A dish of the wine harvest, this baked Italian sausage achieves a casual elegance while being rustic and hearty at the same time. You’ll love how easy and quick it is to throw together!
This simple and tasty baked Italian sausage dish is a longtime favorite during the grape harvest in September, when grapes take central stage at the markets. It easily earned status as a keeper at our house, and is a longtime regular on our Fall dinner table.
What Makes this Baked Italian Sausage Recipe Special
With a hint of sweet acidity from the grapes, this is considered an agro-dolce dish in Italian. The sweetness of onions and grapes together with the savory depth of flavor from roasted Italian sausage is a wonderful combination. Baked celery adds the perfect subtle crunch, and along with fresh aromatic herbs, rounds out the flavors beautifully.
This makes for a very satisfying meal, along with some rustic bread or a baguette to mop up the juices. We also like the motto of make it once, enjoy it twice, so go ahead and add a little extra of the ingredients, and warm up the excellent leftovers for another delicious meal!
A dish well known in years past on central Italy farmers’ tables and vineyards during harvest time, Salsiccia coll’Uva is first mentioned in the Art of Eating Well, by Pellegrino Artusi in 1891. Believed to be from the Italian region of Umbria, it is also found in other parts of central Italy, and would not have been surprising to find in other areas where the traditions of growing grapes for wine and raising pigs span thousands of years.
A Quick Rundown
This dish comes together quickly and easily. It basically involves chopping some celery into large bite size pieces, slicing some onions and throwing them along with the rest of the ingredients together in a pan, and in to the oven to roast. Baking Italian sausage in the oven means you can go do other things while the ingredients cook into a delicious meal. Another reason it’s a favorite.
Ingredient Notes for Wine Harvest Baked Italian Sausage
- Italian Sausage (Salsiccia) – A milder spiced sausage works best for this dish, so as not to compete with the herbaceous flavors of fresh thyme and bay leaves, or the gracious touch of sweetness from the grapes.
- Grapes (Uve) – Wine grapes are optional, of course. See my note below about seedless grapes!
- You can use red grapes, white grapes or mixed. The firmer the better. For this reason, I find the oblong grapes work well. However, if big round juicy globe grapes are all you can find at the moment, just be sure to use fewer grapes, and leave more of the grapes whole, so as not to create a grape broth!
- Whether you crush, or halve, some of the grapes is up to you. If they are big and juicy, I leave them whole, or crush only a few, to provide a little juice. If they are on the firmer side, I crush around 1/3 of the grapes to ensure enough juices.
- The best way to crush grapes is on a cutting board with the back of a wooden spoon. To protect from grape splatters, angle the spoon away from you, and with the palm of your hand on top of the spoon, gently press down on each grape in a front to back motion. You crushed it!
- Seedless, or hand-seeded, grapes are best! Well, you be the judge. While grapes from the wine harvest naturally have seeds, living in Tuscany, I soon found out how hard and crunchy (and a bit bitter) those seeds can be when you bite into them.
- I like to keep some of the grapes attached to their stems for aesthetic beauty.
- Bay Leaves (Alloro) – Including a bay leaf per person looks nice on the plate. If you can’t find a good source for bay leaves to use in your cooking, have you ever considered buying a culinary bay laurel tree (Laurus nobilis) to keep in a vase at home? They’re beautiful.
- Thyme (Timo) – Thyme is such a lovely herb. Approximate here. Put more, if you like. Leave some on the stem to garnish each plate, if you have extra.
- Onions (Cipolle) – I like to use red onions, but any onion will do. Shallots, halved lengthwise, look beautiful. Just be sure to allow for some in every bite.
- Celery (Sedano) – Grape harvest time is also a great time for celery. Include the fanned out ends of the celery stock for extra visual appeal. I tend to exaggerate with the quantity of celery. It seems to never be too much!
Recommended Wine
Sagrantino di Montefalco – Appropriately, an Umbrian wine of high regard! Deep inky red, austere, bold tannins, leathery, concentrated dark berries with a hint of espresso… Where to find it? Winesearcher is a great website to find which stores in your area, right down to zipcode, carry the particular wine you’re looking for, along with comparative prices. Wine.com is a convenient online source for ordering wine that I’ve used many times.
Recipe
Ingredients
- 8-10 celery stocks, cut diagonally into bite-size pieces, including the fanned out ends, for visual effect
- 1 medium red onion (or any onion will be delicious), halved and thinly sliced
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1.5 lb seedless grapes, red, white or mixed, (firm oval grapes are ideal), plus more raw grapes to garnish
- 8 fresh Italian pork sausages (not spicy)
- 4 bay leaves (one per person)
- 1 bundle thyme (20-40 stems), leaves stripped from stems, plus a few whole stems to garnish
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C)
- Toss the celery and onion in a rectangle roasting pan with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Place in the oven to get about a 10 minute head start on cooking while you prepare the other ingredients.
- Crush some grapes with the back of a wooden spoon (see notes), or cut in half, to release their juice. Add the grapes to the roasting pan, including some on the stems, for visual effect.
- Pierce the sausages a few times with a toothpick to allow steam to escape, then lay them on the grapes and nestle the bay leaves closely around the sausages.
- Sprinkle with thyme, including a few whole stems, and a dash of salt and pepper. Return the pan to the oven.
- Roast uncovered for 25 minutes, then turn the sausages to brown on the other side for another 25 minutes. (The minimum cooked temperature of the sausage should be 160°F/71.1°C) If sausages are not golden to your liking, turn the oven on broil for a few minutes until they achieve a deep golden color. (Carefully babysit them the whole time you have the oven on broil—they can go from beautiful to burnt fast.)
- To serve, garnish with thyme, a stem of grapes, and a bay leaf on each plate.
