sausage balls

[niqaeli]

These are an incredibly simple recipe I acquired from a family friend a long time ago and are always super popular at parties: they're a small, nibbly form of protein, which is often not a big feature of most party foods.

They don't reheat very well but they taste just fine cold or room temperature. (You can reheat them once and they're fine while hot, but they turn to leather if you let them cool back off at all.)

Dietary notes: Meat, dairy. I am hard pressed to imagine any way you could adapt either out. However, it can be gluten-free without any effort if you happen to keep gf flour on hand: the flour is mostly there to help hold everything together long enough to bake so just about any flour that has minimal flavour of its own will work (f'rex, I wouldn't use garbanzo flour or brown rice flour).

Accessibility: requires a microwave, oven, chopping cheese if you don't purchase it pre-diced, the ability to lift a fairly heavy bowl of hot cheese in and out of the microwave, ability to roll dough out into balls.

Prep time: ~30 minutes, altogether
Bake time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 lb. hot sausage (preferably Tennessee Pride if you can lay hands on it; whatever reasonably flavourful spicy sausage you have access to if not)
12 oz. extra sharp cheddar
2.5 cups flour
3.5 tsp baking powder
1.25 tsp salt


Directions:

Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together until evenly distributed.

Cube cheese to approx 1/2" dice. In a large microwave safe bowl, melt cheese in the microwave. Exact times will vary based on microwave, but you'll need to stop and stir it at least once, for which I recommend a silicon spatula.

Add sausage directly into molten cheese along with the flour mix. Mix thoroughly with your hands until flour is no longer visible and sausage and cheese are evenly distributed. For the love of god, wear gloves to do the mixing. Even a lightweight pair of nitrile is fine, but LEARN FROM THE DUMBASS WHO KNOWS: if you don't wear SOMETHING, a) the cheese will be hot as hell and ouchy and b) ANY nicks on your hands will burn like burning between the spicy sausage and the hot oil from the cheese.

Preheat oven to 350-375 -- exact temp frankly doesn't matter, these are very simple and very forgiving, and ovens vary. Roll sausage balls out onto cookie sheets. Balls should be approximately 1", and you don't need to grease the pan. Bake ~15 min, until the tops turn gold.

After removing from oven, immediately separate sausage balls from the cookie sheet with a spatula and drop into a paper towel lined bowl or basket to absorb excess grease.

Ta-da! Sausage balls. Makes approoooooximately 40 to a batch, in my experience, but it depends on exactly how big you roll the balls.

(FYI: that flour mix is basically Bisquick, minus the fat that's cut into Bisquick. Because fuck knows you do not need MORE oil than the sausage and cheese provide.)


Despite the spiciness of the sausage, I have not found the end results to be spicy for most people. The cheese cuts through it quite a lot and it seems like you lose some of the sausage flavour if it doesn't have some kick to it.

Comments

[acelightning]

"Self-rising" flour is the equivalent to what you've got there - just flour, baking powder, and salt. A lot of self-rising flour is cake flour, which you don't want for this because it's too delicate. But you can find self-rising all-purpose flour if you look for it (King Arthur, for example, makes it).

[niqaeli]

I actually bake pretty much entirely GF at this point for reasons that don't really bear exploring at this juncture and for that I've found that rolling my own blend at home has worked best for me, but that's good to know to be able to point other people at it.

[acelightning]

You can get gluten-free self-rising flour, but you'll probably have to go to Whole Foods or an independent "health food" store to find it. You can also order it (as well as a lot of other GF ingredient equivalents, and also regular self-rising flour) from King Arthur Flour.