Who knew making your own breakfast sausage could be this easy?
Homemade Breakfast Sausage
We like having sausages for breakfast. Breakfast sausages are the perfect accompaniment to eggs and toast. Their porky, salty, peppery, sage-y goodness provides such a tasty burst of flavor in your mouth.
But the thing I don’t like about most store-bought breakfast sausage links is that they’re so greasy. There’s just so much fat in them that I can’t help but feel a little sick towards the end of the meal. Sometimes I have to force myself to finish the final bites of sausage, thick with coagulated fat.
Make it Yourself
One of the best, most-used tools in our kitchen is our KitchenAid stand mixer. It gets used at least once a week, mostly for Annie’s baking projects. But we also got the Kitchenaid Food Grinder Attachment so that we could make our own sausage using the trimmings from my pork spareribs. I love it because I can control the amount of fat in the ground pork.
Keep Everything Cold
The biggest advice I can give on using the meat grinder is, keep everything cold. Room temperature meat can gum up the blade and grinding plate, slowing down the sausage-making process. I like to put all the meat chunks on a tray in the freezer for at least 15 minutes until it’s firm.
I also put all the meat grinder parts on a separate tray in the freezer. With everything cold and firm, the meat grinding will go much quicker and with less mess.
Making Sausage With the KitchenAid Food Grinder Attachment
Homemade Breakfast Sausage Recipe
Ingredients:
1 lb lean ground pork
1/2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp dried sage
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/8 tsp dried marjoram
1/2 tsp paprika
a pinch of ground nutmeg or allspice
Method:
I grind my meat once using the coarse plate, then spread the ground meat out on a sheet pan and sprinkle the sausage seasonings evenly over the meat. Then the meat and grinder attachment go back in the freezer for another 15 minutes before I grind it again using the coarse plate.
(If you’re just using store-bought ground pork, mix the seasonings thoroughly into the pork)
Homemade Breakfast Sausage with Spices
Form the meat into small meatballs, about the size of a racquetball. (If you like, you can roll them out into little breakfast sausage “link” logs.)
Homemade Breakfast Sausage Balls
Form the meat into small meatballs, about the size of a racquetball. (If you like, you can roll them out into little breakfast sausage “link” logs.)
Homemade Breakfast Sausage Balls
Flatten the balls into patties. The great thing about this breakfast sausage recipe is that you don’t have to cure the sausage. It can be used right away, no waiting necessary!
Freeze ‘Em or Fry ‘Em
At this point, you can cover the breakfast sausage patties with plastic wrap and return them to the freezer until they are frozen solid. Once they are frozen solid, you can store them in a freezer bag. That way, you can save these breakfast sausages for some later time.
When you’re ready to fry up some breakfast sausages, just add a little oil to a medium-hot skillet and fry them until they’re browned on both sides. Since the sausage is so lean, be careful not to over-cook them.
Homemade Breakfast Sausage
Oh man, the sage and allspice in the breakfast sausage seasoning mix are awesome. And the salt and brown sugar are well balanced. Trust me, these breakfast sausages won’t last long in the freezer. You’ll love them so much, they’ll be gone before you know it!
Besides breakfast sausages, we also make bulk Italian sausage using an awesome recipe from Bruce Aidell. But that’s for another post.
Aloha, Nate
>what a great recipe! I hope to try this one soon 🙂
>Yum, these look totally amazing! Our local grocery store makes great homemade sausages, and a large variety, too. I am a sucker for decent sausage!
>They look great – and no nasty red pepper flakes to burn your mouth in the morning!
>Hey Guys! I love the site. Asian food is perhaps my favorite, but it seems that finding the ingredients are quite a challenge where I live (unless I travel into the city). Maybe I will have better luck looking for vegetarian recipes here!
>That looks delicious. I’ll give it a go soon, but I think, unlike anonymous, that I may add just a few red pepper flakes. They help wake me up!
>That’s a good tip to know! (re freeze meat/cold meat) JS has been wanting to buy a meat grinder attachment for our Kitchen-Aid mixer…
>Beautiful sausage Nate!
>Yum! That looks great!
>Oooo yeah, home made sausage. That meat grinder is a nice attachment, great tips. I never thought to cool the grinder parts.
>Wow, way to use the grinder attachment! I ought to get one of those, would love to make my own sausages. Yum!
>@K and S – thanks, hope you like it!
@Wandering Coyote – I like all types of sausage (except blood sausage). Making homemade sausage is great, because you know exactly what goes in.
@Anonymous – to be honest, I like a little of that red pepper bite.
@Haley – Where do you live? Are you that far from an Asian grocery?
@Rebecca – hehe
@JS – I sense a Christmas present is in the making…
@kitchenlife – thanks!
@Gina – thank you.
@Robert – I think I saw that tip on Alton Brown.
@PaniniKathy – the food grinder attachment is an indispensable tool in our kitchen!
>Need to seriously consider a KitchenAid.. I’m missing out on great stuff like encased / ground meats .
>@Jude – the Kitchen Aid is one of the most-used tools in our kitchen. We got ours for a pretty good deal at Macy’s.
>Yummy! Does any one have recipes for homemade tried and true italian and breakfast sausages???? induction friendly. A bunch of recipes out there call for wine and such, so I figured I’ll see what u guys have to offer.
>@sujan patricia – we’re still testing out recipes so when we come upon one that we like, we’ll be sure to post it. Stay tuned!
>Fantastic recipe. You can guess what I’ll be eating tomorrow morning! Will print that recipe of and hopefully I have the ingredients available at hand.
>I think the homepade breakfast sausage is combined with a couple of poached eggs and some bacon would make the very best breakfast. Enough to keep you full for all the morning.
>@Food Barcelona – Great! Let us know how it turns out!
>I was out of marjoram and I can’t have molasses right now, so I used white sugar, but I wanted to let you know this came out great for me using good ground pork from my butcher. The kid was skeptical, but she loved it, too. Thanks for the inspiration!
>@Serene – great to know. I wonder if other sugar substitutes would work as well.
Hi Nate! These are just GREAT!!! I’ve been wanting a KitchenAid for EVER. Seeing as I’m not much of a baker, I figured I would just need to get along without. However, I have always wanted to make my own sausage. Sounds like a good reason to me, lol…
Thank you so much for sharing and joining the Cookbook Party. I really appreciate it:) Say Hi to Annie:)
Thanks for posting this. The recipe looks good, but I especially appreciate the suggestions on chilling the meat and grinder as well as the sausage balls.
These taste exactly like sausages from superquinn grocery store in Ireland!! Best tasting sausage I’ve had since moving to Canada 20 years ago