Homemade Breakfast Sausage

 

With the recent events around the world and talk of food shortages I have changed my habits a bit here at my home. Doing our best to understand and adjust to an ever changing world around us. Normally I allow my freezers to slowly empty during the year only to refill them mostly with the spring and summer garden harvest and then restock meat in the fall from the local farms. Usually pork and beef mostly. We do raise some of our own chickens and also purchase some. Sometimes my son who is a hog hunter also brings me pork from his hunts. Instead of letting those 3 freezers run somewhat low this year and those jars to sit around empty I am refilling them as I go right now. I am concerned about not being able to get certain items later in the year. My husband has dubbed it " Operation Keep Them Full". Kind of a don't get caught with your pants down move for us. 

As I run across sales throughout the next months I will continue to stock up on sale items and run my canner and dehydrator throughout the spring and summer. I will continue to also buy meat on sale as I run across it as well. This is in addition to my own normal garden and fruit harvest. Those sales are still out there you just have to watch for them. I ran across chicken legs and thighs the other day for $0.39 cents a pound at the local save a lot grocer. I bought 30 pound in frozen 10 pound bags and will show you what I can do with them in future posts. 

We are fortunate that many years ago, almost 40 now we invested in grinders, sausage stuffers, meat bin mixers, slicers and even a tenderizer. They have all been excellent investments through the years and I cringe to think what they would all cost us now to replace if you could find them.

In this particular case we caught pork butt for $1.69 a pound at a small community IGA. In these particular times any meat under $2 a pound gets my attention any more. We bought 20 pounds and brought home and trimmed the fat off and deboned then  froze for later use. 

 

Then we defrosted about 4 pounds of meat and ground up with our small grinder and made breakfast sausage. Now a one pound roll of breakfast sausage around here runs about $3.50 a pound in the supermarket. We added our own seasonings from the recipe below.

Breakfast Sausage Seasoning

2 pounds ground pork

2 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp dried marjoram

1 Tbsp brown sugar

1/2 tsp thyme

1 Tbsp sage

To shape I used a canning jar lid and ring. Insert the flat lid in the ring and grease the inside. Stuff the lid with ground sausage and flatten. Then flip over on waxed paper and push on the flat lid. It will come out of the ring and then simply remove the flat lid off the top of the patty. I like this size because it is the same size as my biscuit cutter and my sausage will fit perfectly on a biscuit. Add a fried egg and a slice of cheese and you have breakfast. It's a perfect plan. 

With 4 pounds of meat we made 42 breakfast patties. We froze them on baking sheets covered with waxed paper and then vacuum sealed with 2 to a pack resulting in 21 packages. Small packs for a small household and vacuum sealed to prevent freezer burn. Cost per patty $0.16 cents. And no preservatives or artificial dyes of any kind. We control the amount of fat, salt and sugar in each bite. 

For us our own personal food certainty in uncertain times when it comes to food. These could be canned as well. And here we are as elderly Americans endeavoring at maintaining control of our food, our health and our own food security even though we live in what would be considered a food desert in today's society. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

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