Monday, March 3, 2014

Sausage balls

So, sausage balls (sounds like an expletive, I know but, literally: sausage balls)

Another easy thing to do - as I found out last night. If you look up a recipe for this, basically what you find is mix ground sausage with Bisquick and cheese, ball, and bake. Nice, simple, and easy. Then you look up a second recipe and the ratios are different. Here's what we used:

1 pound (a tube) of breakfast sausage (minus two patty's worth that got consumed for breakfast earlier the same day)
2-1/2 cups of Bisquick
1 cup of sharp cheddar shredded
Onion powder, because it was there
Cajun blackened seasoning, because... hey, why not?

In recipe-speak, the next step is "Combine ingredients", but really that's an understatement. Mix the Bisquick, the cheese, and all in one bowl and dump the sausage in to another bowl. Add a handful of dry mix into the sausage about an handful at a time and work it into the sausage, like you were kneeding dough. I don't know if a mixer with dough hooks could be used - I don't have one - but be prepared to put some work into mixing the stuff. Use your hands.

After all is said and done, you come out with a ball of mix that kind of resembles pie crust dough both in texture and in feel - the fat in the sausage mix isn't any greasier than the shortening in pie dough - to me, anyway. Next thing is turn on the oven to 375, spray a baking sheet with Pam, and then ball the mess a chunk at a time until you have row after row of English walnut-sized balls.

Bake at 375 for 20 minutes.

What comes out of the oven is like a hybrid between a cheese biscuit and a bite of sausage. They are unbelievably good right off of the baking sheet. Not a bit oily - which is kind of surprising, since they have so much sausage and cheese in them. I haven't tried them with any kind of sauce. The Paula Deen recipe on foodnetwork.com comes with a suggestion of mixing a cup of mayo with a tablespoon of mustard, but as I don't like mayonnaise that much, that kinda sounds gross to me. I'd just go with mustard - if I had to pick - just the same as I would use on any sausage roll that I'd get for breakfast.

I wonder what they'd taste like with syrup...