Sausage from scratch (LS)

With Bobble being on a sodium restriction, I have to try my best to make things he enjoyed to where he can have them. Sausage is one of those things. You can't buy premade sausage and expect it to be low-sodium, so I've had to try my hand at making my own and tweaking it. I use this recipe for sausage patties (or sticks) and for crumbled sausage atop pizza. You can make it using Turkey, Chicken, or Pork. The following is made with pork.
 

Leftovers (Hubby and I didn't eat any this time, or there wouldn't have been any patties left)

These were already chilled when I took a picture. Sorry!

SAUSAGE
1 1/2lb lean ground pork (chicken, or turkey)
2 cloves crushed garlic
1T dried parsley
1t paprika
1/2t dried sage
1/2t (pink himalayan sea) salt
1/2t fresh ground pepper (I prefer a mix of peppercorns, but black pepper works, too)
1/4t dried minced onion
1/4t oregano
1/4t thyme

Simply mix all of the above and fry it up. I like using my ceramic cuisinart skillet so I don't even need to use any oil, though you can add a bit of olive, canola, or sunflower oil to fry it up if you need. (While I love sunflower oil, please be aware that it will burn faster and splatter more, so keep an eye on it!)

A serving size is supposed to be 4 oz, and will be approximately 265mg of sodium. There are supposed to be 6 servings for 1 1/2 lbs of meat. While it might not sound like a lot, when you're making sausage patties (mini, toddler sized) and you get 6 of them for less than a 1/6 of the mixture, you realize that they aren't getting that much sodium. Of course, the actual serving size would depend on how you prepare and serve it. The amount of sodium in the entire recipe above is 1590mg, so you can figure out the amount per serving for your house.

I made 8 mini patties (2 went with Bobble to school, Squiggle ate one for breakfast, so you see the 5 left over) and crumbled the rest to go in a tortellini dish this evening and on pizza tomorrow night.

** I cut the amount of salt down to 1/4t and everyone still loved the taste, so that brings the entire recipe down to about 1,055mg for the entire batch. We tend to use half of the batch (~528mg sodium) for ground sausage on a pizza, and either freeze the other half or make patties/sticks out of them **

Disclaimer: Thoughts of Fluff was not compensated for this post. All thoughts are my own and may differ from your own. Post contains affiliate links.