Sausage Biscuit Sandwich With Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits

A sausage biscuit sandwich is a warm, split buttermilk biscuit with a browned breakfast sausage patty inside and, if you want it, a fried egg and a slice of cheese. The biscuits take about 15 minutes to mix and 12 to 15 minutes to bake at 450 degrees. The sausage cooks on the stove while they are in the oven, so the whole batch is ready in about 45 minutes.

The homemade biscuit is what makes it. The dough is only flour, leavening, salt, cold butter and buttermilk, and it bakes up tall, flaky and buttery enough to stand up to a juicy patty. Make eight, eat a few, and freeze the rest as sandwiches for the week.

At a glance: makes 8 sandwiches. Prep 20 minutes, cook about 25 minutes.

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Pasture-Raised Breakfast Sausage Patties

This recipe uses 1 pack of breakfast sausage patties for a batch of 8 biscuits.

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Cooking for a full freezer instead? See the 1/8 beef share subscription.

Gray Shipley, who runs the farm, was talking about burgers, not biscuits, when he said this:

“If you're going to put mayonnaise on a burger, take the time to get an egg and some lemon juice and make the, you know, put some avocado oil in. Make the mayonnaise, it ain't hard.”

Gray Shipley

His point was about mayonnaise, but the idea behind it is why this recipe starts with a bowl of flour instead of a can. Making the thing yourself is often less work than it sounds. Biscuit dough takes about 15 minutes, needs no mixer, and uses things most kitchens already have. A warm biscuit from your own oven is a different breakfast from one that came out of a package.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for the counter
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar (optional)
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
• 1 cup cold buttermilk, plus 1 to 2 tablespoons if needed
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, for brushing
• 1 pack breakfast sausage patties, 1 to 1 1/4 pounds
• 8 slices cheddar or American cheese (optional)
• 8 large eggs (optional)
• 1 tablespoon butter, for the eggs (optional)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 450 degrees with a rack in the middle, and line a sheet pan with parchment.
2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Add the cold butter and work it in with a pastry cutter or your fingertips until most of it is the size of peas, with a few larger flakes. Work quickly so the butter stays cold.
3. Pour in the buttermilk and stir with a fork just until a shaggy dough forms. If dry flour remains at the bottom of the bowl, add more buttermilk a tablespoon at a time.
4. Turn the dough out onto a floured counter and pat it into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Fold it in thirds like a letter, give it a quarter turn, and pat it out again. Repeat the fold once more, then pat it to about 1 inch thick.
5. Cut straight down with a floured 2 1/2-inch round cutter, without twisting, and set the biscuits on the pan about 1 inch apart. Press the scraps together gently and cut the rest; you should get 8. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until tall and golden brown, then brush the tops with the melted butter.
6. While the biscuits bake, cook the sausage patties in a large heavy skillet over medium heat, in batches if needed, for 4 to 5 minutes per side, until browned and an instant-read thermometer in the center of a patty reads 160 degrees F. Move them to a paper-towel-lined plate. For cheese, lay a slice on each patty for the last minute and cover the pan to melt it.
7. For eggs, pour off all but a thin film of fat, add the butter, and fry the eggs over medium-low heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until the whites are set. Flip them if you like them over. Season with salt and pepper.
8. Split the warm biscuits, fill each one with a patty, cheese and egg, and serve.

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Tips for tall, flaky biscuits

Keep everything cold. The flakes come from small pieces of butter that melt in the oven and release steam, which lifts the dough into layers, so the butter needs to stay solid until then. On a warm day, put the cubed butter, and even the bowl of flour, in the freezer for 10 minutes first. Mix only until the dough holds together, because overworked dough bakes up tough. And cut straight down: twisting the cutter pinches the edges shut, and a sealed edge will not rise as high. For soft sides, bake the biscuits touching instead and give them 2 or 3 minutes longer.

If you do not have a cutter, cut the patted-out dough into 8 squares with a sharp knife. Square biscuits leave no scraps and fit a patty just as well.

No buttermilk?

Stir 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar into a scant cup of whole milk and let it stand for 5 minutes, until it thickens slightly. It is not quite as tangy as buttermilk, but it reacts with the baking soda the same way.

Patties, links or bulk sausage

Patties are made for a biscuit: they are already the right shape and cook in under 10 minutes. If you have bulk breakfast sausage instead, shape it into patties about 1/2 inch thick and a little wider than the biscuits, since they shrink as they cook. Links work too, split lengthwise and laid flat. The guide to cooking breakfast sausage below has more on cooking it, and any leftover patties are good crumbled into a breakfast hash.

How to freeze sausage biscuit sandwiches

Let the biscuits, sausage and eggs cool completely. If you are freezing sandwiches with egg, break the yolks and cook them until fully set, since a runny yolk does not reheat well. Assemble the sandwiches, wrap each one tightly in parchment or plastic wrap, and pack them into a freezer bag. To reheat, unwrap one, wrap it loosely in a paper towel, and microwave it at half power for about 2 minutes, turning it over halfway, then at full power in 20-second bursts until it is hot in the center. Or wrap it in foil and heat it from frozen in a 350-degree oven for about 25 minutes. Either way, heat it to 165 degrees F, the FSIS figure for reheating leftovers.

Food safety

Breakfast sausage is ground meat, and USDA FSIS lists 160 degrees F as the safe minimum internal temperature for ground meats. A patty can look browned outside before the center is done, so check the thickest one with an instant-read thermometer. FSIS lists 165 degrees F for reheating leftovers, which covers sandwiches from the freezer. Wash your hands and anything that touched the raw sausage. See the FSIS Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart.