Autumn Harvest Sausage Skillet: A Tasty Breakfast Recipe

Have you ever wanted to change up your autumn and winter breakfast menu but felt overwhelmed and burned out? Try this new apple and sausage recipe that will brighten your mornings.

In today’s post, I’m going to show you step by step how to incorporate a fabulous breakfast sausage recipe into your meal plan with simple, source-able ingredients. This Autumn Harvest Sausage Skillet is so easy, as well as major bonus points for taste and time to prepare.

After going through this guide, you will have happy campers at your breakfast table and be able to perfect this recipe to make again and again for you or your family.

If you get stuck or have questions, simply send me a message, [email protected] and I will do my best to help you out. Let’s get started with this delicious sausage recipe.

Quality Ingredients Make The Difference

Step 1: Define Your Food Priorities

Many people fail in creating quality recipes for the simple reason that they don’t make time in their budget or shopping list for truly high quality ingredients.

Always make every attempt to source your fresh groceries at as high of a quality level as possible. What do I mean by this? For instance, instead of buying commercially raised meat products that you know nothing about, find a local farmer and work with them to find out what their animals are fed. Find out what conditions the animals live in. Do the footwork to make sure you’re buying a healthy, well-maintained animal as the quality is reflected in the meat used for your recipe. I will be doing a blog post soon on coordinating with local farms or butchers as well as what to look for when choosing the animal to harvest.

Here’s where that essence of farmhouse living comes into effect. If you can’t raise your own meat products, this does not mean that you can’t enjoy quality on your table and in your meals. It does not disqualify you and your family from having access to incredible meats and produce. The ability to outsource and coordinate with local farms to get quality foods is a great tool to keep in your tool belt.

The Apples In The Sausage Recipe

Next, when looking for apples, find some local orchards to visit. Find orchards who don’t use pesticides or herbicides and participate with all-natural or organic orchard husbandry practices. Undoubtedly, you’ll make some new friends and support a local business in the process. Farmers and gardeners love to talk about their unique products. As a matter of fact, they will often give you tours, free samples and a ringing welcome to return the following season for their special item.

When choosing an apple for cooking, type of apple matters. Each apple has distinctive characteristics that make it ideal for only eating, preserving, cooking or baking or a combination of these features. Accordingly, choose an apple that fits into the basics of what you’re looking for. I try to source out heritage lines of apples like Northern Spy, Macintosh, Ida Red, Honey Crisp, Jonathon or Wolf River. These apple types are well-known for their ability to cook or sauté well and not fall apart into mush. Each of these varieties also have a fabulous flavor profile, not too sour and not too sweet, that holds up well as a contrast to the well-spiced breakfast sausage.

Generally, the apples to avoid for cooking are the Red Delicious and Yellow Delicious as they are each quite soft and do not hold up well as a cooking apple or as a flavor profile. These apples are great for eating, but that’s about it.

How you decide to source the ingredients for this recipe, as discussed above, will determine the quality and taste of the end product in your sausage recipe.

And ultimately, I will always preach quality over quantity when it comes to food for your home.

Apples and Sausage Recipe…Let’s Address the Elephant In The Room

I will always be the champion on the sidelines, cheering you on to source the foods and products brought into your home as highly as possible. But, what if affordability of said foods or products comes into play a little more often than you would like to admit? I know this to be true because I have the same affordability constraints to consider as the next working mom in the grocery store. Let’s be honest with ourselves here: we have a weekly or biweekly budget for groceries and meal planning and it is rare that we have the extra to go outside of that budget.

Let me direct you to my last post about preserving and canning extra foods for the off-season. You can find that post here: Why Canning Food Doesn’t Work: A Better Way to Preserve for the Working Mom. The way to combat resigning ourselves to unhealthy options is to always be thinking about what’s in season right now (better prices) and how can we save it for later so we aren’t paying higher off-season prices for some of our favorites.

Making The Autumn Harvest Sausage Recipe in 8 Steps

The Process

We already talked about sourcing your ingredients so they are as high-quality as possible or as you can afford to do. To make this sausage recipe for a family of 4-6 people, I usually start with thawing two pounds of organic or all-natural ground breakfast sausage. Fully thawed sausage is much easier to work with when needing to chop it into little pieces.
- My personal favorite is the maple-flavored ground breakfast sausage, as it adds an additional autumn flavor dimension to the dish, but use whatever type of ground breakfast sausage you prefer.
Place the two pounds of breakfast sausage into a large skillet, cast iron preferably, at least a ten to twelve-inch pan to be safe. There needs to be enough room to cook and chop up the sausage as well as to add the apples in later for cooking. Place the skillet on a medium heat, and start the sausage cooking, gradually breaking it and chopping it into smaller pieces. The end result should be that most of the pieces are an inch wide or smaller.
- Note: breakfast sausage is pork. Pork absolutely has to be cooked to at least 165 degrees with no pink left in the meat anywhere to be considered “done” and safe to eat. I don’t condone eating half-cooked meat, especially pork, to anyone.
When the sausage is halfway done, start preparing your apples. The amount of apples in the recipe is entirely up to personal opinion, but my family likes a lot of apples in theirs so I usually peel and slice up 4-6 large apples or 6-8 medium apples.
- Note: Take the time to peel, core and thinly slice the apples as it produces a better finished skillet.

All About The Apples

After the apples are peeled, cored and sliced and the breakfast sausage is completely done cooking, drain any extra grease out of the pan (save it in the fridge for later if you like). Put all the sliced apples into the pan with the sausage. At this point, you’ll want to have a lid of some sort for the skillet as this will help the apples cook a little faster. After you add the apples, give everything a quick stir, put the lid on and let it cook for 5-10 minutes.
Let’s talk seasonings. What is an apple dish without some fantastic fall seasonings? For this skillet, I usually keep my seasonings simple because there’s a fair bit of seasoning in the breakfast sausage that already complements apples. I use three simple seasonings: sucanat (sugar), cinnamon and allspice. The sugar or sucanat sweetens the dish a little more and helps any water cooked out of the apples to caramelize into a fantastic syrup. Cinnamon and allspice are great “warm” seasonings that pair fabulously with apples.

Continuing the Sausage Recipe…

Check the “done-ness” of your apples after the 5-10 minutes have elapsed. They should be starting to soften. At this point, it’s the perfect time to add the sugar, cinnamon and allspice because the apples are soft and will absorb the flavors better. Add the spices, stir so all are well-combined and put the lid back on to cook another 5-10 minutes or until the apples are done to your liking.
- My husband and kiddos like the apples on the verge of being applesauce, so I usually cook the apples on the longer side, making them extra soft.
Taste, taste, taste: you’re not an efficient home cook if you don’t taste the food before it goes onto the table. Add in anything needed, i.e. pinch of salt, extra sugar or spices.
This dish is best served along side of fresh buttermilk pancakes or fluffy Belgian waffles, but it’s hearty enough to be a main breakfast dish as well. You’ll just have to increase the amount you make. Serve onto the table piping hot and enjoy the flavors of fall.