Grains are the hardest foods to digest, after all, which is why nearly all gut healing diets exclude them. This includes GAPS, SCD, and Autoimmune Paleo (AIP).
The kids generally dislike this practice as they all really enjoy toast or sourdough bagels for breakfast. Lately, though, they’ve warmed to the idea as they’ve been getting a homemade breakfast sausage from a local farm and they really love it!
My husband actually came up with the idea. Our favorite sausage from a local farm was back ordered, and we were desperate for a breakfast sausage fix. So, hubby decided to try his hand at creating his own with some excellent quality pastured ground pork and five different spices.
I am happy to report that this breakfast sausage recipe turned out fantastic! In fact, the majority vote in the house is that Dad’s homemade sausage is the yummiest they’ve tasted yet!
I don’t think we’ll be going back to store bought ones, since this recipe is so easy to make, tastes better, and is more budget friendly.
Homemade Breakfast Sausage
Below is the easy breakfast sausage recipe we use in our home with suggested substitutions that work well. I truly hope you enjoy it courtesy of my husband’s creativity in the kitchen!
Love breakfast sausage? You may wish to try this pastured meatballs recipe too.
Breakfast Sausage Recipe
Easy, delicious breakfast sausage recipe flavored with herbs you probably already have in your spice drawer.
Ingredients
- 1 pound pastured pork or ground turkey
- 1 large egg preferably pastured, lightly beaten
- 2 Tbl butter softened
- 1/4 tsp ground cumin preferably organic
- 1/4 tsp ground oregano preferably organic
- 1/4 tsp ground cayenne pepper preferably organic
- 1/2 tsp dried basil preferably organic
- 1/2 tsp thyme preferably organic
- 2 tsp sea salt
Instructions
Mix all ingredients together and chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour or so. This allows the flavors to blend.
Form the chilled meat into small patties and cook on the stovetop in a frypan until cooked through.
Time saving tip: Make a bunch of homemade breakfast sausage patties ahead of time to freeze for quick breakfasts on the go! Separate patties in the storage container using parchment paper.
Refrigerate any leftovers. They will be good to reheat and enjoy for several days.
Recipe Notes
If using ground pork for this recipe, it is best to marinate in 1 cup of apple cider vinegar for 1 hour in the refrigerator first. Dry the marinated meat thoroughly with paper towels or a clean dishtowel before proceeeding.
Ground turkey may be substituted for the ground pastured pork as desired. Ground turkey does not require marinating.
Ghee may be substituted for the butter.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sarah Pope has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. Her work is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.
Her work has been covered by major media including USA Today, ABC, NBC, and many others.
How I Healed My Child’s Cavity
perfect! just got some pastured ground pork and this will be great. thanks for sharing!
My kids like this sausage better than bacon, which I find nearly impossible as good quality bacon is sooooo amazing.
The Booze Hound and I are doing a challenge at our gym that requires us to go grain free for 10 weeks. The foods we are supposed to focus on (veg, fruit, meat, nuts, seeds) are supposed to mimic the “Paleo Diet.” Although I do NOT subscribe to fad diets as the norm, I have to say we have both felt GREAT being grain- and sugar-free (except for fruit) for these past 2 weeks. Our normal diet is quite good, and I do love to bake, so we will go back to including dairy (grass-fed) and starches, but I will have a new arsenal of grain-free recipe ideas to pick from now. We have been eating a LOT of bacon lately from our local Earth Fare and it is AMAZING. We are going through so much of it. Kind of embarrassing, really 🙂 But neither of us wants to lose weight, so we’re finding that bacon and (grass-fed) butter and heavy cream are things we need to incorporate regularly to keep the weight up.
Just wanted to say hello and that we’ll probably adopt a similar 2-day-a-week grain vacation once this challenge is over.
Cool! My husband and I also felt great when we went grain/starch BUT I got incredibly tired after about 4 months on it and went off as I found I needed more carbs for energy. Going grain free was only was helpful short term for me as a kind of digestive rest so to speak. I find it helpful only for short periods of time. I know a number of other folks who have similar issues with going grain free for longer periods.
Thank you….my family are big sausage eaters and I would love to make them home made without all the junk!!! They will eat gluten free Jenni O turkey sausage but I can’t wait to try this!
I was interested to learn that there’s “new wheat” and “old wheat” and that here in the U.S. it’s new (modernized, hybridized, high gluten, and something called “deaminated”) while Europe uses the old wheat. Some people with wheat sensitivities here can consume it just fine in Europe. So much for food science and its so-called advancements.
Thanks for the delicious recipe, Sarah! MMMmmmm, good.
Thanks for sharing that info, Beth. That’s a good reason to use spelt if you live in the US which is a low gluten form of wheat and non-hybridized from what I understand. The bread we use is sprouted/sourdough spelt although I do occasionally use soft organic wheat that I grind fresh for pancakes and such, but spelt is a much better choice.
Beth, your comment interested me in light of something I read last week (sorry, don’t remember where) about people in biblical times eating apparently large amounts of wheat (or some kind of grain). Why did they not have problems with it? The answer was that the wheat they used was not the same as our wheat; it was much smaller in size, for instance, and had different make-up than ours. Apparently wheat has been modified quite a bit over the years to become what it is today.
Wow. And yet another US government intervention into our foods that do us little good! Just saw Fat Head yesterday at our monthly WAPF meeting and talk about government intervention! Great movie, a rebuttal to Super Size Me, and all you who know eating fewer grains an sugars should see this one. The sausage patties for breakfast fit right into what I saw yesterday. I’ll be in Europe in August and will try some European breads to see how I react to them as opposed to US, which I eat sparingly and like Sarah, take a break from weekly.
Thanks – looks great, can’t wait to try it!
Awesome! Thanks!
Thanks for this recipe, Sarah! I had some ground turkey ready to make some sausage but the recipes I’ve used so far have been disappointing. I decided to try this right away, I didn’t wait for it to chill (the meat was already chilled anyway) but went ahead and cooked up a few patties. Yay, this is truly the best tasting sausage ever, even topping any I’ve ever had before! Must be the egg, I’ve never seen egg mixed into sausage before, but I couldn’t tell it was in there after it was cooked. I used ghee and it gives a wonderful flavor also. Since we stopped eating pork (kashrut) we have really been hungry for some good sausage. I’d love to see more recipes that work well using alternatives to pork. Thanks again for sharing!
Naomi, so glad you liked it! I haven’t made it using ground turkey, so your testimonial is very helpful. Glad to know its delish with either pork or turkey. 🙂
I’m not a sausage eater, by my sons and DH love the stuff. I’m going to make this (we’ve done something similar in the past) and add just a titch of garlic powder and some dried, minced onion.
QUESTION: I have been trying to start using spelt flour, Sarah, but don’t know much about how to substitute it (proportion-wise) for the different types of flour I sometimes use. If I use spelt to make sourdough bread, do I substitute, say 1 cup spelt for the 1 cup whole wheat? Sometimes if I’m desperate and all I have on hand is unbleached white flour, do I substitute it cup for cup with that, too? Usually when I use spelt, I end up needing more and it is hard to gauge how much to keep on hand, since I have to buy it in bulk from the health food store (for now). Do you have a previous blog on spelt? If so, I couldn’t find it.
Also, a question on ghee (sorry to stray): is it true that you should only make ghee with store bought, unsalted butter? Someone recently told me my homemade cultured butter from raw cow milk won’t work to make ghee. I have no clue.
Hi D., I make my ghee with raw or low temp pasteurized grassfed butter from my local farm. It works great. I have a video on this blog on how to do it. I’ve not ever tried to make it with cultured butter, so not sure about that question.
With regard to spelt flour, I always sub 1:1 for regular wheat flour in my pancake, bread, and pastry recipes and all turns out fine.
This post made my mouth water! Definitely bookmarking this one!
Evey day is grain-free in our house. You should try it more often.
I went grain free ( and starch free) for over 4 months last year and while it worked fine short term, it began to be a real problem for me after about 3 months. I got incredibly TIRED from it .. totally didn’t work after awhile. Great for some long term I’m sure, but not everyone does well grain free for long periods of time. As soon as I reintroduced grains (traditionally prepared of course, my energy went back to normal). I tried reintroducing starches first with no grains and even that didn’t do the trick. There is something about the carbs in grains that gives me energy and I get very tired if I go without them for longer periods of time.
Have you seen the book “The Metabolic Typing Diet”? It goes into the 3 different typing ‘diets’, and really explains why some people do better on carbs, some on proteins and little to no carbs, and how others need both. It’s a very interesting read and fits in perfectly with a NT lifestyle!
Sarah, how can you be sure that your pork is free of parasites?
I would like to know about this as well. I have read that this is more of an issue w/ commercial pork products and undercooked ones. I’d love to know if anyone has other information.
Thanks for the sausage recipe. We have one that we use occasionally and now we’ll have to try this as well! We are hoping to get a pasteured pig or two this fall!
My pork comes from a small farm where the pigs are outside doing what pigs should be doing. I am not concerned in the slightest about parasites when pork is of good quality from a reputable small farm.
We have been aiming for less grains in our diet as well. I found a recipe on All-recipes.com for Zucchini Patties. It has a small amount of flour in it, but there are plenty of substitutes that would be suitable. We just use what ever raw cheese that we have, and these patties have made a wonderful replacement for starches and grains.
This comment goes along with the spelt/gluten conversation here. Isn’t kamut similar to spelt in that the gluten is the same as way back when and is easier to digest?
Hi Bethany, yes I think kamut is similar from what I know about it but I am not completely sure as I haven’t read much about kamut.
I asked a question on your website – Guess I should have asked it here. Here goes! How can I be sure that the pork is parasite free?
Quality is key Jackie. I don’t eat pork from the store, needless to say. There is a risk of parasites from any meat, but when it comes from a small farm that is focused on quality then you don’t need to worry. You can also freeze it for 14 days then thaw and cook if you are concerned as this eliminates the risk of parasites according to the USDA.
Hi Jackie, the USDA says that if you freeze meat for 14 days or longer this eliminates parasite risk. Also best to make sure you get good quality pork from a small farm rather than commercially.
Sarah,
This sausage was amazing! Tell your husband way to go! I was just searching for a new recipe this morning and then I noticed that you posted about it. Thank you! A local farm offered ground pork at half price recently since they had an excess from selling the expensive cuts to restaurants. So I have a freezer full!! What I had made in the past was always dry but this was perfect! I added a bit of maple syrup, too. Yum. Also, I have trouble mixing sausage, so I put the spices, butter, and egg in the food processor, then added the meat. I feel that this evenly distributed the spices. I made a trial batch, and loved it so then I made a ton and froze it in patties.
Fantastic Julie! Great idea with the food processor too.
I sent this recipe to my daughter this morning and her husband made it right away. They said it was very good.
My mouth is watering! Can’t wait to try it!
Can you explain why white sea salt is not really sea salt? Then what is it? Thanks!!! Another great recipe I can’t wait to try!
Hi Sara, white sea salt is processed perhaps not as much as white iodized salt but REAL sea salt should have color to it. I have pink, blue, and multicolored sea salts in my pantry.
A similar example is “raw sugar” which is turbinado sugar .. it is less processed than white sugar but it still has been processed with much of the minerals and molasses removed. To get truly unprocessed cane sugar, you have to buy rapadura or sucanat which are dark brown.
Hi Sarah! First of all I need to thank you for all your great videos! We are making the transition to healthier foods as well and you have been so helpful considering I’m a visual learner. We live on a Greek island and the salt we get is locally produced but it is white! There are occasional bits of seaweed in it also to testify it’s oceanic origins. Perhaps the color you mention in the salt are trace minerals?