If you don't have a meat grinder you can request your butcher to grind a Boston butt roast (of your choice) for you, while you wait.
You definitely want to make this sausage to compare its "zing" and flavor differences to the breakfast sausages from the first two recipes. We all have taste preferences so why not find yours and make what you enjoy best? In my opinion sausage from this recipe most closely matches the best of the premium commercial breakfast sausages.
Overall, once you start making sausage and varying the seasonings you can home in on what pleases you best.
Ingredients: (makes 1 pound of sausage)
1 lb. of pork butt, ground fine
1 1/2 tsp. of hickory smoked salt
1/2 tsp. of black pepper
1 1/2 tsp. of dried rubbed sage
Pinch of ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. of ground ginger
1/2 tsp. of dried thyme
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tsp. of maple syrup
1 1/2 oz. of cold water
1 tsp. of Wrights Liquid Smoke®
Directions:
Prepare the pork butt for grinding by cutting it into pieces that will easily fit in your meat grinder. Think 2"x3/4"x3/4" size pieces.
Remove excess fat (any large all fat pieces) and discard it. You want the fat to be 20% of the total weight of the meat. You can make a pretty good guess visually.
Grind the pieces of pork butt using the 1/4” diameter holes die in your meat grinder. Then process the ground pork again using the 1/8" diameter holes in the meat grinder.
Put all of the dry seasoning ingredients into a Magic Bullet® mixer and mix them for one minute.
Put all of the liquid ingredients in the bowl with the ground pork.
Mix the ground pork and liquids in the electric mixer on medium speed using the regular mixer beater (but keep the meat from climbing onto the beater by running it fast enough to toss the meat against the inside surface of the mixing bowl).
Add the ground dry ingredients to the pork mixture slowly while mixing. Then mix for two more minutes.
Put the breakfast sausage into a one quart Ziploc® freezer bag, squeeze out the air, seal the bag, then refrigerate the sausage overnight.
Weigh out 8 ounce amounts of the breakfast sausage and put each into a one quart vacuum seal bag. Vacuum seal the bags and then press on them to make the sausage flat and of even thickness, roughly 1/2" thick.
Mark the bags to identify contents and keep the bags of breakfast sausage in the deep freeze until you want to use them. They will be fine for three to six months in the deep freeze.
Thaw the frozen sausage in the microwave oven on full power for 30 seconds. Then flip the bag over and microwave on full power for 20 seconds. Then put the bag on a counter and let it finish thawing for about 30 minutes.
At this point you can put the whole slab of sausage into the skillet as indicated below and cut it up into pieces while it is frying, or, you may want instead to make patties by hand of whatever size pleases you and simply fry them like you would the cut up pieces. I prefer to prepare the patties before frying ... it avoids cutting the non-stick skillet surface.
Fry the sausage in a hot thick bottom non-stick skillet into which one tablespoon of either butter or vegetable oil have been added and heated. If/as necessary, press on the sausage with a spatula to keep it flat and of roughly even thickness.
After one minute flip the sausage over, then (if you left it in a slab) use a sharp spatula to cut it into the size pieces you want to serve.
Continue frying the sausage pieces on low heat, flipping them over every two minutes, until they are nicely browned on both sides.
Serve the sausages hot along with whatever other breakfast items you provide to your guests. The planning and order of preparation are up to you.
I know you will really enjoy this version of breakfast sausage. The sausages are tasty, crisp on the outside and tender on the inside and moist. Yummy!