Sausage Balls
Chop everything, mix everything, form balls, cook.
- 1 pound breakfast sausage
- 1 pound Hot Italian sausage
- 1 c shredded cheese, any flavor cheddar is a great choice
- 3/4 c celery finely chopped
- 3/4 c onion, any color finely chopped
- 2/3 c Italian bread crumbs
- 3 cloves garlic minced or grated with a microplane
- 2 eggs beaten
- 1 tsp salt
- 10 grinds of a pepper mill or 1 tsp
Preheat oven to 350 and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper or foil.
If you have a food scale, zero it with a plate on it so you can keep the balls uniform size.
Chop and mince everything, beat the eggs, and combine it all in a large bowl.
Form the mixture into 1 oz balls and line them up on the cookie sheets.
Cook at 350 for about 50 minutes. Rotate the cookie sheets top to bottom and front to back at the 25-minute mark.
You can use any sausage you want. I've experimented with turkey sausage and tried to manipulate the spices to replicate traditional breakfast sausage flavor. After a few attempts, I've decided regular pork sausage is just fine.
I often play around with the seasonings by adding fresh sage, fresh oregano, or thyme if I have the herbs.
Calorie/nutrition data is calculated for one ball, assuming you'll get about 40 balls from the whole recipe. As you can see, it's not exactly a low-calorie recipe. The trick is to not pig out on them. Put 3 in your salad, grab 2 for a post workout snack. Don't knock back the whole tray in one sitting.