This homemade breakfast sausage recipe turns basic ground pork into juicy patties, links or sausage gravy with a spice blend you mix yourself.
Skip the mystery meat. Most store-bought breakfast sausage hides its fat ratio and fillers behind a label. Mixing your own means you know exactly what’s going into it.
I’m Christie Vanover, a KCBS grand champion pitmaster and founder of Girls Can Grill. This seasoning blend started as a way to use up the trim from my Competition Pork Butt, and after years of tweaking, it’s the version I make on repeat for my own breakfast.
What is homemade breakfast sausage?
Breakfast sausage is as much a staple to the American breakfast plate as bacon or ham. It’s simply seasoned ground meat, cooked up in patties or links or browned into crumbles for sausage gravy.
The most common meat used for breakfast sausage is ground pork, but there are no rules. You could also mix in ground beef, poultry or game meat. You can buy ground meat at your local grocery store or grind your own.
After I trim my Competition Pork Butt, I'm left with a lot of excess pork trimmings. I usually freeze them in 2-inch cubes, until I'm ready to make sausage. I grind the partially-thawed cubes into ground pork and then mix in 2 tablespoons of the breakfast sausage seasoning blend for every pound of meat.
What makes homemade breakfast sausage stand out from the store-bought version is the seasoning blend, which you control completely. I’ve shared the blend I use most often below, but it’s fully adaptable to your taste.
This recipe is well balanced, with just a slight heat and a touch of maple. Make the base recipe once, then start adjusting it into your own signature blend.
Breakfast Sausage Seasoning
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Mix: In a small bowl, combine all of the spices together, until blended.
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Add Meat: In another bowl, combine 2 tablespoons of spice blend for every 1 pound of meat. Mix well.
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To Store: Place a sheet of plastic wrap on the counter. Add 1 pound of sausage on the plastic and roll it into a log, twisting both ends. Refrigerate or freeze until ready to use.
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Cook: Remove the plastic from the sausage and slice it into 8 patties. Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add the patties and cook for 10-15 minutes, flipping a few times, until they are brown on the outside and no longer pink on the inside.
If you slice your sausage into thinner patties, they will only take about 10 minutes to cook. Thicker patties will take a bit longer.
Read the article above to learn how to smoke or cold smoke the sausages.
Calories: 154kcalCarbohydrates: 1gProtein: 10gFat: 12gSaturated Fat: 4gPolyunsaturated Fat: 1gMonounsaturated Fat: 5gCholesterol: 41mgSodium: 613mgPotassium: 173mgFiber: 0.2gSugar: 1gVitamin A: 32IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 13mgIron: 1mg
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
What You’ll Need
- Ground Pork: Buy pre-ground pork at the grocery store or grind your own. For more flavorful, juicier sausage, look for pork that is 80% lean to 20% fat, or use pork shoulder for your at-home grind.
- Salt, Pepper, Sugar: This trio is the base. Use kosher salt, coarse ground black pepper, fine white pepper and maple sugar. No maple sugar on hand? Coconut sugar, raw sugar or brown sugar all work as a swap.
- Herbs: My favorite herbs for breakfast sausage are thyme, rosemary, sage and fennel seed. I always use dried herbs because they’re easier to work with and melt into the meat better.
- The Kickers: These are the ingredients that make this sausage stand out. White vinegar powder gives it a little acidic jolt, MSG adds umami and cayenne brings the heat.
Substitutions: Once you master the base recipe, you can make all sorts of adjustments. If you like spicy breakfast sausage, add more cayenne pepper or crushed red pepper flakes. If you prefer maple breakfast sausage, mix in more maple sugar.Instead of buying vinegar powder and maple sugar, you can also use a splash of white vinegar and maple syrup.
Make-Ahead Tip: Mix a double or triple batch of the seasoning blend and store it in an airtight container in your pantry for up to a year. That way, you're never more than a couple tablespoons away from fresh homemade breakfast sausage.
How to mix breakfast sausage
This sausage seasoning makes enough for 2 pounds of sausage. Double or triple the seasoning recipe and save the blend in your pantry, or make a large batch of sausage and freeze the logs for later.
Step 1: Combine the seasoning
In a small bowl, combine all of the seasonings until well blended.
Step 2: Mix the meat and seasoning
Place one pound of ground pork in a large bowl. Sprinkle in two tablespoons of breakfast sausage seasoning. Mix thoroughly. I find I get a better blend if I use my hands.
Step 3: Shape into a log
Place a sheet of plastic wrap or parchment paper on the counter. Shape the sausage mixture into a log and place it on the plastic wrap. Roll the plastic around the log and twist the ends.
How to cook breakfast sausage patties
You can cook breakfast sausage patties on a griddle like a Blackstone or Ninja, in a large skillet on the stove or in an air fryer. My favorite method is a cast iron skillet on the stove, because I like how the patties brown up in cast iron.
Step 1: Slice the patties
Remove the sausage from the plastic wrap. Slice it into eight 1/4-inch thick patties.
GCG Pro Tip: If your sausage log is partially frozen, it will be easier to slice because it holds its shape better. My favorite knife for slicing sausage is the Cutco cheese knife. The open blade keeps the meat from sticking.
Step 2: Cook the patties
Place a large cast iron skillet on the stove over medium heat. Add the patties to the pan in a single layer and cook for 5-7 minutes per side, until browned on the outside and no longer pink on the inside.
To cook the patties in an air fryer, set it to 400F degrees. Place the patties in the basket in a single layer and cook for 5 minutes. Flip and cook another 3-5 minutes.
To cook homemade sausage patties on a griddle, heat it to medium and cook for 10-15 minutes, flipping occasionally for even browning.
How to serve breakfast sausage
Remove the patties from your pan, air fryer or griddle and place them on a paper towel-lined plate or baking sheet to absorb excess grease. If you’re not serving them right away, keep them warm in an oven set to low.
Serve with eggs, biscuits, waffles, pancakes, hash browns, fresh fruit or whatever you enjoy for breakfast. Cooked sausage is also great on breakfast sandwiches or broken up and mixed into eggs for breakfast burritos or omelets.
How to make breakfast sausage links
Breakfast sausage links use the same recipe and meat blend from above, but they take a little extra work. You’ll need a sausage stuffer and sausage casings.
Personally, I use the LEM Products 1605 5-pound vertical sausage stuffer. Unlike my Smoked Beef Sausage, which uses a thicker casing, you’ll want the smallest stuffing tube for breakfast sausage.
You’ll also want smaller casings. Sheep casing is usually the right diameter. If you’d rather skip animal casings, which are made from intestines, use edible collagen casings instead.
- Soak the casings in water.
- Attach the small tube to the stuffer.
- Slide on a wet casing.
- Fill the stuffer with your breakfast sausage blend.
- Slowly crank the handle to push the meat into the casing. When it reaches the end of the tube, tie the casing in a knot.
- Keep cranking, working the meat into the casing.
- Once you reach the end of a casing, tie off the end. Then twist the sausage rope into links.
How to smoke breakfast sausage
There are two options for smoking breakfast sausage. You can smoke it all the way to 160F degrees, so it’s fully cooked. Or you can cold smoke it, so it picks up just a hint of smoky flavor and finishes cooking in a skillet or air fryer.
For smoking, you could shape the sausage into logs without casing, but I prefer fibrous casings. They aren’t edible, but they help the meat hold its shape, and they’re permeable so smoke can penetrate.
Soak the casing in warm water for 20-30 minutes. Squeeze out the excess water, then use your hands to stuff the sausage inside.
To fully cook the sausages, place them on a smoker set at 225F degrees with indirect heat. Smoke until they reach 160F degrees, which takes about an hour.
Cold smoking is a little more challenging, depending on your grill. If you have a pellet grill or Ninja Woodfire Grill, set the temperature to 150F degrees and smoke the sausages for around 2 hours.
If you want to smoke them at an even lower temperature for more than 2 hours, add 1/2 teaspoon of pink curing salt #1 to the spice blend in the recipe card above. This matters because the meat will be out of the USDA safe zone, which can cause botulism.
My cousin Baron and several of his family and friends smoke hundreds of pounds of breakfast sausage in Kentucky. They use the cold smoke method: light a charcoal fire, let it burn down to a bed of coals, then put the grill in the smokehouse and cover the coals with pre-soaked hickory wood, smoking it overnight. He said it's important to soak the hickory wood so it doesn't catch fire and increase the heat.
With either smoking method, the fibrous casings are not edible. You can store the smoked sausage in the casing in the refrigerator or freezer, but remove it before eating.
How to make sausage gravy
There’s no need to wrap the sausage for gravy. This is the quickest way to turn your homemade breakfast sausage into a full breakfast.
- Cook 1 pound of sausage in a large skillet until cooked through, breaking it up with a wooden spatula as it cooks.
- Add 2 tablespoons butter and let it melt.
- Sprinkle in 1/3 cup flour and cook for 2-3 minutes.
- Pour in 3 1/2 cups cold milk, 1 teaspoon breakfast sausage seasoning and 1/2 teaspoon Girl Carnivore Ooomami Blend. Stir until it thickens.
Serve over my Tender Buttery Flaky Homemade Biscuits.
How to store and freeze breakfast sausage
If you make sausage in a one-pound batch, store the blended meat in the refrigerator, wrapped tightly, for 3-5 days.
I like making several pounds at a time, so I leave one pound in the fridge and freeze the rest for up to six months. I roll the logs in plastic wrap and store them in a resealable plastic bag, so a fresh log is always ready to slice and cook.
Once cooked, store the sausage in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or freeze it for up to 6 months.
GCG Pro Pitmaster Tips
- Mix the seasoning blend in advance for quick sausage any time
- Use ground pork that’s 80% lean and 20% fat for the juiciest sausage
- Roll the mixture into logs and freeze, so a fresh batch is always on hand
- Once you master this base recipe, experiment with your own seasoning
Frequently Asked Questions
Mix ground pork with a spice blend of salt, pepper, sugar, herbs and a few flavor boosters. Shape it into a log to slice into patties, stuff it into casings for links, or cook it loose for sausage gravy.
Sausage patties take about 10-15 minutes to cook in a skillet over medium heat. You’ll know they’re done when the outside is brown and the inside is no longer pink. You can also check with a digital meat thermometer. The goal internal temperature is 160F degrees.
Ground pork is commonly used for breakfast sausage and Italian sausage. Breakfast sausage seasoning usually has salt, pepper and herbs like thyme, rosemary, sage and fennel. Italian sausage usually includes coriander, paprika, garlic and Italian herbs.
One pound of this breakfast sausage makes eight 1/4-inch thick patties.
This recipe does not include nitrates or nitrites by default. If you want to cold smoke breakfast sausage at temperatures below 140F degrees for longer than 2 hours, you’ll need to add a preservative like pink curing salt #1 to prevent bacteria growth.
Yes. You can use any type of ground meat to make breakfast sausage. The flavor really comes from the spices more than the meat.
Both work well. A griddle like a Blackstone is great for cooking a large batch at once. A cast iron skillet gives the patties a deeper brown crust, which is why it’s my go-to method.
