The Single Ingredient Upgrade That Takes Italian Sausage To New Heights

Italian sausage is one of the tastiest things you can cook up, regardless if you're enjoying it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Whether you're trying one of the best brands of Italian sausage from a store or you're creating it from scratch, an important factor in making the meat as delicious as possible is adding the right ingredients to it. More specifically, adding fennel seeds can bring your Italian sausage from a good ingredient or side dish to an absolutely incredible one that can upgrade any meal.

More so than any seasoning you can add to Italian sausage, fennel seeds can truly elevate the meat's flavor, as they seamlessly grant it with a subtle warmth and sweetness that can't be achieved with any other spice or flavoring agent. It's this effect that makes fennel seeds perfect for meat rubs overall. When it comes to Italian sausage, the spice is even more integral due to how well its flavor melds with core Italian ingredients and dishes.

The biggest point of contention among those who add fennel seeds to their Italian sausage is a matter of when and how to do so. For some, it's massively important to cook — or rather, roast — the fennel seeds before they ever interact with the sausage in the first place. They place the dry seeds in a similarly dried skillet for a few minutes before crushing them up and adding them in with the raw meat and the other seasonings, allowing the fennel to cook once more. This method is also commonly used when adding fennel seeds to lasagna, another recipe that benefits greatly from the ingredient's inclusion.

Alternatively, while roasting the seeds is a more popular way to use them in recipes like Italian sausage, some cooks use a much simpler methodology. By adding uncooked fennel seeds to your Italian sausage, you give the meat an incredibly rich taste that differs from what toasted fennel seeds provide, but is still very beneficial for the dish. Ultimately, the one thing that most agree on when it comes to fennel seeds is that they're at their best when they're crushed before they're added to a recipe, as this will allow their flavors to spread more equally throughout the dish.