My Basic Sausage Recipe
Fresh Home Made Breakfast Sausage
I mentioned this recipe in the recent herb show when I talked about sage. I promised I would include it in the show notes but as often happens I forgot to due to a time crunch. Rather than go back and insert it into those notes I figured I would do a stand alone post about it.
I originally got the base of this recipe from Chef Keith Snow. His recipe was for 7 pounds. I modified it to suit my taste (which you may wish to do with my version by the way) and adjusted the ingredients to a 1 pound batch. That makes scaling up really easy.
If you are scaling up to a really big recipe knowing that 3 teaspoons is equal to one tablespoon may be very helpful and time saving. Once you try this you will never buy premade sausage again. The recipe can be adapted and modified, you can use it for breakfast sausage or up the fennel and Italian seasoning a bit for more of a Italian Sausage flare. It can be stuffed into casings and smoked you name it.
The best part to me is how it gets nice and crispy when you brown it on the outside. This never happens with store bought sausage. I use the best pork I can get including feral hog BUT I won’t hesitate to use basic ground pork from the supermarket if that is all that is available, it is still a 1000% improvement on the premade crap.
Per Pound of Sausage
- 1 pound ground pork
- 1 teaspoon of fennel
- 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes (omit if you don’t like it a little spicy)
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt (I prefer Himalayan pink salt, kosher salt or sea salt)
- 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon of Chef Keith’s Northern Italian Seasoning (Were to get his seasoning)
- 1 teaspoon of garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon of onion powder
- 4 finely chopped fresh sage leaves
Mix well and leave to sit over night in the fridge. This binds the flavors well and it is better then if you cook it right away. Though you can cook it right away and it will be fine, it just gets better over night.
If you like jalapeno, one large seeded jalapeno with the white pulp well scraped out or two small ones finely chopped per pound is a great addition. Do it that way and it will contribute good flavor and almost no heat. If you want it spicy chop the pepper with the seeds and pith intact.
Omit the Italian seasoning and fennel and replace with 1 teaspoon of paprika, two tablespoons of chili powder and 1/2 teaspoon of cumin and you will get something like chorizo but less greasy and better to my taste.
Again this is just a base. Buy two pounds of ground pork, make one like this, then adjust the second batch to your taste and have fun coming up with new versions.
I made this last thanksgiving and did it as a stuffing. I used about half sausage and 1/4 each of chestnuts and corn bread. People killed it!
I’ll have to try this with beef instead… I don’t dig on swine.
Jake you could also try turkey, chicken or rabbit. I bet they would all be great.
Rabbit isn’t on the clean list for me either, but I was definitely thinking chicken. Turkey I like, but ground turkey tends to have a funky flavor when it comes to sausage to me.
I don’t dig swine for religious reasons although I tasted it when I was younger and it tastes fine but as I gradually became more religious I decided to veer away from pork and then a year later I accidentally ate some ham hocks in a soup and just about barfed. I think it was more psychological than anything else. Now I don’t let such accidents occur. I am strictly kosher.
FYI, there is nothing inherently wrong with pork. I stay away from it for purely religious reasons.
In a survival situation where I had to choose between eating pork or starving, I’d eat pork… also for purely religious reasons. This is what I advise Jews in jail when I talk to them. When you are in jail you are essentially captured. Presumably the authorities have not determined if you are guilty or not guilty yet but while in jail one is not allowed freedom of movement. Here in Texas the jails do their best to accommodate Jews who eat kosher but there are only a few ways to do it right and about a million ways to do it wrong and thus render the meal non-kosher. I don’t know what Texas procedure is for preparing kosher meals. I tell inmates not to worry too much about it. They are captured and thus the violations they commit while captured are considered unwilling, or unwitting violations.
I was a vegetarian for about a year and then returned to meat. I can attest that meat, in general, tastes REALLY weird after a strict vegetable diet. I got used to it and now I can eat beef with no problem but I had to work back into it.
BTW, I’m a volunteer chaplain at the local county jail and I am now certified by our federal government NOT to be a PRISON RAPIST. 🙂 I just took the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) course for prison guards, chaplains, office staff etc. (Thank you, President Bush! You turkey!) It was a somewhat helpful course but as the course progressed it became clear who was really being “protected.” It was the prison guards and the institution itself. This is the biggest Cover Your Arse boondoggle I’ve ever participated in. I sort of understand it in this litigious society that we live in today, but make no mistake… this course is designed to protect the government, government officials including police officers, staff and volunteers and only incidentally to protect the victims of rape in prison and jails.
It might help but as I told the volunteer coordinator at the jail when she told me I had to take a prison rape prevention course…
“Generally speaking… I’m against prison rape. In fact… I’m against rape outside of prison as well.”
She laughed but I still had to take the course.
Alex
@Alex not sure if you will read this but I’m mostly Kosher as well, although I follow a more Karaite perspective (i.e. allowing milk and meat because the Torah has no ban against it, only the boiling of a kid in its own mothers milk, a pagan ritual).
Also I don’t limit myself to specifically “blessed” kosher products but I find them higher quality when I can.
One thing I noticed, I stopped getting colds and flus almost immediately upon stopping pork specifically, though shellfish may play a part too.
I will have to dig out my sausage stuffer and give these a go
Man that sounds good. We eat Jimmy Deans crap all the time, but this is got to be better.
And it really doesn’t cost any more and you can make it up so fast. Get 6-10 pounds of pork, do it all at once. A pound fits perfectly into a ziplock sandwich bag. Freeze it up and grab and go as needed.
Even plain old store bought ground pork is SO MUCH BETTER quality than what goes into typical factory sausage.
Keep an eye out for pork shoulders on sale too. Sometimes they are stupid cheap. When I find that I get a few to smoke and I have the butcher grind a few for sausage, etc.
I’ve got (local, pastured, neener, neener) ground pork in my freezer, making this tomorrow! Thank you Jack!
Isn’t pastured pork great? I have about 700 lbs of right now in the freezer. Though, it is part of the farm business.
True story. I don’t think I could ever go back to supermarket meat, for a lot of reasons, but the taste is right up there.
I am excited to try this. I absolutely despise store bought sausage that cooks mushy. I like mine brown and crispy. I now only buy sausage from local lockers in recent years.
Thanks for sharing. Can’t wait to give it a try. Sounds close to the stuffing mix I have on Thanksgiving.