Sausage-a-Day: Turkey Sausage with Parsley, Figs, Apricot, and Bleu Cheese

Realizing that making our own sausage meant we could put whatever we damn well pleased inside, we decided to make this haphazard concoction with bits of leftover supplies from our larder. I thought the bleu cheese would be weird with the fruit, but it ended up adding just the right amount of funk; the turkey would have been fairly bland without it. In fact, these ended up tasting best with another stalwart flavor: brown mustard.

More than anything, it was amusing to make a sausage that would probably seem somewhat exotic if someone saw it in the store. “Ooh, fruit in a sausage. Swish!” In reality, it just meant we added a few pieces of dried fruit into the grinder—no big whoop.

If you’d like the specifics of our recipe, I’ll pop them in after the jump, but it’s quickly becoming clear there’s no real science to sausage making. Experimenting is half the fun.

• 2 lbs. turkey breast
• 3 turkey legs (freezer burn optional)
• 1.5 cups of fresh chopped parsley
• 4 oz of bleu cheese, stanky
• 8 dried apricots
• 3 dried figs
• 1.5 Tbsp. onion powder
• 2 Tbsp. black pepper
• 3 Tbsp. kosher salt
• 2 tsp. paprika

Grind, mix, stuff, grill, eat.