If you have taken the time to begin adapting your cooking and eating habits to avoid certain ingredients, one of the last places you might realize needs to change is breakfast sausage. And if you have, you might be avoiding breakfast sausage entirely because you don’t know how to move past this challenge.
When I started my AIP journey, life got exponentially difficult. Foods including certain spices had to be eliminated. Breakfast sausage was one of those foods, first because of the sugar. Second because of the spices. Many sausage companies include spices like nutmeg that is also not allowed on the AIP elimination diet. And often you don’t actually know which spices they put in their food because food companies are allowed to list “spices” as a general term for multiple spices if they’re under a certain quantity.
I don’t know about your family, but ours does enjoy having breakfast sausage with pancakes from time to time. And if you have avoided it, you might be missing it. I know I did at first. So I set out on a journey to find a breakfast sausage recipe that would work for everyone in our family. If you’ve ever tried doing a Google search for breakfast sausage recipes — they are endless! There simply are so many out there that I kept losing my place on which ones I had tried and what quantities of spices we liked.
Today I woke up knowing I had to use my ground pork in the fridge, but when I opened my Google search for a recipe, it felt like deja vu. I had been here before! So I did my best at trying to pull together a combination of spices that we all could enjoy. When I served this day’s breakfast sausage to the family, they all declared this the best one by far. And, my husband and kids have been a difficult audience, not wanting too much sage, thyme, and other spices.
So today I share this recipe with you and hope to make your breakfast table and online recipe searching a little easier. Happy breakfast!
MAPLE BREAKFAST SAUSAGE
Makes 12–16 patties
Ingredients
- 2 pounds ground pork
- 2 teaspoons ground sage
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon mace
- 1 teaspoon allspice
- 1/4 cup maple sugar or maple syrup
- 1/2 cup chicken stock or bone broth*
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with your hands.
- Form the sausage into patties.
- Heat the olive oil on medium in a large skillet. Add the sausage and coo on medium to medium-high heat for 3–4 minutes per side (you may have to work in batches).
- Decrease stove to low and add chicken stock or bone broth to pan. Add a lid and steam sausage until it is cooked through (no longer pink inside).
- Remove to a plate with a paper towel to absorb excess oil before serving.
*NOTE: I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time getting the center of my patties cooked through all the way. Using chicken stock to steam the meat after it’s browned solves the problem of undercooked meat and adds flavor too.