Goodbye Ronald, hello homemade breakfast sausage!

I don't do fast food too often. My developed tastes and increased conscience have led me away from a one-time big-hitter in my culinary repertoire. But lately not many box restaurants can pull me in. The biggest winner for a long time has been Arby's. I just love their juicy roast beef sandwiches. My fave is still the Bacon, Beef and Cheddar. And I may never want to give it up. Especially when you pair it with their curly fries with more cheese sauce and a Mt. Dew. The only other thing that calls my name regularly is a sausage and cheese biscuit for breakfast from McD's. and at a buck, it so easy. So I decided to just start making these myself at home every week and microwaving one or two every morning. So sorry Ronald, the only thing you have left for me is your fries on special occasions!

I had about 2 pounds of pork scraps left from the latest 'nduja batch, so I ground it up on the smallest KitchenAid die. Unfortunately I think my KA stand mixer may have been telling it is ready to move on as is it ground slower and slower through the 2# of meat. God I hope not. Anyway, here is my ingredient list:

2    #   pork, ground
1    T   salt
1    t    black pepper
1/2 t    white pepper
1/2 t    sage, dried
1/4 t    ginger, dried
1/4 t    thyme, dried
1/4 t    crushed red pepper flakes
2         garlic cloves, minced

I put on some latex gloves and got in and mixed the ingredients really well by hand. I imagine you could use the mixer paddle if you wanted, but with such a small batch it seemed unnecessary to me. I then formed patties a little bigger than my biscuits (Pillsbury, sorry avid bakers!) and cooked them away in my non-stick. I didn't have any cheese at home at the time, but it was just fine since these sausages came out so well. They are a touch herbal, but not in a bad way. If you aren't big on herbs, you might want to lay of the amount of the two at your discretion. The heat is there in a nice way. I might increase just a touch of ginger the next time, though it isn't needed, I just love the stuff!

*I did breakfast patties instead of links, but if I had done links I would have added about 1/2 C cold water in at the mixing point to help with the texture to be stuffed into links. Also, if you have fresh herbs instead of dried, be sure to follow the general rule of 2-3X the dried amount for fresh. i.e. 1/4 t dried would be 1/2-3/4 t fresh. This is because the dried version is a much more concentrated version.