Homemade sausage

Homemade breakfast sausage patties made with ground pork or turkey, and seasoned with a simple mixture of herbs and peppers really are a treat!

In my mind, there are really two reasons to make your own homemade sausage: Better quality – a lot of commercially-produced sausage is made with the poorest cuts of meat, and a high percentage of lard. Not only that, but seasonings contain preservatives such as nitrites that you don’t need if you’re making and using it fresh.

The second reason is if you’re processing your own hogs. You can buy sausage seasoning, but making your own blend of herbs and spices from scratch allows you to customize the flavors to be exactly how you like them, and also saves you money.

These are the reasons we make our own sausage anyway.

When I was young, I remember mixing the seasonings together, and then sprinkling them onto a (plastic covered) table full of pork cutlets that were ready to go into the grinder.

Adding the seasonings before grinding made it easier to get the them evenly mixed into a large volume of pork, but it’s not the only way.

If you’re doing a small batch – just a pound or two – it’s easy to simply add the spices to your pre-ground meat and mix it with a spoon or your hands.

That’s what I do most often now, because we usually send our hogs to a processor rather than do them ourselves now that we live in a warmer climate where it’s not as easy to process without worry of spoilage.

Ingredients for Homemade Breakfast Sausage

I have two entire cookbooks dedicated to sausage recipes, but of all of them, this is the one I keep coming back to. Over time, I’ve adjusted it and changed a few ingredients to my own liking, but the classic taste of breakfast sausage can’t be beat, nor can its simple ingredients, and the ease of mixing it up.

• Ground pork or turkey. I usually use 80/20. I would personally not use this recipe for ground beef, or other red meat. 
• Sea salt
• Ground or rubbed sage
• Thyme – ground is best, but chopped is fine. Fresh thyme will have the most flavor.
• Ground black pepper
• Crushed red pepper – or ground cayenne for a spicy sausage.

Sage is the backbone of breakfast sausage. It’s an ingredient that has a very distinct flavor, but blends well with others, so you may not have noticed that that’s what you’re tasting in your sausage, but it’s there.

The other ingredients? Well, they’re not incidental, but they are flexible. You can change the portions to your liking.

For instance, the red pepper flakes will control how spicy your sausage is. My daughter wishes I would leave it out completely, but the rest of us like a nice little spicy flavor.

Thyme can be partially substituted for marjoram, and black pepper, as well as salt can be adjusted up or down based on your preference. 

You can make variations by adding other spices like paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, or a little maple syrup, or brown sugar, to make a sweet sausage.

How to make breakfast sausage

This sausage is perfect for sausage gravy, or breakfast sandwiches with eggs and cheese, and pairs perfectly with pancakes or waffles. Here’s an overview, and you’ll find the full recipe in the recipe box at the end of this post.

1. It’s simple: mix it all together.
   I’m not kidding.
   Plop your ground meat into a large bowl, and sprinkle the spice mixture on top.
   
2. Then mix. You can do this with a spoon (easy if you’re using ground turkey), or your hands (easier if you’re using pork and/or doubling or tripling the batch). Or even use the paddle attachment of your stand mixer if you have one (and underrated luxury!).
   
   The rule of thumb is to mix for one minute per pound of meat. I don’t know why it’s the rule of thumb, but I’ve heard it from multiple people in multiple places, including the Amish community where I grew up, and from various blogs and social media sites.

   I think the main takeaway is to just make sure it’s thoroughly mixed. If you make a 45 pound batch, hopefully you don’t actually have to spend 45 minutes mixing, but who knows. That’s probably actually why we were sprinkling the seasonings over a large tableful of meat before we ground it when I was little – to cut down on mixing time.
   

3. Once your meat is mixed, shape it into patties, or logs, or stuff into casings if you want to, and cook sausage over medium heat until well done all the way through.

Tips for success

I know I just poo-poo’d commercially made sausage for its overabundance of fat a few paragraphs ago, but to some degree, it is desirable. If you use a meat that is leaner than 80/20, you may want to add some lard, or at least heavily grease your pan. Otherwise, your sausage could end up being a bit dry.

Make your sausage ahead of time. Maybe not strictly necessary, but if you can make your sausage a day ahead, and store it in the fridge, those seasonings will have more time to really permeate the meat with their flavors and your sausage will be that much better. Trust me on that!

More recipes for you

• Cheese, sausage and grits bake (a great way to use your homemade sausage!)
• Homemade summer sausage
• How to can pork
• How to can chicken broth
• How to can vegetable soup

Homemade Breakfast Sausage

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Simple homemade breakfast sausage to wow your family.

• Author: Elise
• Prep Time: 10 minutes
• Cook Time: 5 minutes
• Total Time: 15 minutes
• Yield: Varies

Ingredients

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• 1 pound of ground pork or turkey
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried sage
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon of thyme
• 1/4–1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper

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Instructions

1. Place ground meat in a large bowl. Sprinkle with seasoning and mix, either with a heavy duty stand mixer, or your hands, until well incorporated – this should take a minute or two.
2. Shape into patties and fry in a skillet over medium heat until nicely browned on the outside, and no longer pink inside. Transfer to paper towels to blot up grease.

Kitchen tip: Mix a number of spices together and store in an air-tight container. When you’re ready to make sausage, simply add 1 tablespoon of mix to a pound of ground meat.

Enjoy!