Nothing screams summer like this Italian Ring Sausage. Chevalatta is an Italian sausage made with sheep casing. It is a cheesy and delicious sausage, that you can make yourself, or buy at the butcher!
I remember every Memorial Day weekend, my dad would pick up one of the Italian sausage rings and it would be like our appetizer before dinner. We’d all slowly cut away at, an inch or 2 at a time until it was all gone. They were so so good, and readily available in my hometown.
But now I live in North Carolina, and you are much more likely to find country breakfast sausage here than Italian ring sausage. Chevalatta was always a special sausage we had in the summer. My dad would get it from the butcher just every once in a while for a family party or event.
Jump to:
- What is Chevalatta?
- Making Chevalatta
- Ingredients
- Choosing Your Pork
- Grinding the Pork
- Seasoning the Pork
- Stuffing the Sausage
- Grilling Italian Sausage Ring
- What to Serve Chevalatta with
- FAQs About the Recipe
- Leave us a Review!
- 📖 Recipe
- Reviews
What is Chevalatta?
Chevalatta is an Italian spiral sausage filled with parmesan cheese, garlic, salt, basil, and parsley. It’s made with sheep casings making it have less of a snap and more of a soft bite. The texture is soft and creamy and goes perfectly with broccoli rabe! This dish is great for grilling as an appetizer or a side dish.
Making Chevalatta
This blog isn’t about “how to grill chevalatta.” This blog is to teach you how to make and stuff your own sausages. The right meat-to-fat ratios, the right salt content, and the spices that go into making an Italian ring sausage. Of course, I will also go into detail on how to grill after we finish stuffing the sausage.
If you’re looking to get the New York summer sausage flavor, this is the blog for you. Follow along as we go through some of the steps.
Ingredients
- 5 lbs Pork, Boston butt 75% lean, 25% fat
- 5 cloves garlic, minced
- ⅓ cup chopped parsley
- ¼ cup chopped basil
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 35 g kosher salt approximately 2 tbsp
- ¾ cup pecorino romano
- sheep casings
Choosing Your Pork
Any butcher will tell you that this is the most important part. I learn so much about meat every time I go to the butcher. If you don’t know, ask! I used to go to the butcher and buy a Boston butt and some pork fat and cut it all up myself. This time, I was talking to the butcher, and he actually told me he’d do it for me and I’d save money because I wouldn’t be paying for the bone.
When you are choosing your pork to make chevalatta, it is important to have 70-80% lean meat and 20-30% fat. Real butchers will tell you not to go below 25% fat. I sometimes like to do 80%/20% just because it’s a little less fat, and a little healthier. I also feel like you always get more fat than you ask for because it’s hard to separately weigh all the fat and pork and it’s always better to air on the side of fattier when it comes to sausage.
You also want to use hard fat when it comes to sausage. It is about the same texture as the meat if not harder. Soft fat feels a bit jelly and wet. You always want more hard fat because it will go through the grinder a lot easier. I go into more detail about this in my how-to-make homemade Italian sausage blog.
Once you have your pork, it’s time to head home and get to grinding your meat.
Grinding the Pork
I use my Kitchen Aid Mixer for grinding. It has a grinder and sausage stuffing attachment that works really well and the kitchen aid mixer is a workhorse. We’ve had ours forever.
Chop your pork into 1-2 inch square pieces. You want the pork to be smaller than the whole in the grinder you have to stuff it into. Place the pork on a metal tray in the freezer along with grinder attachment pieces for 15 minutes. Cooling the pork down will help keep the best texture during the grinding phase. If the pork gets too warm, the fat will start to melt and get really stringy. It will stop up the grinder, and you’ll have to clean it all out.
After attaching the grinder, grind the pork using the smaller of the two attachment options for Italian ring sausage. I use a speed of 6-8 when grinding the meat. If you are making a traditional sausage, you can use the larger grinding attachment. Grind all of the pork into a large mixing bowl.
Seasoning the Pork
One of the other more important aspects of sausage is salt content. The right salt content will make the sausage snappy and juicy. You always want to have 1-2% of the total weight of the meat in salt. The other seasonings are just for flavor. The salt makes the sausage.
After the meat is ground, add the salt, cheese, parsley, basil, garlic, and olive oil. Combine until incorporated by hand. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and rest in the fridge overnight.
Stuffing the Sausage
Before taking the meat out of the fridge, take your sheep casings out and rinse them in warm water thoroughly. Make sure you do this in a bowl. The entire casing will go right down your drain otherwise and that is absolutely disgusting. Rinse them inside and out, by running water through them. Allow them to soak for 30-60 minutes in a bowl of warm water.
Set up your sausage stuffing attachment with the smaller of the two attachments. Remove the casing from the water, and run a little olive oil over them and the stuffing attachment. Slowly thread the casing onto the stuffer. When you get to the end, don’t tie the knot just yet. Start adding your meat to the mixer and start the machine on a low speed until you get the machine filled to the end of the sausage stuffer. Then tie the knot in the casing. This will make it so less air gets into the casing.
Start stuffing the casing at a speed of 6-8. Start slow until you get the hang of it. Try to keep consistently pressing meat through the machine. Shape the ring as you go. It will be easier than doing it at the end because you could risk tearing it.
Once the sausage is stuffed, tie another knot. Wrap the sausage in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge overnight.
Grilling Italian Sausage Ring
Place your grill on high heat. Allow the grill to heat up to between 500-600℉. Place the sausage on the grill and lower the heat to medium. Grill on each side for about 4 minutes or until the temperature reaches 160℉. Allow to cool for 5 minutes and then serve.
What to Serve Chevalatta with
- This Italian sausage ring would go great with Maple Bacon Brussel Sprouts
- Easy Steamed Artichokes on the side of this sausage would be the perfect match made in heaven.
- I would love to top this sausage with some marinated eggplant and onion or even put them both on a sandwich!
- Have this chevalatta on the side of some lemon pasta with spinach, Mushroom Truffle Risotto or garlicky cauliflower pasta!
- Serve it as an appetizer with some air-fried zucchini fritters or the OG Macaroni Salad!
- Having a BBQ? Serve sausage alongside some of our favorite sliders, Bacon Onion Jam Blue Cheese Slider or the Goat Cheese and Fig Jam Burger
FAQs About the Recipe
How to reheat Italian Ring Sausage?
You don’t, you eat it all in one sitting! Just kidding, you can microwave it, or slice it up and fry it and add it to pasta!
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