Recipe...Beef Breakfast Sausage Patties

Here at Foothill Frolic Farm on Gammon Creek, I have been making Beef Breakfast Sausage, forever it seems, with what lots of you have come to know, our delicious Custom Ground Beef + Vitals (Heart, Liver, Kidney, Tongue) Blend. I change up the spice combination ever once in a while and my latest combination has been one of our favorites and I wanted to share.

The Recipe and Photo Preparations can be found below.

As most of you probably either know or are just beginning to figure out, I have had a long stance affair with farm to plate and organically raised ingredients. This life priority all started very soon after graduating from college way back in 2002. Despite not majoring directly in agriculture or going to cooking school, my biology and chemistry major/minor from my alma mater, Belmont University, in Nashville, TN served me well as it gave me a core foundation of the sciences and placed me in a location that opened many doors that became major influences in my life.

After graduating and continuing on with my collegiate sport of cross county and track and field by competitively training to participate in triathlons, road running races, cycling, and marathoning, I took on a research job at Vanderbilt University, but in the later part of my 22nd year I was inclined to try to get a job as some sort of cook or sous chef in any Nashville Restaurant that would take me. I couldn't believe it, but I ended up being hired and taken under the wings of the well known chef Deb Paquette at her owned restaurant Zola on West End as the Salad Sous Chef. What an experience this was, as I had never worked in an upscale renowned restaurant's kitchen before, lots of hard work and learning that's for certain! This was around the same time that I meet my husband Matthew, which lived rurally, out past Leipers Fork on his family property. Looking back, my young adulthood seemed to be empowered by bursts of inspirational freedoms, confident explorations, and the fun naivety that all things worked for the good and the 'anything is possible' mentality. Within this frame of time, I was able to start pulling together past intuitions about growing up on a farm in the foothills of East TN, my studies in the sciences, and passion for real food to connect all my dots together of how Land, Soil, Health, Nature, Organics, Cooking, Farming, and Locality were all interconnected. Along with growing organic vegetables and establishing Arugula's Star of Neal Family Farms, I was able to have the neatest opportunity to be a personal cook for Robert Lipman, CEO of Lipman Brothers, LLC. I did this until the demands of Arugula's Star of Neal Family Farms were greater than it was possible to do both, and I for some reason (haha) chose the harder of the two, which was farming. This was a well remembered time in my life that I will always look back fondly on. I have been smitten with the interconnectedness of organic farming, nature, health, and real foods ever since and have been actively growing and preparing local foods for twenty years now and have always found such zeal in the seasonal availability of organically raised farm fresh growings!!

Jumping forward to current time, as farming here at Foothill Frolic Farm keeps me on my toes, our family eats high quality organic meals, that by necessity, have to come together quickly or ahead of time and are highly based off of our delicious, organically raised 100% grassfed beef, seasonal veggies, and fruits and organically, outside sourced, simple old world grains, chickens, milk and yogurt, eggs, spices, dried herbs and condiments.

As we do not raise pigs, I do not seek out pork for breakfast sausage and why would I when a whole beef provides approximately anywhere between 170 to 240 packages of wonderful ground beef + vitals blend to work with!! To start the day off, our Ground Beef + Vitals Blend Breakfast Sausage makes for a great 100 % grassfed and grassfinished protein, loaded with extra nutrients from the organs being ground into the grind. Plus, any leftovers can be snacked on throughout the day or eaten with lunch!! With my growing 11 year old boy, Eastenn Dutch, I have firsthand experience that boys are hungry almost every 2 hours!

Here my Recipe is with photos showing the stages of preparation and final breakfast patties!

I sure hope you give it a try and I know your family will love it!!

Foothill Frolic Farm's Best Beef Breakfast Sausage Patties

Ingredients:

1 approx. 1 LB package of Foothill Frolic Farm's Ground Beef + Vitals Blend

1 tsp organic dried marjoram

1 tsp organic dried thyme

1/2 tsp organic dried sage, ground

1/4 tsp organic Korintje Cinnamon

1/8 tsp organic cayenne pepper

a little less than 1/8th tsp of organic dried nutmeg

1/2 tsp Redmond Salt

40 grinds of fresh cracked organic 3 peppercorn blend (black, white, and green)

6 Dried Plums(Prunes) cut into pieces

Photo Steps:

I simply just measure out all herbs and spices directly into my iron skillet. I do my best to spread them evenly and orderly throughout so the seasoning will be dispersed evenly amidst the sausage. This is important because I do not over mix and kneed the seasonings into the sausage. Then I cut and pop out the ground beef + vitals blend on top of ingredients into the skillet. No need to use a mixing bowl, as by doing so, there are more things to clean up and wash in the end.

Next, I evenly push down and spread the ground beef + vitals blend till it fills the bottom of the skillet.

This roll is formed by just rolling up the spread out ground beef. Then I cut it into quarters. These quarters are then divided in half by hand, which then will make a total of 8 sausage patties.

Here are the 8 sausage patties with the awaiting chopped dried plums.

I push the dried plum pieces down into the sausage patties really well. It is good for them to be emerged so that they stay in the sausage while cooking.

Oh looky here -- as I was documenting my sausage making on Jan 31st, during our deep and wonderful winter wonderland snow, I happened to look out the kitchen window and see what Eastenn Dutch had driven in...The old McCormick Farmall Cub and I had to break to run out and take a quick picture. In the background the Main Cow Herd had herded together amidst the trees of the old Lacy House.

Cook over medium high heat for a total of 7-10 minutes depending on desired level of doneness. I generally aim for 4 minutes on each side once I can tell the patties have started cooking. Do not start your time when you initially turn on the heat, that is unless you are using gas or a very hot wood cookstove. When done, I always scoot my sausages to the upper edge standing on side and stick something under the skillet that elevates it just enough for some of the fat to drain to opposite end. My cooktop has an elevated edge so I just prop my skillet on that and the process works perfectly.

Good enough and ready to eat up....Foothill Frolic Farm's Best Breakfast Sausage Patties.

Until Next Time, Eat Well and Be Well and hopefully you have had a descent start to the 2026 New Year.

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Allison Mills Neal of Foothill Frolic Farm