The title may seem like a stupid question, but I am quite serious.
Ever since I started making my own pork meat topping to go on the pizzas in my new pizza oven, I've been thinking about this. As I have tried to find an "authentic" Chicago-style Italian sausage recipe, all the recipes include instructions for stuffing into the casing, but for my situation, this isn't needed.
So why do we put ground meat into casings? We don't do it for hamburgers, and they are served on a bun with relish and mustard (or ketchup, yeech), so the reason can't be just to put it on a bun.
In the past, before I started grinding my own pork and adding spices, I'd buy pre-made Italian sausage, and the first thing I'd do would be to take it out of the casing so I could drop small bits on the pizza. I then realized that for my meat sauces and other dishes, I've been doing the same thing for years. Probably 80% of the Italian sausage I've ever bought has been removed from its casing before being cooked.
So, besides holding the meat so it has a certain shape when served on a bun, is there another reason to spend considerable effort to stuff the meat into these little flexible tubes?
Tonight I'm cooking up my leftover homemade pizza topping ("sausage") that didn't get used for our last pizza, and am going to serve it on a burger bun as a patty, like a hamburger. Near as I can tell, this will taste exactly like it would if it were in a casing.
I'm not trying to be controversial in any way whatsoever, and instead am just curious.
Oh, and BTW, I haven't even come close to creating sausage that tastes like Italian sausage you get on Chicago pizzas, or at Chicago Italian beef joints. That quest continues.
Ever since I started making my own pork meat topping to go on the pizzas in my new pizza oven, I've been thinking about this. As I have tried to find an "authentic" Chicago-style Italian sausage recipe, all the recipes include instructions for stuffing into the casing, but for my situation, this isn't needed.
So why do we put ground meat into casings? We don't do it for hamburgers, and they are served on a bun with relish and mustard (or ketchup, yeech), so the reason can't be just to put it on a bun.
In the past, before I started grinding my own pork and adding spices, I'd buy pre-made Italian sausage, and the first thing I'd do would be to take it out of the casing so I could drop small bits on the pizza. I then realized that for my meat sauces and other dishes, I've been doing the same thing for years. Probably 80% of the Italian sausage I've ever bought has been removed from its casing before being cooked.
So, besides holding the meat so it has a certain shape when served on a bun, is there another reason to spend considerable effort to stuff the meat into these little flexible tubes?
Tonight I'm cooking up my leftover homemade pizza topping ("sausage") that didn't get used for our last pizza, and am going to serve it on a burger bun as a patty, like a hamburger. Near as I can tell, this will taste exactly like it would if it were in a casing.
I'm not trying to be controversial in any way whatsoever, and instead am just curious.
Oh, and BTW, I haven't even come close to creating sausage that tastes like Italian sausage you get on Chicago pizzas, or at Chicago Italian beef joints. That quest continues.
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