Italian sausages baked slowly with mushrooms and tomatoes until they're so tender you could cut them with a spoon. This is a cheap, one pan meal that'll feed a crowd and just might be my favorite sausage and mushroom recipe. There's lots of different ways to and make it your own and improvise-today I'll walk you through it.

A baked Italian sausage on a plate with tomato sauce, mushrooms parmesan cheese and polenta. — Tender baked sausages with tomato, mushrooms, polenta and parmesan.

Back when I was sous Chef of Il Vesco Vino in St. Paul we cooked fennel sausage slowly in tomato sauce so it could be served quickly on a sandwich. We served not one, but two whole sausages in a type of Italian pocket bread with mozzarella cheese. It was a little excessive.

At the end of the shift the leftover sausages were the stuff dreams a line cooks dreams were made of. Cooked for hours until nearly falling apart, the sausage imbued the sauce with flavor and fat, becoming spoon tender like a pot roast and so addictive they could be traded for goods and services.

Chef's Tips and Variations

Tips

Use canned, whole peeled tomatoes or tomato passata (strained pureed tomatoes).
Browning the mushrooms and sausage is the key to the deepest flavor.
Loose, ground sausage won't have the same tender pot roast effect as sausage links.
The tomato sauce gets infused with flavor and is one of the best parts of the dish.
Many mushrooms can be used here (or omitted entirely) and each variety will be a little different. Below is a version I made in 2023 with black velvet boletes and leatherback mushrooms.

Baked Italian sausages with black velvet bolete mushrooms and milk cap mushrooms. — A variation with hot Italian sausage and blood sausage, black velvet boletes and milk cap mushrooms.

Variations

There's so many ways to vary this It's hard to keep track of the different ways I've made it.

In the video I demonstrate using frozen hen of the woods and fresh shiitakes, but you can substitute dried mushrooms and their soaking liquid.
Pork sausage is my favorite, but turkey sausage or chicken sausage are fine too.
If you have something like bratwurst, adding light beer instead of wine to the sauce is a good variation.
You can serve the sausages whole, but they're also great sliced up and made into sausage and mushroom pasta sauce.
Omit the mushrooms and make sausage and peppers. Cook three medium-diced bell peppers and onions until tender, folding them in at the end of cooking.

Baked italian sausages in tomato sauce with penne pasta. — Baked sausages in tomato sauce with penne pasta.

How to Make It (Step-By-Step)

The first step is to squeeze the seeds from a large can of whole, peeled tomatoes. Next strain the juice from the can, add to the squeezed tomatoes and puree them into a smooth sauce. This is known as tomato passata in Italian cooking. You don't have to get every seed, just try to get most of them. Cheaper canned tomatoes can be very seedy and too many seeds can ruin the sauce.

Squeezing seeds from a can of whole peeled tomatoes. — Squeezing seeds from canned tomatoes.

Straining the juice from a can of whole peeled tomatoes. — Straining the tomato juice from the can.

Pureeing canned whole peeled tomatoes with a hand blender. — Pureeing canned tomatoes with a hand blender.

Next brown a pound of Italian sausage links in a pan, remove them and add half a pound of mushrooms. Cook until the mushrooms are browned, then add thinly sliced garlic and cook until golden.

Browning sausages in a pan. — Cooking sausages in a pan until well-browned.

Adding sliced shiitake mushrooms to a pan of sausage drippings. — Adding mushrooms to the sausage drippings.

Adding sliced garlic to a pan of cooked mushrooms. — Adding sliced garlic to the pan.

When the garlic's starting to brown around the edges, deglaze the pan with white wine, add the tomato puree, browned sausages and a ladle of chicken stock or water.

Deglazing a pan of garlic and mushrooms with white wine. — Deglazing the pan with white wine.

Adding tomato puree to a pan of cooked mushrooms and garlic. — Adding tomato puree to the pan.

Adding browned sausages to a pan of mushrooms and tomato sauce. — Adding the sausages back to the pan.

Adding chicken stock to a pan of mushrooms, sausage and tomato sauce. — Adding chicken stock to the pan.

Cover the pan and bake for an hour or until the sausages are spoon-tender. From here they can be served right away or can be refrigerated and reheated and served in many different ways.

A finished, cooked pan of baked Italian sausage with mushrooms in tomato sauce. — The sausages are finished when they're tender enough to cut with a spoon.

One of my favorite ways to serve them is with polenta, pasta, or fried potatoes. Below they're pictured with an heirloom ground corn from Romona farms in Arizona.

A fork cutting into a sausage with tomato sauce and mushrooms served with polenta. — Serving the sausages with polenta.

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5 from 2 votes

Slow Baked Italian Sausages with Mushrooms

Slow baked sausages baked with mushrooms and tomato that are so tender you can cut them with a spoon. The recipe can be scaled and reheats like a dream.

Prep Time25

Cook Time1 30

Total Time1 55

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Italian

Servings: servings

Calories: 468kcal

Author: Alan Bergo

Cost: 10

Equipment

1 10 inch braising pan with high sides

Ingredients

1 lb Sweet Italian sausage or hot Italian sausage or your favorite sausage. Up to 1.5 lbs can be used.
1 clove Garlic large, thinly sliced
2 Tbsp Cooking oil Divided
8 oz Fresh mushrooms, thickly sliced or quartered or substitute 1 oz dried, rehydrated mushrooms *see note
Kosher salt to taste
Fresh ground black pepper to taste
Grated parmesan cheese to taste
1 32oz Can whole peeled tomatoes

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 325 F.
Heat a tablespoon of the oil in the pan and brown the sausages well over medium high heat. Make sure not to burn the drippings in the pan.
Remove the sausages, add the mushrooms and cook in the drippings until browned. Add a little extra oil if needed to help them brown.
Push the mushrooms to the side of the pan. Add the remaining oil and the garlic and cook until the edges turn golden.
Deglaze the pan with the wine.
Add the tomato puree, chicken stock and sausages to the pan, bring to a simmer on the stove, then cover and bake for 1.5 hours, or until the sausages are very tender.
If the pan threatens to dry out, add some water to adjust the consistency.
Double check the seasoning (It should be fine as sausage is salty). Serve the sausages whole, or cool and cut into links for a rustic pasta sauce.
They're great served with pasta, polenta, mashed potatoes or even wild rice. Garnish with a dusting of grated parmesan.
Any leftover sauce and sausage is worth it's weight in gold. It's great tossed with a bowl of noodles, used on a hot hoagie, or as a condiment.

Video

Notes

Using Dried Mushrooms

Rehydrate 1 oz dried mushrooms in 2 cups tepid water for 15 minutes, squeeze dry, roughly chop and brown just like the other mushrooms. Add the soaking liquid instead of the chicken stock and reduce the sauce accordingly until it thickens. You can also use a blend of dried and fresh mushrooms.

Nutrition

Comments

LaRae

January 25, 2025 at 12:45 pm

Amazing!!

Ben Rosen

January 25, 2025 at 10:27 am

Looks good . I always wanted to make my own sausage. I even got a sausage attachment for our mixer for our wedding. Just make me nervous to try it .

- Alan Bergo
  
  January 25, 2025 at 10:48 am
  
  Thanks Ben. I've used so many different types of sausage attachments and stand alone machines over the years, some of them are easier to use than others. I'm here for advice when you're ready.