Homemade Sausage

Our family really enjoys sausage with our breakfast on the weekends but I really didn't want to purchase what is regularly available at the local grocers. After trial and error with different meats and seasonings I finally came upon a recipe that we all really enjoy. Since we rarely eat pork (it makes Gary VERY lethargic for some reason) I use a combination of grass-fed beef and free-range chicken meat. Here is my recipe:

Beef & Chicken Sausage Patties

1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground chicken
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons white pepper (you can use black pepper if you prefer - I just like the way the white pepper blends into the meat better)
1 1/2 tablespoons ground sage

Place ground beef and chicken into food process and pulse until meats begin to blend. (You can do this with a spoon but the processor makes it so much faster and easier.) Once meats are fairly well blended add olive oil and spices. Pulse until well mixed.

There are two options for cooking the sausage:

1. Form patties and cook in a skillet as you would regular sausage (you can easily freeze what you don't cook); or,

2. Form patties and place on a lined cooking rack (I just use one of my cooling racks) and set it on a cookie sheet. Bake sausages at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. NOTE: Your baking time may vary; also, I slightly undercook the sausage so that when I heat it up in the future it does not become overdone. This method works great for cooking ahead for brunches or busy mornings.

The one 'drawback' to using the beef and chicken and is that the patties tend to puff up a bit. I've found that if you just make them very flat before they begin to cook they end just fine.

I have used this recipe with pork, beef and turkey, and just plain chicken. Pork really tastes great and the beef and chicken is our second favorite.