Ah but my dear, you too can have sausage!

Hello and good morning!  I'm up early for a Saturday since my oldest son is off to work.  I'm getting breakfast made before he leaves; Sausage biscuits.  Am I going to have one?  Dern Tootin!

I LOVE SAUSAGE!

Now It isn't that I can't have real, full fat, high calorie breakfast sausage.  In this case I choose not to.  It's one of those "Food as an investment" things.  Store bought sausage has a lot of fat, but not a lot of protein per serving.  That's because sausage has a lot of filler.  Protein keeps you filling fuller longer so I try to have a good amount during the day, especially for breakfast.  It is for this reason I make our sausage.  Yes, I make our sausage.  It's easy!  Here's the deal

While you can use ground turkey, and I have used ground turkey, I prefer to use ground pork loin.  There are two stores I watch for pork loin to go on sale.  Ingles is one and a local store here called J&J foods is another.  The reason being they will grind the meat they sale for you.  Many stores will slice, but these grind as well.  Find a store that will do this!  When pork loins go on sale I will buy 2 usually and have them slice the 1/3 of the loin in the center into chops, but grind the 1/3 on each end.  When I come home I'll either put the ground pork away in 1 pound portions, or take all of it and mix up a big batch of sausage and then put that away in 1 pound portions.  Last time, I just put the pork away without making the sausage first.  I do all this because, ironically, ground pork rarely goes on sale.  Plus this way I know what went into my ground pork and how much fat was on that pork loin.  It's just a better product that way.

So you've read all this to get to the recipe so I won't fail you:

Breakfast Sausage

1 lb ground meat (I use pork)
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp minced onion
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp sage
1/2 tsp parsley
1/4 tsp salt

Take all your spices and mix together in a bowl.  Add the ground meat and mix well with your fingers til everything is blended well.  You can either do this ahead of time and let sit in the fridge covered til morning, or you can do this in a pinch like I did this morning.  I like to do it a head of time, but forgot to lay out the ground pork to thaw.  Oops! A serving is 4 oz pre-cooked.  I measure it out into 2 oz patties to fry.

Calories- 140, Carbs- 0, Fat- 4 gm, Protein- 23 grams

***If you want to make Italian sausage, just add 1/2 tsp fennel seeds (Or to taste) to your spices.  Then you can brown it and add to pizza, lasagna, or any other Italian dish.***

*** If you make sausage cheese balls like I do during the holidays, you can substitute this sausage for the sausage called for in the recipe.  You may need to add a little milk if the dough is too dry.  I do this every holiday and, while it may not stem the tide of calories much, every little bit helps.***

*** When I have this for breakfast I will have 2 pieces of sausage and 1 biscuit or two pieces of sausage and a baked apple.  Plus coffee of course.

Try !  Let me know what you think!