Here is the transcript of the episode:
Welcome to The Sensitive Kitchen, where home cooks are inspired to “Cook to Enable Those You Love to Flourish.” I’m Cindy Sullivan, registered dietitian, passionate nutrition educator, and accomplished home cook.
Bacon or sausage? I’m a bacon girl, myself. I like bacon with most anything. In the sausage world, I grew up on smokey links and those are the only flavor of breakfast sausage I really like, although there are some chicken sausages that I enjoy cooking with.
Whether you’re changing how you cook for food sensitivities, allergies, intolerances, or just trying to eat healthier on a budget, you’re in the right place. Most episodes, I will share favorite recipes as well as modification, tips and nutrition benefits. Occasionally I’ll have a guest or special episode like modifying holiday favorites. My favorite foods? They’re raspberries and homemade chocolate chip cookies. My latest cooking project was long fermented sourdough bread.
My son, however, likes sausage. However, most sausage has ingredients that can trigger migraines in him. Even the grocery stores and meat markets that make their own use flavoring packets that contain MSG or protein isolates and et cetera, et cetera.
So around Christmas time, several years ago, my husband declared we were making sausage patties. He went to our local meat market, sadly since closed, and purchased several kinds of ground meat and went to work.
Homemade sausages with only spices as additives, yum and safe for almost everyone. And you can decide how to flavor them. I’m giving you our guidelines, but use whatever spices and herbs you desire. I adore maple syrup and garlic in mine. And because meat fat is the one fat I really still watch, I try to use half lean turkey when I use a higher fat ground meat.
I also like sage and thyme in my sausage, but you could use majoram, hot pepper flakes, paprika or smoked paprika, oregano parsley or cilantro. Don’t forget onions. And there are many forms like shallots, chives, leeks. This is really a blank palette. Try different spice combinations until you find one your family likes.
My favorite recipe happens to be one from a website called The Chunky Chef. I think it is just right. The combination of maple, garlic, thyme, and sage is delicious. The pork combined with turkey gives good flavor and moistness while reducing the total amount of fat.
However, I radically alter her cooking methods. After mixing all the ingredients together, I make sausages into tiny patties. Meat fat is not especially good for your heart or your risk of colon cancer. So I make them small, really small. That way if you eat several, you can still salvage your fat and/or calories for the day. My husband says three is satisfying for him.
The only problem with making these patties small is that it takes time to shape and cook them. The last time I made them, it took about 15 minutes to shape all the patties because I made so many of them. This last batch was about 45 patties from two pounds of meat.
Anytime you work with ground meat, work with it gently, don’t pack it together, just enough for it to hold together. I use a dinner plate that can go into the dishwasher and place a layer of tiny patties on that plate. I separate the layers of patties with wax paper, or you could use plastic wrap.
I cook them all and then freeze them. This time I used our griddle and it was faster, but a frying pan or two works well. I do recommend that you cook them before freezing for food safety reasons. It’s generally safer to handle raw ground meat as little as possible.
I make these ahead on a day when I have more time. Who am I kidding? When my local grocery store has ground pork on special that day – half off because it needs to be used that day I drop everything and make them unless I’m making them for a holiday or a birthday breakfast. Then I plan ahead.
Like any meat, these are high in protein, iron, zinc, and vitamin B12. Since ground meat is higher in fat, they’re higher in saturated fat and calories. As I mentioned earlier, you may try mixing a lean ground turkey with a higher fat meat so that the flavor is still there, but there’s less saturated fat and fewer calories.
Go to foodsensitivitykitchen.com, and I have two different recipe combinations there for you, and a link to the maple one from The Chunky Chef. Enjoy.
Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m about to start planning the recipe calendar for the first quarter of 2021. So if you have suggestions for recipes, please let me know. You can email me at [email protected] or leave me a comment in one of the recipes or blog posts.
Keep cooking to enable those you love to flourish. Enjoy these breakfast recipes, enjoy time with your family and friends. Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Happy Hanukkah! Have a wonderful day. Thanks for joining me.
