Every winter, as soon as the weather cooperates, Michael Del-Zoppo gets to making his family’s fennel-laden Italian sausage.
The process is decidedly homemade: It starts with pork butts from Raddell’s, ground in 20-pound batches. The mix is then sprinkled with spices, including fennel cracked in a hand-cranked spice grinder and soaked in dry red wine before being stuffed into casings and hung in the attic to cure.
It takes an assembly line of family and friends to keep the tradition alive. Del-Zoppo tends to the tubes, poking and pinching them to make sure air that can ruin the end results isn’t trapped inside. He gave Signal Cleveland an inside look at the process through a trove of photos and videos he’s taken documenting everything from grinding the meat to stuffing the casings.
Del-Zoppo learned the family recipe the same way his son is learning now: by helping his mother, Rosaline. When he was in grade school, his parents made sausage every year in the same Little Italy home where he lives now.
As far as he knows, the recipe began with his mother. Her mother had immigrated to the United States from Italy but died young, and Del-Zoppo doesn’t believe she made the sausage. It wasn’t until around 2007, when his mother’s health began to fail, that he took over the process himself.
How did you learn to make the family sausage?
Slowly.
As a kid, Del-Zoppo watched until he was old enough to take on small jobs, then graduated to grinding the meat. His mother handled the harder parts — seasoning, stuffing, hanging and knowing how the sausage should feel as it cured.
“I never got to season it. I never got to put it in the casings, and I never got to hang it,” he said.
Even pinching and squeezing the drying sausage was something he rarely got to do until he was older. Too much pressure could tear or break it.
When did you take over?
Around 2007, his mother’s health began to fail. For the first time, Del-Zoppo was stuffing and tending the sausage without her supervision.
There was some trial and error.
“That’s too soft, that’s too hard. But, you know, over the years it just — it comes natural,” he said.
Eventually, he learned to judge the sausage by touch, smell, color and even sound. When he squeezes it, he’s listening and feeling for pockets of air, which can cause mold and affect the texture.
Is there a recipe — or is it something you just have to learn?
Both. The basic ingredients are simple: salt, black pepper and fennel. For the dried sausage, Del-Zoppo adds wine and garlic powder. From that base, families tweak their recipes with different amounts of seasoning. Some add wine or even cheese. Curing the sausage requires knowledge that isn’t easily captured on a recipe card.
“I know exactly just what to do, what to feel for. Do I smell anything funny? What’s the color look like? … You’ll know if something’s wrong,” he said.
What did your mother think when you finally made sausage without her?
Del-Zoppo remembers proudly showing his mother the first batch he and his cousin Jim made on their own.
Her verdict?
“It’s OK.”
Del-Zoppo couldn’t believe it. They had followed her recipe.
“I was like, ‘What do you mean it’s OK?’ It’s your recipe.”
Looking back, Del-Zoppo thinks his mother may have felt a little left out. Her health no longer allowed her to climb into the attic and take part in the process. But he believes she was proud to see her family keep the tradition going.
“We carried it on,” Del-Zoppo said. “She was a great teacher. She really was.”
