Make your own sausage

Happy Mother's Day!

For breakfast today I'm having homemade sausage. I got the recipe online, it's one of those reverse-engineered ones that is supposed to mimic Jimmy Dean sausage.

You can buy ground pork or if you're lucky enough to have a meat grinder you can grind your own. I tried grinding my own this morning but my grinder doesn't go as fine a grind as the butcher we buy 1 hog a year from (we just used up the last of "our" pig a few weeks ago).

Buying your pork a pig at a time allows you to say "NO MSG" for the cured meats, get the hams and roasts sliced into meal-sized portions, get a bucket of lard for frying (deep fried onions are delicious!), and much more. And it's only around $2.50 a pound and includes hams, roasts, chops, bacon, sausage meat, and ribs. Quite a bargain if you have the space for it!

Here's the sausage recipe I use (I took out the MSG and leave out the cayenne in deference to my kids' taste).

Sage
1 lb ground pork (30% fat/70% lean works best)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/4 teaspoon rubbed sage
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/4 teaspoon coriander

Whenever we have them I like to use fresh herbs instead of dried ones. Even just fresh sage instead of dried adds a whole new level of yumminess! One sage plant can live for many years and even makes some leaves in the winter.

For my breakfast this morning I added in some fried peppers and onions I had pre-cooked yesterday when I was making my omlette. I ground them right in with the meat but I think it would be just as easy to give them a whirl in the food processor and stir them into ground pork. Sausage makers often add water to the recipe, so adding a little water to puree the peppers and onions shouldn't affect how the sausage turns out.