Breakfast Sausage

It can be difficult to consistently eat on the low-carbohydrate plan without seriously overdoing one's fat intake, and breakfast is one of the most difficult meals at which to avoid those fats.

At first, one is tempted to avoid fats by avoiding conventional breakfast foods, but that road leads to despair and diet abandonment. After all, if one is denied all of the pleasures in life, why bother with life at all? Faced with this question, rational people will put any diet aside.

Enough philosophy, for now. The purpose of this post is to describe to you how my Honey and I make a spicy, home-made bulk pork sausage. Since first posting of this recipé, I've done a bit of experimentation, I think I've hit on a better mix of herbs and spices.

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The Seasoning Mix

Before attempting to make the sausage, it is necessary to have adequate supplies of Mariner's Sausage Seasoning on hand. If not, then the first item of business is to assemble the mix.

Suggested Equipment:

• Mixing bowl, 1 quart
  
• Wire whisk
  
• Common kitchen measures and tools
  

Ingredients:

Item		Amount
Garlic	Dry, granulated	4	Tbs
Onion	Dry, flakes	4	Tbs
Black pepper	Dry, ground	2	Tbs
Cayenne	Dry, powdered	1	Tbs
Sage	Dry, rubbed, ground, or flaked	1	Tbs
Mustard	Dry, ground	1	Tbs
Turmeric	Dry, ground	1	Tbs
Red pepper	Dry, flakes	1	Tbs
Thyme	Dry, ground	½	Tbs

Directions:

Measure all ingredients into the mixing bowl and stir until all components are uniformly distributed throughout the mix. Use a wire whisk if it makes you feel more professional.

Makes about 1 cup. This is a bit more than the minimum absolutely necessary for the sausage recipe.

The Sausage

Before doing anything, with the food, make sure to wash and rinse your hands thoroughly! Repeat washing often, throughout the process! Cleanliness is your best defense against food poisoning!

You should also keep the meats as cold as possible while still being able to work them. Put on your butcher's coat and turn down the thermostat! If you're somewhat uncomfortable with the cold, you might have your kitchen cool enough!

Suggested Equipment:

• Mixing bowls, large stainless steel - or food-grade white polyethylene storage box
  
• Meat grinder w/assorted grinding plates
  
• Cutting board
  
• Butcher knife
  
• Zip-top storage bags
  
• Disposable food-handling gloves (optional)
  

Ingredients:

Item		Amount
Pork	Loin, trimmed	5	lb
Pork	Boston butt, boneless, skinless, trimmed	4	lb
Celery	Fresh, puree or juice	3	floz
Salt	Canning	2½	Tbs
Sausage seasoning	Mariner's blend of herbs and spices	¾	cup

Directions:

1. Cut or chop the meats into cubes (or as close as you can get) no larger than ¾" on a side. Put the pieces into a bowl or other container large enough to hold the entire mass. Sometimes, when I'm particularly lazy, I simply put larger chunks of the meats through my sausage grinder, using the stuffing plate to regulate the size of pieces output. Seems to work fairly well.

2. Distribute the ¾ cup of seasoning mix, along with the salt, over the mass of meats, and add in the celery juice. Mix the meats and the seasonings together by hand, distributing the seasonings throughout the mass of meats. You are going to get greasy hands doing this. Yeah, it squicks me too. I deal with it by using disposable, plastic food-service gloves like the cafeteria ladies do.

3. When the meat is thoroughly mixed, cover and let it marinate in the refrigerator, overnight.

4. The next morning, you have to make a decision: how finely ground do you want your sausage to be? Start with a coarse grind, perhaps one with ¼" holes. Put all of the meat through the coarse grind, then step down to the next finer size. Repeat as necessary to achieve your target grind. Personally, for most applications, I'd recommend nothing smaller than a ⅛" grinding plate for the final grind. Much smaller than that, and the meat practically becomes a paste. Be sure to monitor the temperature of the meat and that of the grinder, periodically chilling both to maintain safe temperatures.

5. On completing the grinding, you must decide whether to package the meat as bulk sausage, or make patties. If you choose to package in bulk, I recommend 1-pound packages in zip-top freezer bags. These should go directly into the freezer.

6. If you want to make patties, you should again place the meat mix in a clean, covered bowl or other container, and refrigerate overnight. There are two purposes to this. First, it helps insure that the meat remains at a safe temperature during the next processing steps, but then it also gives the sausage-maker a break from tedious and sometimes back-breaking work!

7. After the meat has "rested" overnight in the refrigerator take it out and divide it into portions of about 76 grams - a little bigger than 2½ oz . Roll these portions into balls, and then roll the balls out into patties with a thickness of about ¼" to ⅜" - this should result in a patty diameter of about 3". Freeze the patties, separately, flat on a tray, and then package them stacked, separated by layers of waxed paper, inside a zip-top freezer bag. Push as much of the air out of the bag as you can, without damaging the stack of patties, before putting them in the freezer.

At six patties per pound of meat you can get 54 patties using this recipe.To use your patties, take out only the number you need for a meal, and cook them until well done, as you would any bulk sausage patty.

In case anyone is wondering why we are using two different cuts of meat, it's our method for managing fat content. Pork loin typically contains 12% to 14% fat, while a boneless Boston butt roast will typically have 20% to 30% fat. These are pretty large ranges, but it's about as close as you can get to real information, without having your own laboratory.

Most commercial sausages contain 25% to 50% fat, with the majority clustering around 30% to 35%. The target fat content our sausage is something between 18% and 22%, so in order to achieve this, we use a mix of cuts.

The taste and texture of these patties will be subtly different from most commercially available bulk sausages. You may or may not like the difference, but if you do, the fact that you can control the fat content is advantageous. You may feel, as we did the first time we tried this, that one or more spices is either overpowering, or unnoticeable. Go ahead and play with the proportions, and come up with your own, signature blend of herbs and spices.