Every year, I try to have a traditional Ground Hog Day dinner of ground hog (pork sausage.) Usually, I end up with a pasta-and-red-sauce thing with Italian sausage. Strong’s Market makes a killer Italian sausage. I’d like to break out of the rut this year.
Any ideas?
Well, according to Phil Connors, “They used to pull the hog out, and they used to eat it.” No pesky cooking involved! 
Here’s a recipe for ground sausage
Sausage Casserole
1 chub of sausage (I use Jimmy Dean Hot)
1 cup of rice, cooked (1c is the dry measurement)
1 can of Campbell’s Vegetable Beef Soup, plus 1 can of water
Brown the sausage, mix with the cooked rice, soup and water in a casserole dish. Bake at 375 for about 30 min.
Breakfast tacos:
Crumble raw sausage like hamburger and cook it. I use half Jimmy Dean spicy and half Jimmy Dean regular. Drain some of the excess grease but leave the sausage in the pan.
Scramble eggs and cook in the sausage grease with the sausage.
You may add sour cream, cheese, salsa, onions, fried potatoes, whatever you want.
Roll up in a flour tortilla and eat.
Yum!
Robin
If it’s okay to mix the pork with beef, try this awesome meatloaf:
1 lb ground pork
1 lb ground round (or chuck)
1 box Stouffer’s stuffing and the seasoning, any flavor
1/2 onion, small dice
1/2 green pepper, small dice
1 can Campbell’s condensed old-fashioned vegetable soup (no alphabets!)
2 eggs
a squirt of ketchup
1 tsp garlic
salt and pepper
Mix it all up. Place in a foil lined baking dish and form into loaf. Bake at 350° until it reaches an internal temp of 170 °, about 1 to 1-1/2 hours. (During the last 20 minutes, add some more ketchup on top.)
Sounds weird, but it’s really good.
Simple, but I make this every year over the Christmas holidays and people think it is some secret, time consuming recipe:
Jim’s Italian Sausages
Take about 1 1/2 pounds of hot (or mild) Italian sausage. Poke with a fork and then put them in water and boil a few minutes to get the fat out of them.
Take the sausages out of the water, slice into about 1/2 inch slices.
Put all the sausages slices into an electric skillet, on simmer. Immediately add 1/2 bottle of the cheapest port wine you can find. Simmer until all the wine is about gone and then add the remaining half of the bottle and simmer again until the liquid is gone.
By now, the sausages will be a dark brown, have a thick syrup soaked into them and you can leave them in the electric skillet on warm and let people pick out pieces with toothpicks, or put some on a plate and nibble off the plate.
They taste great, and the aroma from cooking them will have guests running from the front door to you kitchen to see what smells so good.
Fogot to mention, simmer with the lid on…and remember - CHEAP Port wine - the good stuff just doesn’t taste as good and is a waste of money, really!
Takes about 1 1/2 - 2 hours for all the wine to evaporate and before the sausages are fully ready.