I was making this for our family dinner tonight, and thought… why don’t more people make their own sausage?? The whole saying ‘how the sausage gets made’ in reference to messy, often nasty processes holds true. There is so much STUFF stuffed in there and when you consider preservatives to extend shelf life and ethical farming practices… sigh. I know it’s easy to just close your eyes and grab it off the grocery wall, but you can also make your own pretty easily (without needing to raise, harvest and process the protein you will use as your base!)

If you have a trusted brand (or farm) that you get your ground proteins/meats from – YOU CAN MAKE SAUSAGE. There are lots of ways to do it, but the one I thought I would share (that we are eating later tonight) is a light, clean, chicken based sausage with a little sweetness from a crisp apple, savory from black pepper and onion as well as some herb notes from dried thyme and sage (saved and dried from our garden, but fresh or store-bought dried is also fine… use what you have!)

Chicken Apple Sausage w/ Thyme and Garden Sage

• 1 pound ground chicken
• 1/2 of an apple of choice, finely diced (Like tart? Granny Smith is great. Like well rounded flavor? A Fuji or Honeycrisp is good. Try to avoid anything that might add mealiness though… Ive never tried with Macintosh mainly due to this worry…)
• 1/2 of medium sweet onion, finely diced
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1-2 tsp fresh or dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp fresh or dried sage
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (optional to kick up heat… I omitted this time in case the baby wanted to try them!)

Instructions:

1. Put everything into a bowl
2. Mix
3. Store in quart zip lock in fridge until use within 2 days, or in a quart freezer back in freezer for up to 2 months.

There. That’s it. You made sausage.

Here in our kitchen, I make our own spicy Italian (pork) sausage for our camping burritos or pastas/soups, and I hope to actually case some of them one day. I’ve made fresh chorizo… At this point I use trusted ground chicken and pork, etc from the store but I DO have a meat grinder so… I might try getting a bit deeper into sausage making.

But for now, I enjoy a few basic, clean recipes that I can control the amount of ingredients for.

Here’s to healthier food choices and empowerment to control those bad ingredients!