A few weeks ago I saw a post in another forum about making some Sausage Balls.
Now I for one just love sausage balls. However I'm on a low carb diet and working on loosing weight after some other health problems cropped up. Fortunately I do not have "fat" restrictions and no issues with cholesterol so my doctor did green light me for low carb meat fest 2018. But, this is about my experiment, not my "issues"....
So after seeing that other post, I got to thinking "that looks like it would be easy to modify to a low carb version". The flour is basically the only thing that is needing to be changed. There are several alternatives on low carb diets, and some work better than others (and some taste better). I recently ordered a couple of boxes of CarbQuik from Amazon and have used it for several recipes already. This was a logical choice to substitute for the flour in Disco's recipe. I also substituted ground Jalapeno for the cayenne as I like the flavor and wanted no so much heat. So onward with the experiment I went.
The original version was based on 300g of sausage meat (about 10.5 ounces) and listed both the metric and "American" weights/volumes. I had a pound of sausage I bought just for this so I had to modify the recipe. Here is the 1 pound version:
- 1 pound of ground bulk breakfast sausage
- 257ml of CarbQuik (I used a cup)
- 2ml of salt (I used 1/2 tsp)
- .8ml of pepper (I used 8 grinds on my grinder or about 1/4 tsp)
- .8ml of ground jalapeno pepper (a little over 1/4 tsp - added a smidge extra)
- 6ml of baking powder (I used 1 1/4 tsp)
- 151g of extra sharp cheddar cheese (weighed it as is, and shredded from block)
- 114ml of fine chopped onion (I used 1/2 cup)
- 76ml of milk (I was out, used a little over 1/4 cup of half/half instead)
- 8ml of lemon juice (I used 1 1/2 tsp).
- Mix the CarbQuik, salt, pepper, jalapeno and baking powder.
- Make a well in the dry powder and add the milk and lemon juice.
- Cut or combine until the "cornmeal" texture stage.
- Add the sausage, cheese and onion
- I hand mixed well.
- Line a pan with foil for easy cleanup
- Roll into walnut sized "balls" and place on foil
- Bake at 400* for 22 minutes
Doing the math on the carbohydrates for the entire batch (as measured above):
Sausage - 0 grams
CarbQuik - 6 grams (2 grams per 1/3 cup)
salt - 0 grams
pepper - 0 grams
jalapeno - 0 grams
baking powder - 0 grams
cheese - 0 grams
onion - 6 grams (1/2 of a medium yellow onion at 12g per whole onion)
milk - 0 grams
lemon juice - 0 grams
-------------------------------------
Total for entire batch = 12 grams of carbohydrate
I got 23 balls out of my batch. So a batch should make roughly 24 balls, or 0.5 grams of carbohydrate per ball.
Here is the rolled balls ready for the oven. Looks like sausage balls to me!
The finished balls. Smell like sausage balls. Look like sausage balls. And most important, they taste like sausage balls. They did fat out some when cooking. Not sure how much was from the sausage and how much was from the extra sharp cheese as both will do it. Not 100% like Bisquik based sausage balls, but it's like 98.9% the flavor to my taste. The jalapeno adds just a little heat on the back end but not enough that someone might complain they are hot.
Overall it's a great recipe and a keeper.
