Is there anything better than a fluffy stack of blueberry pancakes straight off the griddle, just dripping with melted butter and fresh maple syrup? We could argue that the best part of breakfast isn’t the syrup on the pancakes, but the pool of maple syrup that floods the breakfast sausage links. The combination of the savory spiciness of the sausage with the sweetness of the maple is a totally out-of-this-world combination. Call us crazy if you must, but sausage that’s been soaking in maple syrup is always the best part of breakfast.
Our Favorite Maple DIY Recipes
We began experimenting with adding maple to different recipes years ago. We had a ton of success – which, of course, means we made a ton of food and shared it with everyone that we knew. The result was some of our favorite DIY kits you can use at home to make fresh and delicious meals your family will love.
Bearded Butcher Maple Breakfast Sausage Kit
Well, this is the one that got it all started. Our famous maple breakfast sausages combine the sweetness of maple syrup and brown sugar with a unique blend of spices that draw out the flavors of your meat. The combination works best for pork sausage, but we love it with lean meat like venison, too.
Our DIY kit makes it almost too easy to get professional results at home. Simply mix ground meat with the included seasonings, feed the mixture into a sausage stuffer using the included fresh collagen breakfast sausage casings, and twist them off to store. Don’t have a sausage stuffer? Press the meat into patties and fry them up in a hot skillet. It might just be our imagination, but the 10” dual-handle Lockhart skillet seems to make these taste even better.
Bearded Butcher Maple Bacon Kit
Few things smell better than fresh bacon frying on a griddle, but when you add the Bearded Butchers Maple and Cinnamon Swirl seasoning to the mix, you get the most tantalizing bacon ever. Seriously, make sure your neighbors have left for work before you fry this stuff up or you’ll have a houseful in no time. Or, grab a Blackstone griddle and cook up enough for everyone.
The maple bacon DIY kit includes all the ingredients you need to season 25 lbs of meat. That’s a lot of bacon! Our secret to getting perfect bacon uses a meat grinder to process pork butt which is then pressed into a pan and smoked. Not only does this process cut down on the time it takes to make bacon, there is a lot less that can go wrong.
Maple Bourbon Bratwurst DIY Bundle
Our first experiments with using maple to make breakfast sausages got us thinking about other ways the unique flavor might be useful. Ohio happens to be close enough to bratwurst country in the US that we get quite a bit of demand for the stuff. Our customers are always looking for something unique and different, so we decided to take a stab at using maple sugar with our traditionally-inspired bratwurst recipe. Adding bourbon powder to the mix gave the meat a deep flavor that enhanced the sausage tremendously. We thought it was pretty good, so we shared it with our friends. Next thing you know, we were making kits trying to keep up with demand.
This maple bourbon bratwurst recipe is perfect on its own but versatile enough that it can give great results no matter what type of meat you use. Pork and chicken are both awesome and showcase the sweetness and richness of the maple bourbon flavors, but we particularly like this one with venison for something uniquely different.
Maple Bourbon Apple Bratwurst
This recipe was a happy accident when we decided to toss in dried tart apple chunks to our regular maple bourbon bratwurst recipe. Our maple bourbon apple bratwurst kit is unbeatable!
There is something about the tartness of the apples that amplifies the complexity of the bourbon powder and maple sugar.
Combining these three ingredients with our custom spice blend produces a flavorful sausage that is unlike anything you will find at the next summer barbecue, even if you are in Wisconsin.
The kit has all the stuff from our maple bourbon bratwurst kit and includes enough dried apple pieces to make 25 lbs of sausage. This one is also delightful with elk and is delicious simmered with thin-sliced onions.
Maple Bourbon Peach Bratwurst
Pork and apples are a popular combination in the northern parts of the country, but we wanted to see what would happen if we added a little southern flavor to our classic maple bourbon bratwurst recipe. We got a sausage that has the nuances of a traditional German-style brat with the delicate sweetness of Georgia peaches added to it. Talk about a mouthwatering combination! This kit flies off the shelves, even up here in Ohio.
Beef isn’t a traditional primary meat for making bratwurst, but old-school recipes (like 1498 old school) often add a small percentage to pork for flavor and consistency. Making a brat with about 15 percent beef and adding our maple bourbon peach seasoning to it will give you one of the most unique flavor combinations you’ll ever find in a brat. The kit includes all of the non-meat ingredients you need to make 25 lbs of sausage.
What Else Can I Do with Maple Seasoning?
Our Bearded Butcher Maple Seasoning is available individually on our site, so you can also experiment with your own recipe creations. While this blog has been all about our DIY sausage kits, one of our favorite ways to use maple seasoning is as a dry rub on beef ribs we plan to smoke. The smoker perfectly caramelizes the maple sugar and gives the ribs a mesmerizing sweet and smoky bark while leaving the meat succulent and juicy.
One of our favorite customers clued us in on using the seasoning to flavor sweet potato fries, so obviously, we had to try that. The complexities of the maple flavor with the already sugary sweet potatoes make for a side dish that competes with dessert. Oh, and we also made up a sweet potato casserole using our Cinnamon Swirl seasoning and maple seasoning. When we went back for seconds there was none left, so that should tell you it was pretty good.
Let Us Know What You're Cooking Up
Have you got a story about a way you used our maple seasoning to get creative? We want to hear about it. Drop us a line sometime and tell us what you’re cooking, we might even give it a try ourselves.
Our DIY sausage kits are perfect for beginners and make great gifts. Even seasoned pros will love the convenience and completeness of our DIY kits. They are a great way to try out new flavors, experiment with creative ideas, or to make delicious, all-natural, gluten-free meals for family and friends no matter what season it is.
The Bearded Butchers are dedicated to providing as much information as we possibly can to help you understand how to best process and prepare meats of all kinds. To help you, we maintain a blog and Youtube channel with lots of free, high-quality information. The Bearded Butchers and Beardedbutchers.com are also a participant in affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to products we love. This means that The Bearded Butchers may receive a commission if you click on a link above and make a purchase using one of our codes.
