Last week I shared with you a Sweet Potato Stuffing recipe that included ground sausage. That recipe inspired me. Could I make my own sausage? I don’t have a sausage making attachment for my KitchenAid Stand Mixer, but I know that sausage can sometimes be served as a patty. So, off to my cookbook collection I went.

Of course, I first went to my Paleo cookbooks. I thought that a sausage patty could be considered Paleo – I mean, a sausage patty is just meat. I was fortunate that within a couple of minutes, I found the basis for the recipe that I am sharing with you today.

The original recipe was simple just ground pork, some garlic and spices. As I was going through the fridge, I found inspiration in the produce crisper: onions, celery and jalapeño peppers. These would be perfect flavours to add into a breakfast sausage.

I grabbed a bunch of spices, pulled out my food processor and started chopping. Since I knew I wanted to blend everything together, I didn’t have to spend a lot of time mincing up my vegetables. This saved me a lot of time. I only took out half the seeds from the jalapeño pepper. For our palate, I have found that half the seeds is the perfect amount of heat. Depending on how much heat you like, you could keep in more seeds or remove them all. I feel that using the jalapeño seeds to add in heat is very natural. No added sugar or preservatives that you might find in hot sauce.

Once I minced up all the vegetables and spices in the food processor, I added in the ground pork. A few minutes on a medium blend setting and I had jalapeño spiced sausage. The secret to making your pork taste like sausage and not a pork burger patty, is adding in fennel seed. The taste is very distinctive to sausage.

After the meat, vegetables and spices were blended together; I made them into small patties and fried them up. The original recipe called for them to be cooked in coconut oil, but I used bacon fat (which we always have in the fridge, due to the copious amount of bacon that we eat) 🙂

These little sausage patties were delicious! I made them into 2 inch rounds; actually they reminded me of sliders. They cooked up and were eaten in no time.

What I loved about this recipe is that we knew exactly what were in our sausages. Since we used the food processor, it really took no time to make these. I guarantee we will be making these again, who knows what flavours we will throw in next time?

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Adapted from:
Make it Paleo – Bill Staley & Hayley Mason

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground pork
• 1 jalapeño pepper (half seeds removed) – roughly chopped
• 1 small onion – roughly chopped
• 2 small celery stalks – roughly chopped
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp paprika
• 3/4 tsp ground thyme
• 1 1/2 tsp fennel seed
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp chili poweder
• 1/2 tsp red chili flakes

Directions:

1. Combine vegetables and spices in food processor until finely chopped and well blended.
2. Add in ground pork and mix until combined.
3. Form pork mixture into small patties (about 2 inches) – makes 13-15 patties.
4. Heat a skillet to medium heat with cooking fat (I used bacon fat, but you could use any other cooking fat).
5. Cook the sausage patties for approximately 3 minutes per side.  You want to make sure that the middle of the sausage patty is no longer pink.
6. Serve with eggs and enjoy!