Folks — it’s grillin’ season in metro Detroit, which means one can almost hear the sound of Italian sausage sizzlin’ in the background. For the most part, Italian sausages are one of those dishes people purchase at the meat counter at Whole Foods or Kroger, or prepackaged. The broad public view seems to be that Italian sausages are created more or less equal, and there’s not a ton of range in quality. It’s the same view people have of hot dogs.
But it’s flawed thinking. A whole nother echelon of Italian sausage exists, and perhaps the best of them can only be found on a grill on Saturdays at the Royal Oak Farmers Market. There aren’t a ton on hand, and when they’re gone, you missed your opportunity til the next week.
The sausages aren’t made by a company, but an old, affable Italian man, Benny Ciccarelli, who learned the craft many decades ago while growing up on a farm in Italy. In a simple dish like an Italian sausage, excellence is achieved in subtle ways. Benny knows those subtleties.
Before elaborating, a bit about Benny: He learned to butcher pigs at around 14 years old after he stopped going to school to help on his family’s farm and vineyard in Italy. Aside from sausage, he’s a skilled winemaker. Though he developed butchering skills at a young age, he decided to join the military, and not long after getting out of the service, left for the U.S. He bounced among jobs in construction and at Ford, and moved back to Italy for a minute before retiring in 2005.
During this time, he never gave up on his passion and would make sausages for friends. But the leap into full-time butchery or sausage making seemed unrealistic because he had three kids and needed to bring home the bacon. Butchering didn’t seem lucrative.
It was not until his daughter opened Redford’s Mama Rita bakery and started producing breads several years ago that Benny, with time on his hands, got a business license and started making sausage for sale. He teamed up with decorated Royal Oak restaurateur Seymour Schwartz, who helps run the grill at the market’s south end.
The sausages are fantastic. Why? As Benny explains, they are stuffed with the correct pork butt meat to fat ratio, and he uses the good fat, not the bad. Glorious pig fat is what generates flavor, so if the package is too lean then it’s bland, but if there’s too much fat then the texture is off and it drips on the grill, causing flames to leap and burning the sausage.
There’s a broad underappreciation of texture in American cuisine, but certainly not in Italian. Benny cuts the meat to just the right with a knife that has to be razor sharp or it will stress the meat and ruin the texture.
“Every little thing like this helps you succeed in what you want in the sausage,” Benny says.
Finally, he doesn’t add herbs as many do with Italian sausage. Only salt, black pepper, and a little garlic, though not so much that it overpowers the rest of the flavor. He also adds red wine, which is really what puts his sausage over the top. It adds depth and complexity, and the wine’s tannins work with the meat’s protein to unleash flavor. It’s a no brainer for a guy who knows how to make wine and sausage.
Benny doesn’t add mustard or grilled onions and peppers, as is common, because it obscures the meat’s flavor. Instead he usually eats his sausages with a small, simple salad. He’s right — who needs condiments when your sausage is poetic?
