Home for the holidays. There's something wonderful about waking up to the ethereal smell of coffee brewing, then taking an extra few seconds to lie your childhood bed listening to the sizzling sounds of breakfast being cooked. Eggs with bacon, ham or sausage, there's always sizzling involved. There's more. Breakfast always tastes better back home sipping a cup of Folgers, eating mom's sausage, dad's eggs and a bagel served on now-vintage plates. It's therapy.
Sausage and eggs. It might sound kind-of run-of-the-mill, but, when the sausage is homemade, and the eggs are fried in the luscious sausage drippings, it's quite remarkable. And newsflash: While making breakfast sausage is not quite as easy as picking up a package of loose or link sausage at the grocery store, it's pretty darn close to being that easy, AND, trust me, after one taste of this homemade sausage, you'll never look at store-bought the same way again. Period.
This is my (mom's) all-purpose breakfast herb-sausage mixture. For sweet sausage, add 2-3 tablespoons brown sugar to the mix. For hot sausage, incorporate 1/2-1 teaspoon red pepper flakes.
2 pounds ground pork
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
1 teaspoon each: garlic and onion powder
1 teaspoon dried sage
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence (a blend of rosemary, marjoram, thyme and savory)
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon each: coarse-grind black pepper and sea salt
~ Step 1. Place the sausage in a medium-large bowl. Add the herbs and spices as listed. Using your hands, thoroughly incorporate (like you were mixing a meatloaf) the herbs and spices into the sausage mixture. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate one hour or overnight, to allow the flavors time to marry. Overnight is best.
~Step 2. Use sausage as directed in any recipe calling for loose sausage (sausage out of the casing). More often than not, I make sausage patties for breakfast or breakfast sandwiches by using a kitchen a scale to divide the mixture into 8, 4-ounce portions. I form each portion into a 4 1/2"-round disc or patty, arranging them in a 14" skillet as I work. After frying them over medium-heat until light-golden on both sides, turning only once with a spatula, about 9 minutes per side, I fry the eggs, (sunny-side-up is my favorite) in the sausage drippings.
Sausage & Everything Bagel Breakfast Casserole:
Sausage & Egg w/Cheddar, Apple & Apple Butter:
Light & Flaky Pastry-Wrapped British-Sausage Rolls:
Mel's Herbaceous All-Purpose Breakfast Sausage: Recipe yields 2 pounds loose sausage/8, 4-ounce breakfast sausage patties.
Special Equipment List: kitchen scale; 14" nonstick skillet; spatula
Cook's Note: These not-too-sweet and slightly-savory shortbread-esque two-bite cookies called snowballs, or, depending on where you're from, also referred to as Mexican wedding cookies or Russian tea cakes, are the darlings of holiday cookie trays all across America. They are also the perfect sweet ending to any holiday breakfast. Served on my mom's now vintage Christmas tree plates, try my new twist on an old favorite recipe: ~ Tart Cherry & Toasted-Pistachio Snowball Cookies ~.
"We are all in this food world together." ~ Melanie Preschutti
(Recipe, Commentary and Photos courtesy of Melanie's Kitchen/Copyright 2019)
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