Every sausage recipe box needs a good, solid, basic breakfast sausage recipe. Here’s one for rabbit (though you could make it with any type of meat!).
This recipe, while simple, has great flavor with just a hint of a spicy bite from red pepper. It’s something to start your day off well with high protein, a touch of brown sugar*, and just the right amount of spice for flavor, without doing in your belly first thing in the morning!
Without further ado, let’s jump right into the recipe.
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Easy Rabbit Breakfast Sausage Recipe
Makes 10 pounds of rabbit breakfast sausage.
Ingredients:
- 10 pounds of rabbit meat trim*
- 2 cups ice water
- ⅓ cup salt
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 ½ tablespoons white pepper
- ½ tablespoon red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon rubbed sage (2 teaspoons if using fresh)
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme (2 teaspoons if using fresh)
*A note about adding fat to rabbit sausage:
If you want a moister sausage with more fat content, you can add pork or chicken fat. Extra fat also helps to act as a binder. If you choose to add fat, add about 10% and reduce the amount of meat trim by 10%.
The right measurement would then be: 9 pounds of rabbit meat plus 1 pound of fat, for a total of 10 pounds of fat and trim mixed.
Directions:
- Make sure your rabbit carcasses are completely cooled out before you start. Always work with cold meat when deboning, grinding, or making sausage.
- Debone your rabbits for the meat trim. Keep any fat that is in the rabbits, and count it in your trim weight.
- Return the trim to the refrigerator or freezer and let it cool completely through before moving on to the next step. Do not let the meat freeze all the way through. Very cold to partially frozen is a good temperature to work with.
- Before grinding, it helps to freeze your grinder parts or attachments. This helps keep the grinder neck, auger, and meat cold while you work.
- Grind all the trim (and fat, if using) through a coarse plate.
- Return the coarsely ground meat to the refrigerator or freezer to chill.
- Leave for several hours or overnight to chill through completely. Do not let the meat freeze solid. (So if leaving overnight, the refrigerator is a better choice, but the freezer can speed chilling if you want to finish the sausage in one day.)
- Prepare your spice mix. Mix the dry ingredients together.
- Measure the ice water separately.
- Sprinkle the spice mix evenly over the top of the ground meat.
- Mix through to combine until the spice mix is evenly distributed.
- Pour the ice water evenly over the meat and spice mixture, and then mix to combine.
- Grind immediately. You can use the same coarse plate if you like, or you can go down to a medium or fine plate for this final second grind. (Rabbit meat is finely textured, so it can get mushy with small plates; you might prefer the coarse or medium plate. However, the texture and plate you use is up to you.)
- Form the sausage into patties** (see below for tips) or package it as bulk loose sausage (your preference).
- If you want to link the sausage, return it to the refrigerator or freezer and allow it to cool completely before stuffing. Use a sheep casing for breakfast sausage-sized links.
Find more on casings and how to stuff rabbit sausage into links here.
No Sugar and/or Natural Sugar Substitutions
*For sugar-free sausage, feel free to omit the brown sugar.
*If you want to keep the sweetness but want your breakfast sausage to be as natural as possible, substitute the brown sugar for maple syrup. To substitute maple syrup, use an equal measure of maple syrup in place of the brown sugar (three tablespoons). (The slight amount of increased moisture will not hurt a thing.)
Variation: Smokey Bacon Rabbit Breakfast Sausage
If you'd like a smokey bacon flavor to your breakfast patties, you can substitute a pound of the rabbit meat trim with a pound of bacon ends.
- Use 9 pounds of rabbit meat and 1 pound of bacon ends
- Grind the bacon into the rabbit trim when you’re grinding
- Do not use other fat (such as the added fat mentioned in the note above). The bacon ends will be plenty fatty, so they’ll add that extra fat, moisture, and binding.
- Keep all other spices and measurements the same.
- If you want a Maple Bacon Rabbit Breakfast Sausage, use the bacon ends and also substitute the brown sugar for maple syrup!
**Tips for Making Ready-to-Use Sausage Patties
For breakfast sausage patties that are fast and easy to use, flash freeze them individually. Then, you can take out what you want and cook it straight from frozen, in just minutes.
- Form the patties and either lay them in a single layer on a baking sheet or tray, or place a piece of parchment paper or waxed paper in between the patties, then stack in small stacks to freeze
- Put the patties in the freezer and allow them to freeze solid
- Now, you can remove the tray and portion the patties into packages -- use however many you like per package, according to how many you typically cook at a time
- By freezing the patties before packaging, the patties will stay separated and will be easy to pull apart
- You could even put all the patties into one bulk bag or container after they are frozen, if you don’t want to deal with making a lot of small bags or packages (and if you have the space in your freezer for bigger bulk boxes or bags!).
A fast patty-making alternative:
- Another option is to place one to two pounds of sausage mix into a large (one gallon size) ziploc or large vacuum sealer bag, then remove the air and seal. Now, flatten the bag and score lines in the meat to make square patties.
- The scored lines should go nearly all the way through the meat to make individual patties. A thin wooden dowel pressed flat over the bag works well for this.
- Be sure to keep the bags flat and don’t let them be squished by the weight of this or other meat (that would make the lines disappear and leave you with just a bag of flat bulk sausage).
- When you want to use the patties, the scored lines will snap apart, and you will have individual square breakfast sausage patties!
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Eliza
Greetings! I’m so happy I found your website, what a great resource! I’ve been raising rabbits for several years but just decided to attempt sausage with some of my older does that won’t breed. I have already ground the meat and found this website while looking for recipes. My question is, there is a lot of liquid juices etc that have come out of the meat. Should I drain this off or try to incorporate it back in. Since the meat is being refrigerated presently, can I use this juice in place of the ice water? Thanks in advance!
Mary Ward
Hi! I'm so glad you found us, too!
If the juices are excessive, you can drain most of it off, but I usually do not worry about it. I would still add the liquid in -- it is important in the mixing and stuffing especially for subsequent grinds. If you are not linking the sausage (just using loose or making patties, you could probably use the liquid as is and skip adding more liquid.
Most importantly, this is more of a mixing and grinding/stuffing issue, not a food safety issue. So don't overthink it. If you are stufffing and linking, I really recommend sticking with the liquid added in the recipe as it is written.
Hope this helps. Here if you have more questions!