What part of the pig is Italian sausage?

What's the difference between pork sausage and Italian pork sausage?

Do I have to buy both?

Do they have different meat content? I thought I could use the pork sausage for just a few recipes and leave the Italian sausage to season all of the meat dishes.

I don't think they are meant to be used interchangeably--at least I've never seen it suggested that way. If you do substitute one for the other, do note that they will not have the same flavoring. Even if you cook with them as the same thing. I use one for Italian food in dishes like lasagna or carbonara or in meatballs where the sweet flavors work well, and in a pork dish like a pasta-sauce using chard or kale. However, I would use regular Italian sausage as a flavor for anything with red wine or coffee flavors. You may have the same result using the pork sausage as the Italian sausage for Italian recipes; just try to keep the ratio of each type of sausage and flavor so that the result is right for the recipe.

We make sausage links from our ground pork, sausages. You can make them big or small. After they are in links they are placed in glass jars and refrigerate until used.

Sausages take longer to make than bacon and sausage are usually expensive making it best to buy. As far as the difference between regular pork sausage and Italian pork sausage I prefer using the former but when I make things like meat balls and meat loaf I prefer the flavor of the latter. They are pretty much the same with respect to the meat content.

I didn't know that you could make "sausage links." How much meat is in each link? If you wanted to go big (like 10 oz.) or small (4 oz.), how did you determine the meat content per link? Do they come in different flavors too?

The pork sausage comes already made up. I just take the little links, about an ounce each, and put them on a rack and put in the broiler and put a pan under it to catch the drippings.

In a couple minutes you have perfectly cooked sausage links. There are a couple places where they cook them all day but I can't live by that.

If you buy the links then you just cut the links into slices as is done for meatballs. It is easy to tell the difference. The meatballs are just under 1/2" long.