This turkey sausage recipe has the perfect balanced seasoning you want in a breakfast sausage—making it flavorful as well as healthy. Leaner than pork sausage and made with real ingredients, homemade turkey sausage is a great way to get healthy protein in the morning!
Making Homemade Turkey Sausage is Crazy Easy
There are a handful of things — breakfast sausage, granola, a quick vinaigrette for a salad, pesto— where homemade is so clearly better and so surprisingly easy that paying for a store-bought version starts to feel silly. This is one of them.
Breakfast sausage may seem like a project, but it only takes about 15 minutes and is less complicated than making meatballs.
I started making it from scratch when my son Ethan began eating solids. I wanted to give him varied, interesting breakfasts (to hopefully avoid picky eating), so I started checking labels on store-bought sausages. What I found was basically a choice between paying a small fortune or feeding my kid a list of preservatives and fillers. Neither option felt great.
So despite the fact that I struggle to find pockets of time to do much of anything these days—not to mention the occasional ‘tradwife’ joke from my sister—I started making my own. The process is so quick, I’ve kept it up, whipping up a batch of sausage every month or so.
I store the patties between sheets of parchment paper in the freezer, and grab one or two to fry up in the pan with an egg and maybe a side of avocado toast—all while packing up for daycare.
Now Ethan holds up his sausage patties and goes, “This is MOMMY’S HOMEMADE SAUSAGE!” as he stuffs another mouthful in. It just warms my little ol’ heart.
Family Roots In This Recipe
This recipe has roots in my family — specifically, my aunt (my dad’s older sister), who spent months testing and refining her breakfast sausage until it was exactly right. The original is a classic pork version, and that’s where I started too. But eventually I began playing around with ground turkey, and this is where I landed.
The switch to turkey comes with one main challenge: fat. Ground turkey is leaner than pork, which is great for nutrition but can make for a dry, crumbly patty if you’re not careful. The fix is simple — be sure to use dark meat ground turkey (not the 99% lean stuff made from turkey breast). Plus, a few tablespoons of olive oil mixed right into the meat keeps everything moist and juicy.
If you want something in between, a half-and-half blend of ground turkey and ground pork works beautifully too. I will also emphasize that right out of the pan, this turkey sausage is really juicy! Let it sit out for a while, and like any cooked meat, it does dry out. So serve it immediately after you cook it.
I also tweaked the seasoning to suit turkey’s more delicate flavor. The original recipe has more pepper and crushed red pepper, which are great with pork but can steamroll turkey. I pulled those back, reduced the cloves for the same reason, and added garlic powder — a nod to my grandpa’s Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey recipe, which relies on little more than garlic, salt, and pepper.
I hope you give this sausage a try!
Turkey Sausage Recipe Instructions
Toast the fennel seeds in a pan over medium low heat until fragrant. Add to a mortar and pestle or spice grinder and grind to a powder. Add the turkey to a mixing bowl along with the ground fennel seeds, pepper, sage, garlic powder, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, cloves, salt, maple syrup, and olive oil.
Mix until well-incorporated, and chill overnight or for at least 2 hours.
Using wet hands (to prevent sticking), form into 16 patties and fry in a lightly oiled pan over medium high heat until browned and crispy.
To store the sausage for later use, form into patties and place raw patties between squares of parchment paper. Transfer to an airtight container or freezer bag and transfer to the freezer. Cook patties directly from frozen, no need to thaw!
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Recipe
Turkey Sausage Patties
Ingredients
- 1½ teaspoons fennel seeds
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 ½ teaspoon dried sage
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- ½ teaspoon dried rosemary
- ¼ teaspoon dried marjoram
- 1 pinch ground cloves
- 2 pounds dark meat ground turkey (not 99% lean)
- 2 teaspoons sea salt
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
Instructions
- Toast the fennel seeds in a pan over medium low heat until fragrant. Add to a mortar and pestle or spice grinder and grind to a powder. Add the turkey to a mixing bowl along with the ground fennel seeds, pepper, sage, garlic powder, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, cloves, salt, maple syrup, and olive oil. Mix until well-incorporated, and chill overnight or for at least 2 hours.
- Using wet hands (to prevent sticking), form into 16 patties and fry in a lightly oiled pan over medium high heat until browned and crispy.
- To store the sausage for later use, form into patties and place raw patties between squares of parchment paper. Transfer to an airtight container or freezer bag and transfer to the freezer. Cook patties directly from frozen, no need to thaw!
