Five Minute Homemade Breakfast Sausage

 

* We posted this recipe at Real Food Wednesday at Kelly the Kitchen Kop *

I love a good breakfast sausage.  This is a fact that can be very frustrating to a person who also tries to avoid things like monosodium glutamate, corn syrup solids, sodium metabisulfite, and other chemical additives.  I'm fortunate to live right in the middle of a collection of conscientious farmers who raise some of the best meat anywhere, but because of various regulations, laws, and other interference they must subject their fantastic ground pork to spice blends that include most or all of the above ingredients.  For that reason, I've started making my own spice blend.  At first, I was a little intimidated by it, but it turns out that breakfast sausage is one of the simplest things you can make, and the resulting flavor and quality is something that you will never be able to get from a grocery store.  Here's how to season up some ground pork into delicious breakfast sausage in under five minutes:



Breakfast Sausage (makes 6-7 patties):

1. 1 lb pastured/foraged ground pork
2. 1.5 Tbsp sage (grow this!)
3. 1 tsp rosemary (grow this too!)
4. 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (and grow this!)
5. several grinds of black pepper (probably 1/4 tsp or so)
6. 1 scant tsp sea salt

If frozen, thaw your pork for a couple of days in the refrigerator.  When you're ready to make the sausage, put the pork into a mixing bowl with everything else, mix it well by hand, then form into patties and fry it up!  That's all there is to it.

I sometimes add some variety by adding some of the following ingredients.  Lots of things taste good in sausage, so let your creativity run a little:

• maple syrup (~1 Tbsp)
• anise (~1/2 tsp)
• thyme (~1 tsp)
• honey (~ 1 Tbsp)
• crumbled bacon
• celery seed (reduce the salt if you add this)

First get the spices together:

 

Dump all the measured spices into the bowl with the pork:

Mix it well, until it looks pretty uniform:

Form it into patties and put them in a single layer in a heavy medium-sized skillet:

I find that if you cover them for the first few minutes of cooking they are much juicier in the end:

Cook them for a few minutes over medium-low heat, until they are nicely browned, then flip and repeat.

Drain them on a paper towel or a rack, and you're ready to roll.  If you make this a few times, you'll never go back to the old squeeze tube sausage, I guarantee it!