Meat Toppings Help

[The_Fat_Boy]

So I have been doing this for 10+ yrs and have always used the bagged Sausage and Beef from Roma i am lookinf for a product that doesn’t resemble RABBIT droppings any ideas

thanks
Dennis

 

[Joe]

I too despise that sausage. I prefer to buy raw bulk italian sausage. Bake it in my oven on a sheet pan and cut it up with a dough scraper 10 mins after it comes out of the oven. Less risk with cooked sausage handling than raw sausage and you can use it on sandwiches right away.

 

[Georgiascp]

I too despise that sausage. I prefer to buy raw bulk italian sausage. Bake it in my oven on a sheet pan and cut it up with a dough scraper 10 mins after it comes out of the oven. Less risk with cooked sausage handling than raw sausage and you can use it on sandwiches right away.

we do it exactly like this as well its delicious your customers will love it and its really easy to do. we cover ours with foil so that it doesnt dry out as much.

 

[Smokin]

Another method to do sausage is to poach them. Take a turkey roaster or large pot and bring the water to 160 to 165 degrees. Plop the sausage in and bring the Internal temp up to 160 degrees. You will not fat the sausage out and it will be nice and plump. If your water is hotter than 165 you will start to fat out. After poaching put the sausage in a tub of cold water for a min or 2 to cool it down to keep it from continuing to cook. Let it finish cooling on the counter and when the casings are dry put back in cooler for later use. If you make your own patty sausage you can use a steamer and just steam the raw uncased sausage until it is cooked. Once cooked you can break it up into the chunk sizes you want.

 

[December]

I too hated the rabbit turd look, here’s what we do:
Beef topping- i buy 2oz beef meatballs at $2.52lb and break them up, very easy to portion control looks great and tastes great been doing that for years.
Sausage topping: I buy fontanini large chunk sausage topping-i break some up and leave some whole-a little trick is you can throw them in the fryer for 8 seconds then on the pizza they look fantastic when it comes out. I pay $2.80lb for that

 

[bodegahwy]

Beef topping- i buy 2oz beef meatballs at $2.52lb and break them up, very easy to portion control looks great and tastes great been doing that for years.

We do that as well but we use a 4oz meatball.

For sausage we buy a fully cooked, sliced Italian sausage. Looks great, tastes great. Just have to train the employees that it does not get as many slices as pepperoni because they are thicker slices!

 

[GotRocks]

We purchase 70 pound cases of “Pork Picnic trim” grind it with a medium plate with only 1 pass through the grinder.

I’ll share a formula close to a sicilian style sausage that works very well on pizza,
5 pounds pork (butts, or picnic trim around 75/25 lean/fat)
5 t kosher salt
1.5 T coarse ground black pepper
2 cloves fresh garlic, fine mince or 2 t granulated will work too)
1 T ground fennel (get whole fennel, and run it through a cheapy coffee grinder from walmart to grind it as fine as possible)
1 t anise seed (ground the same way)
1 T red pepper (coarse grind)
1 Cup dry red wine
Optional, 1 T fresh finely chopped parsley

Keep your grinder head in the cooler or freezer, your pork should also be as cold as possible too. Slightly frozen is even better
After grinding, mix everything vigorously until the mix feels sticky and tacky ( a paddle attachment for 1-2 minutes works well for this) make sure your mixing bowl is also very cold.
If the mix gets too warm when grinding or mixing, you will “Smear” the fat, and that may give you a dry crumbly texture when it is cooked, so you don’t want that. You want the specks of fat to stay visible in the raw sausage, they will render out when cooked but not create a greasy pizza.

The places near me that do not use the precooked sausage topping product mostly use Johnsonville Italian sausage that they purchase frozen in 5# tubes, that may also be an option if you do not want to grind your own, or continue using what you guys call “bunny turd sausage”

Any other sausage questions; I will gladly help with them,