Can You Freeze Italian Sausage?

3 minutes

With a hint of fennel and the spice of chilli, Italian sausages aren’t like your standard pork sausages. It’s easy to buy a few too many when you manage to get them, however, so what is the best way to store them?

How to Freeze Italian Sausage

Freezing Italian sausage is a breeze, especially if you’ve frozen meat or sausages. The method remains similar:

1. Portion: Sausages and other meat products cannot be refrozen, so you have to ensure that you’re only freezing the sausage in portions that you can use.
2. Wrap: Wrap the Italian sausage in baking paper, ensuring you leave a small air barrier between the sausage and the paper. That will allow for the free movement of air, leading to a more evenly well-preserved sausage.
3. Wrap Again: Wrap the baking paper parcel in cling film, ensuring you smooth the cling film across the parcel and against itself. This will form a good seal, and allow for a small space where frost can form away from the meat of the sausage itself.
4. Freeze: Freeze the sausage in the centre of your freezer with a clear label. This is especially important if you have frozen multiple types of sausage. You don’t want to defrost Cumberlands expecting Italian!

3 Tips for Freezing Italian Sausage

Now you know how to freeze it, we’ve got our 3 top tips which we strongly recommend following when freezing Italian sausage to have the best results:

Check the Seal
Ensuring that you form a good seal will allow you to prevent other items in your freezer from taking on a sausage smell that would otherwise be quite unpleasant to smell. Therefore, we recommend forming a good seal with the cling film to protect other food in your freezer. 

Freeze In A Marinade
While the freezing won’t allow any amount of flavour to be absorbed, the thawing process will start the marinade early. This can allow you to save a little time, leading to a quicker weeknight meal. 

Freeze With Other Ingredients
Freeze the Italian sausages with other ingredients for a simple form of meal-prep. For instance, you could wrap the sausages and place them in the freezer with a portion of gnocchi. Then, for a quick meal, thaw the sausages, boil the gnocchi, and toss everything in some pasta sauce. 

How Long Can You Freeze Italian Sausage?

You can freeze Italian sausage for around 3 months.

This is the general limit in terms of time for freezing most things, and you can easily achieve that full time frame since sausages are very dense.

To ensure you do get the whole three months, and possibly a little more, make sure to follow the steps we set out above.

How Do You Defrost Italian Sausage?

You can easily defrost Italian sausage in the fridge overnight.

While there, the ice should easily melt, and the sausage will then be stored at fridge temperature, which is entirely safe for meat.

Can You Refreeze Italian Sausage?

No, you certainly cannot.

Meat cannot be refrozen while still in the same state you thawed it in.

By this, we mean that you can thaw some raw meat, and then cook it. Once cooked, the meat can be refrozen, but you couldn’t have frozen it if it were still raw.

Does Italian Sausage Freeze Well?

Yes, Italian sausage does freeze well.

The combination of dense protein and fat as well as several rich, potent seasonings, makes for a freezer-friendly ingredient that is really easy to store.

Related FAQs

If you’ve still got questions about freezing Italian sausage or sausage in general, then these may help: