Making perfectly seasoned sausage is a fine art - and Frank Saverino is a maestro when he creates a tasteful masterpiece.
The meat director of Holiday Market, 1203 S. Main St. in Royal Oak, Saverino’s nickname is “Dr. Meats.”
Making fresh sausage is his forte and he paints the sausages with ingredients to bring to them added flavor.
How about green peppers and onions, wine and cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese and roasted bell peppers? These are just some of the items incorporated into the fresh sausages to add flavor and fun.
The turkey/chicken low-fat sausages; the traditional pork sausages made from leaned out pork butts, loins, and hams, his bratwurst, Italian sausage and wild game sausages have a discriminating audience.
Bratwurst might incorporate sweet ginger, sweet cherry, beer, garlic potato, Irish potato. His Italian sausage might be sweet and mild, hot, loaded with green peppers and onions or with sun dried tomatoes.
The ever popular Polish sausage encompasses country-style bulk, little link breakfast, and large dinner sausages. Some are flavored with apple cinnamon. The wild game sausage might be ostrich with tangerine, walnuts and cognac, venison with apples and walnuts or garlic and rosemary and venison with salsa.
What makes these tasty fresh sausages even more interesting is combining them together with other ingredients to make side dishes or entrees.
His expertise has developed over the years. At the age of 13 he began making sausage at his family’s market, Phil’s Quality Meats in Warren. Eventually he was the proprietor of the 40-year-old market but was then wooed to Holiday Market.
Each week, the Holiday Market sells about 1,500 pounds of sausage. Saverino also is happy to give recipes to add to the sausage for special dishes.
Among the sausage dishes Saverino prepared are Greek roll ups combining turkey/chicken spinach feta sausage with Roma tomatoes, cream cheese, grated mozzarella and lavash bread.
His Italian sausage with roasted bell peppers is a great side dish. The kraut ‘n’ kielbasa could make a meal, and the kraut is both sweeter and more savory when seasoned with beer. Pizza boats with Chicago style sausages make a good luncheon dish. His angel hair spaghetti and Italian sausage is a great main dish.
Saverino said, “Fresh sausage can be oven roasted but it is superior on the grill. After it is cooked it is often combined with other ingredients.
He experiments with adding ingredients to the sausage meat itself. His Italian sausage has a combination of spices including garlic, basil,oregano and peppers. The Polish sausage has garlic and often allspice, nutmeg, salt and pepper.
He said customers at the Holiday Market asked for a healthful low-fat sausage, and he said, “We pioneered turkey/chicken sausage.” He tried several of his own recipes until he “came up with one that tasted good.” It is a combination of turkey thigh and chicken breast. It has half the fat of regular sausage.
Before holidays such as Easter, the store runs specials on the sausage and sells about 3,000 pounds of it in three days.
No wonder sausage, which has always been popular in ethnic markets, now has become mainstream to Royal Oak - thanks to the flavor combinations created by Saverino.