Black Olive and Orange Sausages

Black Olive and Orange Sausages
April 26, 2007


I haven’t made sausages in a few months (although I had made some bacon and pancetta) and wanted to get another batch done. Although I love most sausages, I try to make varieties that lend themselves to being used in different dishes as opposed to varieties like brats, where all I want to do with them is grill them and throw them on a bun. Some of the varieties that are easy to work into other dishes are Italian sweets, Spanish Chorizo, Cajun Andouille, and Portuguese Chourico. All of them work well with beans, pastas, soups, etc. I had been thinking about something with Mediterranean flavors and decided to make some pork sausage flavored with black olives, oranges, cumin, cinnamon, coriander, marjoram and oregano.

The basic recipe was:

4 lbs Boneless pork shoulder, ground
4 tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp dried Greek oregano
1 tsp dried marjoram
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground black pepper
Zest from 2 oranges, finely chopped
Juice from one orange
10 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 cup of pureed black olives


Mix the all the ingredients except for the ground pork in a bowl and mix them together. Then combine this mixture with the pork. Let it sit in the fridge for several hours (or overnight).

It’s a sausage that works well in bulk or in links. (I put most of mine into 32-35mm hog casing, but left some in bulk). You could also use lamb, beef, or even chicken instead or pork, but I’m fond of pork sausage and use it about 95% of the time I make sausage. I took some of the bulk mixture and made a stew of with onions, tomatoes, chick peas, and the sausage and then served it over rice. You could also grill it and then slice it and use it as a tapa or meze.

I did have a Sierra Nevada Summerfest while I was making the chickpeas and sausage stew. Summerfest is a pilsner-style lager which is incredibly refreshing and has a faint, but noticeable hop bite in the finish. It’s a terrific seasonal beer that I look forward to every year. With dinner, I had a Lagunitas Maximus IPA. I like most of Lagunitas’s beers very much (I must confess that I’m not a big fan of the Brown Shugga, but love the Imperial Red, IPA and Pils). The Maximus is a big beer at 7.5% alcohol and about 70 IBU’s. It’s a great beer, but it was a little big for the food. I probably would have done better to have the Maximus while I was cooking and the Summerfest with the food. There’s always next time.