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UK equivalent of breakfast sausage ??

M

Margarettt

Well-Known Member
Messages
367
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
You have all been really supportive in my journey from being a non cook to a keto cook but once again I find myself stumped. Whatever I cook has to be easy and appealling to the three men (almost men) in my house. Think American diner type food and you're there.
I found this for keto sausage balls https://thebestketorecipes.com/5-ingredient-keto-sausage-balls/ and it looks do able but I have no idea what sausage meat is. Is it just pork mince or do you squeeze the innards from sausages? Apologies for what I assume is a silly question.
 
Breakfast sausage is just the US word for what we'd call sausages. I guess the intention is to differentiate from hot dogs, brats etc.

I'd just buy some tasty sausages and squeeze them out of the casings. Then you can combine all the meat together and make the balls.
 
You can buy sausage meat in supermarkets if you can’t be bothered with emptying the contents of sausages. However the carb count will be substantially higher than using good quality (high meat content) sausages.
 
You could just buy some pork or beef mince, or both and add whatever flavouring/seasoning you want.
If you decide to buy ready made sausage and extract the meat, make sure you get the ones with the highest percentage of meat you can find.
Sausages can be stuffed with all sorts of fillers, most of which will do your sugar levels no favours at all. I think that a sausage only has to contain 52% meat to be legally called a sausage, so you can guarantee that the cheaper ones will be 48% not meat.
 
Buying sausage meat from the supermarket (or butchers) is much easier than trying to force the meat out of sausage skins as my MIL will confirm after needing sausage meat for her Christmas stuffing and getting FIL to do his sausage skinning for the next hour.
My Mum always had sausage meat for making sausage rolls at the same time of year and my partner now buys his sausage meat to make his own rolls throughout the year.
I also remember my Mum making her own Scotch Eggs with it in the summer - I guess you could do something similar and replace the breadcrumbs with something else like crush pork scratchings.

Interesting question regarding how it differs from pork mince. I seeno reason why you cannot substitute pork mince if you cannot get sausage meat.
 
My butcher does sausage meat and it's about 30% oatmeal. I think a better bet is to use Heck sausages (if they're the ones that are around 95% meat) or Lidl's bratwursts etc. remove casings etc.

You could always just buy some minced pork, add some onions and some crushed pork scratchings for a bit of texture (Black Country pork scratchings are good) some salt and pepper, spices to taste and a couple of eggs and make your own sausage patties. I make these sometimes with a fair amount of chilli in.....
 
Morrisons and Tesco The best/finest sausages are around 1.5g carbs per sausage.
They used to be less carby, but have recently dropped their meat content from 95 to 90 per cent. Sneaky way to use filler and not put the price up. Grrr

I make meatballs, burgers, meatloaf etc with Pork mince, or beef or even better a mixture of both.
Add seasonings of your choice, doesn’t need anything else. Have learnt after following lots of recipes that simple is best.

Favourite in our house is burgers. 95% mince, half a courgette grated in. Salt and freshly ground pepper. Mash up with your hands and make into patties. No binders, egg or. breadcrumbs
The courgette makes it beautifully moist and juicy. No doubt would work the same for meatballls.
 
Courgette is a good idea.
 
Before recommending using sausages, I strongly recommend trying to remove the casings. Some are easier than others but I am pretty sure my MIL struggled with the Heck ones and they took over an hour to remove the casings from one pack.

If it was me and I was concerned by the oatmeal in the sausage meat, I would use pork mince. I don't have time to waste skinning sausages.
 
Have looked at the recipe @Margarettt and I would just buy 1lb of high quality sausages- I don’t really like Heck sausages I think they lack flavour and are tough, (I suspect it’s the lower fat content) I get some from Tesco or M&S do a pack of 4 bigger sausages that are low in carb and very tasty and just split the skins, like others have said minced pork would work but you would need extra seasoning - I recommend a couple of teaspoons of onion powder, garlic powder & maybe a couple of teaspoons dried herbs like thyme & sage which will give it the sausage rather than the pork flavour
 
Question: if a high quality pork sausage is 95% pork, how is that different from pork mince (100% pork) with a bit of added seasoning?
If I didn't want the sausage in the skin, I would just use seasoned pork mince (unless you can find commercial sausage meat which is 90%+ pork).
 
I think there might be a definition thing here. In some places "meat" can include a percentage of fat, gristle, etc, minced up and included: that's before you start adding filler. So if "meat" can be (say) 40% non-meat then something that has to be minimum 50% meat can have as little as 30% real "meat" in it.

Which is why I buy sausages etc from my local butcher and not from supermarkets. Lidl's bratwursts excepted.
 
I adapted my usual sausage meat stuffing at Christmas to a low carb one. I ditched the ready made sausage meat, used Tesco Finest sausages (about 1.8g ish carbs per sausage) and low carb bread (toasted and blitzed for breadcrumbs). Same principle could be applied to meat balls, with or without the bread, depending on taste.

I'd also add it might be necessary to add an egg or some oil to make sure the meatballs don't get dry.
 
I’ve never had a problem with skinning sausages and do it regularly. Sharp knife slit along the length and peel casing off. It takes me about 3 minutes, if that, to do 8 sausages!
 
Thank you all. As it happens I had a pack of the heck sausages because I needed one for my pretend haggis (its looking good I'll put a pic on my haggis thread)so I know its quite straight forward to split one with a knife. I think I'm going to go with the seasoned pork mince for the sausage balls. Thank you thank you thank you
 
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