Homemade Pizza Sausage
Use this tasty Homemade Pizza Sausage to give your pizzas the authentic flavor of a local pizza parlor or take-out joint.
I have a Homemade Italian Sausage recipe that I love. I use it for bomber sandwiches, for stuffed mini peppers and for an amazing Italian Meatball Appetizer. And it’s totally delicious!
But when it came to pizza, I didn’t love it.
That’s right. For pizza sausage I wanted something that tasted like my childhood pizza takeout. Or the classic neighborhood pizza joint. And as much as I love my Italian Sausage, this wasn’t it.
And so I kept trying online recipes until finally it hit me—they were all too complicated. A few experiments later, I had it–with about half the ingredients.
Sometimes simple is better!
Why You’ll Love This!
Authentic Tasting. All of my tasters agreed this was a ringer for classic pizza sausage!
Easy. Since this has fewer ingredients, it’s even easier than my regular Italian Sausage. Just mix and that’s it!
Fun. Maybe it’s just me but I thought it was extra fun to have homemade pizza that tasted closer to take out/pizza parlor recipes. Not that pizza isn’t fun in the first place!
Step by Step Overview
Mix spices together.
Mix spice mix into ground pork (I used my hands) until evenly combined.
Apply quarter-sized pieces to your pizza, placing them either below or above the cheese. Cook as usual making sure the sausage reaches at least 165F.
To Pre-Cook or Not
As an alternative, I know that some people prefer to use pre-cooked pizza sausage. And if I had a 12-year-old babysitter cooking pizza for my kids, I’d probably want that too.
So we tried putting raw sausage on one pizza and then made another after pre-cooking this sausage. When we compared the two, the precooked sausage was noticeably drier and less appealing–likely because I’d effectively cooked it twice.
So my first choice recommendation is to use it raw and make sure it is cooked through (mine was well over the 165F recommendation for ground meat).
If you do want to pre-cook this, (that babysitter thing), here is what you can do. You pinch off clumps of the sausage mixture like you were putting sausage on a pizza. Then you fry these in a medium-hot frying pan for a few minutes per side (depending on size) until the reach at least 165F.
And (I can’t believe I’m saying this), they’re actually pretty tasty to snack on and some of ours never made it to the pizza.
Variations
If you prefer it, go ahead and use Italian Sausage of course! And truthfully that’s what I use in my Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza (with a big, whole-pizza-sized, slab of sausage).
Tips & FAQs
The one difference from commercial sausage that remained was that my ground pork was not as coarse as commercial pizza sausage. If this matters to you, you may be able to find a butcher who will custom grind it for you.
But since I had just bought an organic side of pork with lots of ground meat, I decided it was fine this way.
How long can I keep the raw sausage? Per the USDA, raw meat should be used or frozen within 2 days of purchase. Since the pizza sausage is (more or less) ground meat, this would apply here. It should last 3-4 days after cooking.
How much sausage should I use per pizza? I thought 8 ounces (half a pound) worked pretty well on a 12 inch pizza. But you do you–no pizza police here!
Homemade Pizza Recipes
- Homemade Pizza Sausage from Art of Natural Living
- Homemade Taco Pizza from Jen Around the World
- Mexican Street Corn Pizza from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
- Pepperoni Pizza Macaron from A Kitchen Hoor’s Adventures
- Rainbow Pizza from Creative Cynchronicity
- Spaghetti Squash Pizza from That Recipe
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Homemade Pizza Sausage
Ingredients
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon fennel seeds
- 1/8 teaspoon cayenne
- 2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 pound ground pork