Breakfast Sausage Seasoning Recipe, Scaled to Your Meat Weight

By , Ready Utilities

Fresh sausage makers commonly salt at about 1.5% of the meat and fat weight and stay under 2%, and this calculator turns that into teaspoons for the salt you have.

Common batch sizes

Tap a batch size to load it into the calculator, and the exact amounts appear below.

Sausage salt and seasoning calculator

Weigh lean meat and fat together before seasoning.

Unit

1.5% is the common default. Use the number field to type an exact value.

Grind changes how much salt fits in a spoon. Amounts match by weight.

Salt for your sausage

Safety: this calculator covers fresh sausage only. Cook it thoroughly and check the ground meat line on the USDA FSIS safe minimum internal temperature chart. Cured and smoked sausages use curing salts and aren't covered here.

Salt is measured by weight, so any salt on the list gives the same saltiness once you use the amount shown for it. America's Test Kitchen makes the same point in its recipe: because the salt is weighed, table salt and kosher salt both work.

Salt level is a preference within a safe range for fresh sausage. Fry a small test patty and adjust the next batch.

On this page

Why sausage makers weigh salt

A spoon holds very different amounts of salt depending on the brand and grind. USDA puts a teaspoon of table salt at 6 grams, while the brands' own nutrition labels put Morton kosher salt at 4.8 grams per teaspoon and Diamond Crystal at 2.8. America's Test Kitchen describes the same gap in spoons: 1 teaspoon of table salt equals 1 1/2 teaspoons of Morton or 2 teaspoons of Diamond Crystal. Sausage recipes that give salt as a percentage of the meat avoid the problem entirely: the grams stay the same, and only the spoon measure changes.

Worked example: 2 lb of meat and fat at 1.5% needs 13.6 g of salt

SaltAmount
Table salt2 1/4 tsp
Diamond Crystal kosher salt1 tbsp + 1 3/4 tsp
Morton kosher salt2 7/8 tsp
Fine sea salt (Morton Fine Sea Salt)2 3/8 tsp
Celtic Sea Salt Fine Ground2 5/8 tsp
Celtic Kosher sea salt2 1/4 tsp
Light Grey Celtic Sea Salt (coarse, moist)2 1/4 tsp
Redmond Real Salt, fine2 3/8 tsp
Redmond Real Salt, kosher2 3/8 tsp
Pink Himalayan salt, fine (The Spice Lab)1 tbsp

Choosing a salt

Grind and moisture change how much salt fits in a spoon. Unrefined salts such as Redmond Real Salt and Celtic Sea Salt weigh differently from table salt, and by the labels used here, Celtic Kosher sea salt packs about twice as much salt into a teaspoon as Diamond Crystal kosher salt. Pick the salt you actually have, and the calculator remembers it across the site.

Label weights come from nutrition facts serving sizes rounded to a tenth of a gram, so treat them as close rather than exact, and check your package if it lists a different serving weight.

How this was checked

Cedrick Reese built this calculator for Ready Utilities. The 1.5% default and the 2% ceiling come from The Curesmith's fresh sausage calculator, with Miss Vickie's 1.5 to 2% range and America's Test Kitchen's 1.5% salt rule as further references. Spice amounts are adapted from America's Test Kitchen's Breakfast Sausage Patties. Salt weights come from USDA FoodData Central for table salt and from each brand's own nutrition label for the rest, including Diamond Crystal and Morton kosher salt, Morton Fine Sea Salt, Celtic Sea Salt (Fine Ground, Kosher, and Light Grey), Redmond Real Salt (fine and kosher), and The Spice Lab pink Himalayan salt.

Frequently asked questions

Why measure salt by weight?

Salts have different grain sizes, so a teaspoon of one weighs more than a teaspoon of another. USDA puts table salt at 6 grams per teaspoon, and the brand labels put Morton kosher salt at 4.8 grams and Diamond Crystal at 2.8 grams. Weighing keeps the saltiness the same whichever salt you use.

What's the difference between Diamond Crystal and Morton kosher salt?

How much fits in a spoon. By their own nutrition labels, a teaspoon of Morton kosher salt weighs 4.8 grams and a teaspoon of Diamond Crystal weighs 2.8 grams, so you need nearly twice as much Diamond Crystal by volume for the same amount of salt. America's Test Kitchen puts the same difference in spoons: 1 teaspoon of table salt equals 1 1/2 teaspoons of Morton or 2 teaspoons of Diamond Crystal.

What gives breakfast sausage that unique flavor?

In America's Test Kitchen's Breakfast Sausage Patties, the seasoning is packed light brown sugar, rubbed sage, pepper, and a small amount of cayenne.

Can I use this for cured sausage?

No. This calculator covers fresh sausage only. Cured and smoked sausages use curing salts, which aren't covered here.