use this in ground turkey (went on pizza) I used it to spice rub a chuck roast. It is just so good. Thank you
There are many interesting and useful comments posted about this article. Thanks, everybody! But I am wondering why nobody has questioned the specification of the paprika! Aren’t there many types of paprika, and will not the use of one kind significantly change the taste of the entire batch of sausage that you make?
I hope that you will clarify for me just what type of paprika that you used to make this recipe. FYI- I have tried it using Smoked Paprika (by McCormick) but I love to try and duplicate the suggested recipe before I comment about it.
Thank you!
I didn’t have any Italian seasoning on hand and this was made delicious sausage.
I made it again last night to season some ground turkey cooked with scrambled eggs. Again, we thought it was delicious and very flavorful and created a true Italian-sausage seasoning. I went very light on the red pepper flakes but only because my stomach can’t tolerate too much heat, but the other ingredients contributed plenty of flavor. This seasoning mix is delicious and will be our go-to recipe from now on.
Usually I buy the pre-seasoned Italian turkey sausage, but the market I was at didn’t carry it. So I purchased ground turkey instead. Tried this recipe for the first time tonight and my husband who is very particular and a pretty good cook himself, said this tasted better than the pre-seasoned turkey sausage we usually buy. We are definitely keeping this recipe in our book. It was so flavorful and free of all the odd additives that are included in the pre-seasoned sausages at the grocery store.
I used your recipe to season some Gardein ‘Beefless Ground’. I served it with eggs and biscuits Christmas morning. Oh man… the meat eaters in the house were convinced I had served them real sausage to eat. I plan to use it soon for a potluck with “sausage” gravy and biscuits. Perfect recipe I will use again, and again! Thanks so much 🙂
I used this recipe to make turkey sausage for homemade Lasagna on Christmas Eve. I used plain ground turkey and mixed it with the seasonings, then let it sit for several hours in the fridge before making the marinara sauce. Our guests said it tasted like Italian sausage and were surprised when I said it was turkey. I didn’t have dried parsley and paprika (sweet?) on-hand, so just imagine the Italian seasoning goodness with them! Thank you for sharing your recipe which took my lasagna from great lasagna to “amazing Lasagna” (quoting one of the guests). This seasoning mix is… Read more »
Thank you for sharing! My closest grocery store has been reducing the availability of small batch products and replacing them with more national brands, which all include more of the ingredients I’m trying to avoid. I need a good starting point for customizing homemade sausage without the extra fat and preservatives in those national brands and this is just what I need. I’m going to try it tonight with turkey.
We LOVE this recipe! We first tried it last week and altered it accordingly to our personal flavor preference of spicy! We get our hog processed yearly and request the sausage be plain Jane, so we can try new flavors of sausage blends. We then use our press and make links or freeze in patties or crumbles. One question- I tripled this recipe for six pounds of pork. I ran out of crushed red pepper at the 1 tsp mark. I have a great cayenne blend, but unsure how much to compensate for the missing red pepper. Any idea or… Read more »
Can ground turkey substitute for beef? What can I do to make it more like beef, looks and taste.?
First of all, LOVE this recipe! But if you make a large batch of this spice mix, how many tablespoons should you use per 2 lbs of ground meat? Trying to find this in the description but I can’t…
I absolutely love this sausage recipe. I made it with 1 1/2 pounds of ground pork plus 1/2 pound ground beef. It was hard to do but I let it rest including the fridge overnight. Then I made spaghetti sauce. Oh, heavens!!! For my spaghetti I browned the sausage, added: 2 28 oz. cans of Cento San Marzano tomatoes 3 T Cento Tomato Paste 2 T your amazing Homemade Italian Seasoning 2 T olive oil. Simply delicious!! Normally, I’m chopping, slicing, dicing and seasoning my sauces. Instead, I made my sauce with your blend exclusively and it was just perfect.… Read more »
Should the fennel seed be used as whole fennel seed or should it be ground. If ground what is the quantity of ground to use for a 2LB batch and a 5LB batch’
The minced garlic–are you using dry?
The minced onion–are you using dry?
Thanks in advance for your reply.
Joe
Could I use half ground beef and sausage
I made this tonight with spaghetti squash and sauce and it was soooooooo tasty! I just had to leave a comment! I added a teeny but more red pepper flakes to make it a spicy Italian sausage and it was delicious!!! My husband loved it too. We both agreed that it was even tastier than store bought italian Sage. Thank you so much for the recipe and all your time perfecting it!