Ricci's Italian Sausage is linked by pride, tradition and a secret recipe

No one can fault a popular food company for not wanting to share the secret to their success. Especially if a pinch of this spice or tablespoon of that seasoning is what’s brought customers to its door for generations. 

So really, can you blame Stella Ricci for fudging the ingredient list when her son applied to the U.S. Department of Agriculture so they could sell their hot and sweet Italian sausage to restaurants, bars and pizza houses?

In 1972, Ernest Ricci Jr. was looking to grow Ricci’s Italian Sausage, the retail sausage company his father, Ernest Sr., started in 1945 in McKees Rocks, with a wholesale division. To get the official stamp of approval, ingredients must be listed in descending order by weight on the label, which meant the family’s secret mix of pork, paprika and various spices would be disclosed.

Stella, however, wasn’t buying it. “She was like, ‘Do you really think I gave them the real recipe?’” third-generation owner Ernie Ricci III  — then still in his teens — recalls her confessing at the dinner table with a smug grin. 

Knowing the USDA would analyze the sausage to ensure the label accurately reflected its contents, family members quickly corrected the recipe and resubmitted it to the lab in Athens, Ga. (Whew!) And the rest is Pittsburgh culinary history. 

Ricci’s — pronounced “Ritchie’s” — ended up winning approval, enabling it to add wholesale customers such as The Pizzeria on 4th Ave. in Coraopolis, Chub’s Place in North Park and Pasta Too in Bethel Park to its growing list of customers.

Today, the company that started as a small grocery store offering imported Italian groceries, specialty meats and homemade Italian sausage has grown to also include hand-rolled meatballs and a wide variety of hot prepared foods such as sausage rolls, sandwiches and daily specials like lasagna.

Customers at the store, located at Kenmawr Plaza in Kennedy, also can choose from several sauces stacked in a cooler near the front door. The crowd favorite is Lil’s Homemade Tomato Sauce and Sherry’s Pasta e Fagoli made with hot Italian sausage. 

What’s never changed is the sense of pride the family has in its products, and the passion they have for their buyers, many of whom are not just repeat but generational customers.

“People will come in and say, ‘You did my father’s graduation party,’” says Ricci. 

They want the best product they can buy, of course, along with good service. But they also value the strong connection and longevity of the brand.  

“They’re family, just like we are,” he says. 

Rooted in tradition

Ernie Ricci Sr. was 16 when he emigrated from Sulmona in Italy’s Abruzzo region to the U.S. in 1919. HIs older sister, Grazielle, owned a small grocery store in Columbus, Ohio, and the teen’s job was to help her cut fresh meat and make sausage using a family recipe. 

In his twenties, he relocated to McKees Rocks, where he found work with the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, got married to wife Stella and eventually had two children, daughter Ida Mae and son Ernie Jr. In 1945, tiring of the grind of railroad work, the couple took advantage of his former career as a butcher and opened a small grocery on Island Avenue in the Rocks specializing in meat and sausage. 

Ernie still worked the night shift, so they filled the sausage casings using a hand-cranked stuffer in the evening before he headed to the railroad yards, leaving Stella to run the shop during the day. 

Their son took over the growing business in 1965 after his father suffered a stroke that left him unable to work. After selling the store, they packed up all of the equipment and moved operations to the garage of the family home in Kennedy. Changing locations didn’t seem to matter to their dedicated following — all customers had to do to was ring the bell and announce they were there for sausage.

The business outgrew its home setup after adding its wholesale arm in 1972, relocating to a bigger space on Broadway Avenue in Stowe in 1982. Grandson Ernie, who grew up stuffing sausage alongside his grandmother and also helped her make wholesale deliveries, came on board part-time in 1987.

While he probably always knew he’d one day take the reins of the family business, Ricci worked for several years in sales for Johnson & Johnson after graduating from Washington & Jefferson College in 1977 with a degree in economics. But he still worked part time in the store during holidays and days off.

“I just enjoyed the food business and my dad wanted me to come back,” he says. “I had to grow up first.”

The experience he gained in marketing and advertising would come in handy when Ricci’s relocated once again in 2005, when Ricci took full ownership. The new retail outlet on Rt. 60 in Robinson was outfitted with ovens and hot cases so they could offer grab-and-go prepared foods to hungry customers, along with trays for catered evens. 

“It was the best move,” Ricci says. “It just exploded.”

The full-time face of the business since 1997, he has never looked back. Approaching 70, he’s still at the store six days a week overseeing production — it moved to its current location on Pine Hollow Road in Kennedy in 2015 —  and when time permits, he loves to chat with the 100 or so customers they average each day in the showroom. 

Ricci inherited his work ethic not just from his father, who worked at the store until he was 90, but from his grandmother. Stella was mixing her still-secret blend of spices up until the week before she died at age 88 in 1994. 

“She was a worker,” he says, with emphasis. 

So was his mother, Lillian, who helped make sauce, rolled meatballs and and baked her famous hot sausage rolls — made with Mancini’s bread — until she was 92. Lil’s “real” job was as an OB nurse at Ohio Valley Hospital — she helped deliver generations of babies over a 61-year-long career — but there’s no denying she was an essential foot solider in Ricci’s kitchen, too.

If continuing a family-owned business for 80 years sounds remarkable, that’s because it is — an estimated 70% of family businesses either fail or are sold before the second generation takes over.

About that secret recipe

Ricci’s Italian hot sausage is made Calabria-style, with lots of fennel seeds, crushed red peppers and Spanish paprika to give it color and bite. Its sweet sausage is made Abruzzi-style — no garlic, just salt and crushed black pepper.

Ricci’s sausage can be purchased online and shipped nationwide (except to Alaska or Hawaii), or in person at four locations: the main retail store in Kennedy, Pennsylvania Macaroni in the Strip District, Cibrone Bakery in Castle Shannon and Groceria Merante in Oakland.

While Ricci concedes it’s not easy to build a following, the business has always enjoyed great word of mouth via its many satisfied customers. It really took off when local media extended its reach in the late 1990s with personal appearances.

For 22 years beginning in 1998, Ricci’s donated sausage to the KDKA Spaghetti Breakfast started by KDKA Radio broadcaster John Cigna in 1984 to benefit the Little Sisters of the Poor, and they also  took part in KDKA Radio’s Feast of the Seven Fishes with John Pratt. The company made an appearance in the special “Meat Pittsburgh,” which was produced by Rick Sebak and televised on the WQED “Nebby” series.

Ricci also has cooked with Chris Fennimore on QED Cooks. 

“I always know then the show [is on repeat] because the phone starts ringing,” he says with a laugh.

The company makes all their sausage in the 1,200-square-foot store on Pine Hollow Road — some 3,500 pounds a week in pretty tight quarters —  along with around 2,000 hand-rolled meatballs. They also have a 1,250-square-foot warehouse to store supplies, boxes and seasoning.

The shop is so small, there’s no good place for customers to sit once they order their hot sausage or banana pepper sandwiches or one of Lil’s sausage rolls. Depending on when they enter, customers might catch retired mailman Frank Barbaro, 85, rolling meatballs bound with Mancini’s bread crumbs at the end of the counter, or see production manager Charlie Foley, 36, feeding pork sausage meat into foot after foot of natural casings, or strands.

“They’re already cleaned and tenderized, with no whiskers,” Ricci points out as Foley, who grew up on a farm in Bulger and served as a Black Hawk crew chief in the Army before coming on staff 11 years ago, methodically stuffed the strands, rolled them into giant circles and stacked them in a bin headed for the cooler.

In another tight corner, Lorie Redman placed portions of 80/20 ground beef into a patty machine that spits out the 2-ounce patties that are hand-rolled into meatballs.

The meatballs, which are sold in 2 pound bags as well as in trays of 12 or 24, are so popular during the holidays that customers are limited to two bags each. 

Ricci says they sometimes can’t make them fast enough. 

“It’s insanity,” with lines everywhere and an order folder that measures 7 inches thick. Christmas, in particular, is so busy that Ricci has to keep a 3-ring binder at the ready so he can keep track of what needs to be prepped and what has already been cooked.

“But that’s a good problem,” he says.

“There is stress,” agrees Harry Hartung of Kennedy, who worked for U.S. Airways as a flight crew scheduler for 42 years for retiring a few years ago. But it’s a good stress “because the people are good here,” he says.

Now 75, Hartung works three days a week at the store rolling meatballs, making hoagies and working the counter — whatever Ricci needs to keep things snappy.  

Often, that’s making sure the Henny Penny hot case to the left of the cash register is constantly replenished with the Italian-American foods they make on site in two Unox Italian ovens. That includes rotating daily specials like mac ‘n cheese with ground hot sausage and lasagna layered with homemade sauce and Grande Sopraffina ricotta cheese.

The secret recipe for Ricci’s sausage is the same today as it was back in 1945, handed down from father to son to grandson. And everything is still mixed by hand after the pork butt goes through the grinder — 200 pounds at a time. That includes the spices, which are tossed together in a giant metal bucket that was ancient even when his parents began using it back in the ’40s. 

“We have it down to a science,” says Ricci. 

What might change going forward is who might one day oversee operations of the decades-old business. While both of Ricci’s sons worked at the store all through school  alongside his wife, Sherry, they’ve chosen completely different career paths. Ernie IV is a lawyer in Naples, Fla., and his younger brother, Gianni, is an orthopedic surgeon in Georgia. 

“So we’re still working that out” with succession planning, says Ricci.

In the meantime, “we’re still busy rolling and working”  with no thoughts of retirement, he says. “Remember, my dad worked until he was 88.”

Stella’s Roasted Red Bell Peppers 

PG tested

“My grandmother, Stella, was great for comfort food,” says Ernie Ricci III, the third-generation owner of Ricci’s Italian Sausage in Kennedy. 

“In this recipe, she used the red bell peppers because they are lower in acid and easier to digest. The combination of the coarse ground black pepper in the sweet Italian sausage, breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese really complements the red bell pepper.”

It was served with homemade mashed potatoes smothered with red sauce and “plenty of bread for dipping!”

2 pounds bulk Ricci’s sweet Italian sausage

1 egg

1 cube chicken bouillon

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup unseasoned bread crumbs

4 large red bell peppers, halved and deseeded

Red sauce made from Italian plum San Marzano tomatoes

Mix bulk sausage and egg together in a large bowl.

Dissolve chicken bouillon in 1 cup of water.

Pour dissolved bouillon into the bowl, add Parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs and mix to combine.

Divide the stuffing among the 8 pepper halves. Place in a deep pan with tomato sauce.

Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. You will see traces of the Parmesan cheese in the red sauce once the pepper are cooked — delicious!

Serves 4.

— Ricci’s Italian Sausage

 

Sherry’s Risotto with Sweet Italian Sausage and Portabella Mushrooms

PG tested

Ricci’s featured this recipe in the QED Cooks Kitchen at the Pittsburgh Home & Garden Show. 

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 pound Ricci’s Italian loose sweet sausage

1 teaspoon chopped garlic

½ cup wine

8 ounces sliced baby portabella mushrooms

Quart of your favorite marinara sauce

1 cup arborio (short) rice

1 tablespoon concentrated chicken soup base

1 cup grated Romano or Parmesan cheese

Place 1 tablespoon olive oil, sausage and garlic in a large pan. Saute on medium, pulling apart and browning the sausage into small pieces.

Add wine, then mushrooms and simmer until mushrooms are tender.

In a second pot, heat marinara sauce until warm and add to mushroom mixture. Simmer on low, stirring occasionally.

In a a heavy-bottomed, straight-sided skillet, heat remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add arborio rice and cook, stirring continually, on medium heat until rice is translucent.

Add 2 cups water and chicken base. Bring to a boil, then turn heat down to a slow boil, stirring to prevent rice from sticking. 

Add more water as needed until rice is tender enough to your tasting. (I added an additional 1 cup.)

With a slotted spoon, scoop out rice and place into a large enough pot to accommodate ⅔ of the sauce and all of the rice. Add sauce and stir thoroughly.

Cook on low, stirring to prevent sticking, until all liquid is soaked up but still moist.

Stir in grated cheese and place in a serving bowl.

Serve with remaining sauce for topping. 

Serves 6.

— Sherry Ricci