Bacon-Sage Breakfast Sausage

*Note: Most commercial breakfast sausage contains a lot of sugar in one form or another as well as nitrates. Although bacon is not orthodox Paleo, it is included in this recipe to provide hints of sweet/salt/smoke flavors. Use nitrate-free uncured bacon. I buy mine at Trader Joe's. If you only have thin bacon, use four slices instead of three. The bacon is totally optional and can be left out if a more strict Paleo result is desired. This is still very tasty without the bacon.

The salt is optional as well, and not strict Paleo. Salt is one of my personal exceptions to this WOE, mostly so the non-Paleo members of my family will eat the food I cook. If you use salt and leave the bacon out, you may find this recipe needs additional salt.
 
Ingredients

2      lbs. ground pork
3      slices thick nitrate-free uncured bacon*
3      tsp dried powdered sage
1/2   tsp salt*
1      tsp ground black pepper
1/2   tsp dried marjoram
1/2   tsp granulated garlic
1      tsp liquid smoke
1      pinch ground cloves

Directions
   
1.    Finely chop the bacon into small pieces so it will blend well with the ground pork.

2.    In a large bowl combine all of the dried spices and mix well.
   
3.    Place the ground pork and chopped bacon in the bowl with the mixed spices. Add the liquid smoke and mix well with your hands and form into links or patties.
   
4.    Fry the links/patties in a skillet over medium heat until internal temperature reaches 160 degrees F/70 degrees C (about 5-minutes per side).

This recipe makes quite a bit of sausage. I usually put half of it in a Ziploc bag and put it in the fridge and cook it as needed during the week and the other half goes in a Ziploc freezer bag and it goes in the freezer. Also, this tastes much better if you make it in advance and let the raw sausage sit in the fridge for a day or two before you cook it. This allows the flavors from the spices and other ingredients to really blend together with the meat into a truly savory combination.

What on earth is liquid smoke?

Another update on this recipe. I stumbled on ground wild boar at my local Sprouts market (kind of like a smaller version of Whole Foods) so I decided to try it as breakfast sausage instead of regular ground pork. A photo of the package is attached. It looks a little wilted because it was frozen originally, so I thawed it to make the sausage, which is when I took the photo.

Anyway, like other game, this meat is much leaner than its farm-raised counterpart. It reminds me of ground turkey in consistency (both raw and cooked). I don't like ground turkey personally, but I was eager to try this so I whipped up a batch of sausage using the second recipe above (the no-bacon version) to try it out.

Although trichinosis is all but non-existent in the North American commercial pork supply, this meat is from feral animals so the potential for trichinosis or other parasites is much greater than it is with commercial pork. So I decided to cook it well done instead of how I usually cook pork (medium). Between that and the lean state of the meat, I decided that instead of throwing the patties in a hot, dry pan as I usually do, I put a tablespoon on pork lard in the pan just to keep the patties from getting too dry. That was the only modification to the recipe above though.

The taste if fantastic. Buttery and smooth and much more flavor than regular pork. At $8.00/pound, I doubt if I'll be able to afford to make this a regular thing, but I will try to incorporate it into my diet as much as possible. It's still a lot cheaper per pound than grass fed bison or beef, and I'm assuming it's a good source of O3s compared to commercial pork, so I can probably eat this a little more often than I eat grass fed beef and bison.

This company also sells ground venison, which makes great burgers.