Types:

Fresh Italian sausage is most commonly made of pork, but is sometimes made of chicken, beef, turkey, and even buffalo:

• Mild Italian sausage  is usually seasoned with fennel and black pepper. It's great as a breakfast sausage, or in pastas and casseroles.
• Sweet Italian sausage  gets its sweet flavor from seasonings including fennel, anise, brown sugar, and basil. Works nicely in sandwiches and hot dogs.
• Hot Italian sausage  usually contains cayenne pepper, paprika, and chilli, and has a zesty and pepper flavor. Try pan-frying the sausage with onions and red peppers, and a splash of red wine .
• Organic Italian sausages  are also available.
• If you're feeling ambitious, why not invest in a sausage maker , buy some Italian sausage seasoning , and create your own sausages?

Tips for Cooking:

• Frying: Use a non-stick pan  and do not cook over more than medium-high heat. Sausages cooked at high temperatures can burst open and lose their fats. The slower you cook your sausage, the more juicy and flavorful it will be. Your sausage is done when there are no pink spots inside. Use tongs to turn your sausages to avoid piercing them.
• Baking: Always bake sausages in a marinade, some liquid, or perhaps a cheese  sauce, otherwise they will become dry.
• Poaching: To poach sausages, place them in water that is just simmering. Poach them for 10 minutes if you're preparing them for grilling or frying, or for about 30 minutes for eating.
• Grilling: Grilling makes sausages tasty. Cook them over a low flame gas grill  to prevent bursting. You can keep your grill's lid down to help heat the sausages through.

Dry Italian sausages are great on pizza, grilled bread, sandwiches or crackers, with cheese , or just as a snack on their own:

• Pepperoni  is a popular dry cured Italian sausage with a hot and spicy flavor.
• Salami , or Salame , is a highly spiced and salted sausage made of beef, or a mixture of pork and beef. 
• Nduja  is a soft, spreadable, spicy salami mainly produced in Calabria, in Italy's southern region.
• Sopressata  is a dry cured, coarse salami, usually made of ham or pork, but sometimes of beef. It often includes hot pepper.

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Pots and Pans

Meat