Make Chicago Style Italian Sausage for Pizza!

Make Your Own Fresh Italian Sausage!

It’s really easy to make your own bulk Italian sausage at home! All you need is this recipe that some of you will recognize from page 2 of the RDD Thin Crust Pizza recipe. You can use it for deep dish or thin crust pizza, or shape it into patties or links for any number of recipes!  

FYI, some deep dish restaurants, like Lou Malnati’s, have stated that they do not use fennel in their sausage, so it’s entirely up to you if you want to use it, or any of the other spices. 

The most basic version of this sausage (usually for deep dish) is 3 ingredients: ground pork, salt, and pepper. Everything else is technically optional, but recommended.

*Updated on 12-10-2022

  • 1 lb lean ground Pork
  • 1 tsp Salt 
  • 2 tsp of Fennel seed, lightly crushed
  • 1/2 tsp granulated Garlic (or 2 cloves of fresh garlic, crushed/minced ; if lots of garlic isn’t your thing, you can reduce the amount or leave it out entirely)
  • 1 tsp Black Pepper
  • 1 tsp Sugar 
  • 1/2 tsp Oregano
    You can also add other herbs, like Marjoram, Parsley, and Basil.
  • 1/4 tsp Crushed Red Pepper Flakes

Combine salt and spices.

Mix with ground pork until well combined.

Wrap and refrigerate for 2 to 24 hours

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10 thoughts on “Make Chicago Style Italian Sausage for Pizza!”

  1. I’m from Chicago and moved to Utah, this is a real taste of home and goes great with our homemade Chicago deepdish! Tastes just like I remember

  2. I’m looking for Chicago style pizza sausage. When I was a kid, I found a drive in that made Pizza BURGERS. I loved them. I’ve been trying to find one for 55 years. My grocery store made some Chicago Style Pizza Sausage and it works very well with onions, mozzarella cheese and pizza sauce in it. Unfortunately the guy who made it left. I’m trying to find the recipe for myself. I’m not looking for hot Italian sausage as the comments indicate may be the case. Is this what I’m looking for? Thanks.

    1. Hi, Nicole. It’s a basic recipe for Italian pizza sausage similar to the kind used in many pizza restaurants.
      I haven’t had Pequod’s in a while, so I could not tell you how close it would be to theirs.

  3. I’ve made this sausage a couple of times now and it’s the bomb! And I’m a Chicago boy. I made it exactly as written tho I omitted the crushed red pepper and substituted just a dash of cayenne instead (I didn’t want hot Italian).

    1. Hi, Deanna. Traditionally, italian sausage goes on raw and cooks with the rest of the pizza.
      You can pre-cook it if you want, but in my opinion, it would not taste the same.
      Thanks for visiting RealDeepDish.com!

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