I like sausage with breakfast, or as a component of an Italian dinner, and maybe as part of an overindulgent lunch. My problem is that over the counter sausage usually has too many carbs, too much cholesterol, too much salt, too many calories. You know, the things that make it great tasting. Unfortunately, if I eat it, my heart stops, or at least blood stops flowing to extremities, and I have to see my cardiologist frequently enough to address him by his first name. What kind of a name is Roy for a cardiologist?
So I sift through recipes, looking for one that comes close nutritionally to acceptable, then it is adapted to my specific relic requirements. As an example, the recipe that follows is based upon the recipe appearing at https://meatwave.com/recipes/grilled-breakfast-sausage-recipe. For my purposes, the recipe was scaled up, seasoning proportionally by weight, not volume, and use of some seasoning was modified. The recipe at the provided link can serve as a reference. My version is:
BREAKFAST SAUSAGE INGREDIENTS
For the sausage:
10 pounds untrimmed bone-in pork butt (shoulder), cut into 1″x 1″ full length strips for the grinder
6 teaspoons kosher salt
4 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
4 teaspoons dry sage
4 teaspoons dry thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons dry rosemary
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar (removed from subsequent production to get rid of a sweet taste. So, optional)
1 1/2 teaspoon powdered nutmeg
1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper
I rarely use fresh ingratiates. It is a 30 mile round trip to food store, and I am only cooking for the freezer and myself. Additionally, I am a guy, not a foodie, so the difference is wasted on me. I use bone-in pork butt because the bone is small, and the cut is $1.40/lb less expensive than boneless in our area. The small bone that is left gets tossed outback for the local flock of turkey vultures. They are surprisingly picky eaters.
Cuts made to feed the meat grinder. Yes, that is a bag-o-fat behind the pork butt, but it was returned to the freezer unused.
The definition of cheap and easy
This is my much less than sophisticated set up. The $58 no name meat grinder from Amazon is much faster than the grinder attachment I have for my KitchenAid grinder attachment, and approximately half the price. Another big plus, heavily worked, the grinder’s body gets warm, but the isolated attachments containing food material remains cool to the touch. The feed pusher is shown in the photo, but I have never needed it to clear or feed.
The reason I grind first, then blend while adding spices, is because the pork butt has a very uneven distribution of fat and lean sections. Seen above with almost pure fat coming through on the last section. I don’t add fat. There is plenty on a pork butt, and there is not much reason to trim away fat, then add expensive fat back. The finished sausage is slightly lean, but certainly not dry or tree bark like.
All of the seasoning was premixed in a bowl, then gradually worked into the ground meat as it was mixed. This makes for the most even distribution of meat and seasoning. Probably a fifteen minute exercise in blending. The mixture was then returned to the refrigerator while my hands took a nap.
The base of a patty mold, and sheet of burger paper separator, was placed on the scale, then a large ice cream scoop metered out the sausage, 4 oz +/-. Then a top sheet was added, the patty was compressed, and they were bagged for the freezer, 4 patties to a 1 quart freezer zip lock. Present tense, past tense? Grammar is very stressful.
I was going to show a picture of the cooked sausage on a dish, bumped up against light and fluffy scrambled eggs. Unfortunately, by the time the camera or you came to mind, breakfast was long gone. So you will have to use your imagination.