Hot Italian Turkey Sausage

***I recently made my own Italian Turkey meat - using 16oz/1lb rolls of plain turkey meat (Super One Plaza had it - a weird brand - it was like 2/$3 and had no extra additives (unlike the turkey store, and other brands do - I was pleasantly surprised and happy it was just ground turkey without all the crap). I ended up making 5lbs at once and froze the rest - using about 1.5lbs in that lasagna I was tellin you about, and some of the larger browned chunks I saved for making a pizza as 'sausage' - was super flavourful, but not sausage - so healthier and delish! Would be great for spaghetti or any other Italian dish you want meat in.

I used a combo of spices found in a couple of online recipes for making turkey sausage - OMG - so good. The recipes were for like 20lbs of meat, so I just reduced it down some for 3lbs.

For 3 lbs ground turkey (or chicken) If you only wanna make 1lb just divide up the recipe.

Mix all in a bowl:

1/2 to 1.5 tsp sea salt

1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp finely minced garlic

1 tsp onion powder and/or finely minced onion

1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground white pepper

2 tsp paprika

*1.5 tsp cayenne pepper

1.5 tsp poultry seasoning
1.5 tsp italian seasoning

2 T basil**

2 tsp mexican oregano**

1.5 tsp summer savory

1 tsp anise seed (I used a little over 1 tsp cuz I love anise)
1.5 tsp ground fennel seed

1 tsp fennel seed (I used a little over 1 tsp cuz I love fennel)

*1 tsp red pepper flakes (grind up with mortar/pestle or whatever you have - I didn't bother)

1.5 Tablespoons Olive Oil.

*If you don't like it hot - don't add cayenne or red pepper flakes (this was mild to me - I'd use more next time or when I thaw my package and cook it, as I like HOT Italian sausage)

**You can use Italian seasoning too - just omit the basil/oregano

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl, then add in olive oil, and mix well.

Mix that with the ground turkey  - really mixing well. I did this by hand in a large mixing bowl - divided the wet mixture like in half with half the meat at a time. Then mixed it all together - if you have a heavy duty mixer or something(food processor?) maybe use that. I didn't so I did it by hand.

Cover the bowl and let the mixture sit for a full 24 hours in the fridge so the flavours blend with the meat.

Divide into 3 -1lb packages - freeze.

When I browned the meat, I left it more chunkier like sausage would be - not broken way down as ground poultry tends to do.

I set aside a few dozen chunks for pizzas - so yum!

And way healthier too - not greasy/fatty like sausage is, but had all the Italian flavour.