I feel like we always have some random piece of meat or meat product in the freezer begging us to be used or to just throw away already. Recently we had to sort out stuff in our small freezer, and we came across some “pork sausage breakfast rolls”, which I found odd, because when I hear the term ‘sausage rolls’ or ‘breakfast rolls’, I think of something with bread or pastry around a piece of sausage, and this was pretty much just a raw piece of meat product, frozen and wrapped in plastic. Since it was already seasoned and didn’t have the casings of a traditional sausage, it can pretty much just be cooked in a skillet over a stove like ground meat, but of course I had to make some sort of baking project out of it, because that’s how I roll!

I initially wanted to make sausage rolls with it (because that’s what it said on the package), but every time I went to the grocery store this week, I kept forgetting to get puff pastry, so today I just decided to let Google guide me. This is loosely based on a recipe (found here) for ‘sausage cheddar biscuits’, although I used mozzarella and parmesan instead of cheddar, and decided that a cup and a half of cheese was sufficient. It still came out amazing, I think, so you could probably use almost any kind of cheese or combination of cheeses, as I did, and still end up with a great breakfast item or snack. You could probably also substitute a pound of bacon for the sausage, or better yet, just add a pound of bacon to this and call it sausage bacon cheese biscuit.

sausage cheese biscuits (makes about 20 small biscuits)

ingredients

1 pound seasoned sausage meat product, any variety

8 ounces butter, softened

3/4 cup sour cream

1 and 1/2 cups grated soft cheese of your choice (I used about 1 and 1/4 cups of mozzarella and 1/4 cups of parmesan)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tablespoon baking powder

0-1/2 teaspoon salt (optional, depending on the salt level in the cheeses and whether you used salted or unsalted butter)

 

method

Heat oven to 400 degrees F. and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.

In a skillet on medium heat, cook the sausage meat until sufficiently browned. Set aside to cool.

In a medium to large bowl, beat together the butter with the sour cream with a hand held electric mixer with beater attachments on low. Add the grated cheese and continue to mix on low until blended.

Sift in the flour, baking powder, and salt on top of the butter/sour cream/cheese mixture and continue to beat on low or use a spatula to mix or fold in the dry ingredients somewhat until most of the flour is moistened.

Add all the contents of the skillet with the browned sausage meat including any of the drippings to the top of the contents in the bowl with the creamed butter/sour cream/cheese mixture.

Fold in the sausage and drippings somewhat, then dump or scrape all the ingredients from the bowl to on top of a large piece of parchment paper, wax paper on a counter, and press down with another similar large piece of parchment or wax paper on top of the biscuit dough then use the edges of the bottom paper to fold the dough to help get all the flour moistened.

Form the biscuit dough into an 8″ by 8″ square. Divide or cut into desired shapes for the biscuits. I simply cut a grid shape to make 20 individual square-ish biscuits, but you can also use a scoop to make circular mounds of dough instead of squares.

Arrange the biscuits spaced evenly between each of the two parchment lined baking sheets. Bake for about 20-25 minutes until lightly browned with crisp edges and bottoms. Can serve right away or let cool for a few minutes before serving. Eat by itself or as part of a larger breakfast or brunch. Because these are quite rich, you can also freeze any leftover biscuits, tightly wrapped, and then reheat however many you want at a time in a 350 degree F. oven for 8-10 minutes.

By the way, speaking of searching Google, I finally found that the little signature on the linen napkin I used for this shoot is not ‘Usna’ but ‘Vera’ and stands for Vera Neumann, an American artist and entrepreneur best known for boldly colored linen patterns and scarves! Took forever to find, but today has been sort of a slow day… 😉