If you have read my blog for any amount of time you will discover one of my favorite brands to work with as an Allrecipes Allstar Ambassador is Johnsonville Sausage. Johnsonville is AWESOME and i’m not just saying that because they have given me some lovely swag over the last few years or how awesome they are on social media. It is because they have a great product. I am complete sausage buying snob and only buy Johnsonville so I have to say I was excited to work with them again!
I decided to make one of our favorite things with Johnsonville, sausage balls! Yes, I have my own recipe for sausage balls but since becoming gluten free I haven’t made them. Sausage balls typically have some sort of flour or biscuit mix in them and I just hadn’t experimented with making them gluten free yet. There is no better time than the present especially with the holiday’s coming up. After all sausage balls are a perfect appetizer for the holidays.
Some notes about the recipe-
I typically do not buy Bisquick, in fact I have never had a box of regular bisquick in my house so I bought my first box to make this recipe. I wasn’t sure how the gluten free baking mix would work in this recipe but to my delight you could not even tell the difference. While i’m not a Bisquick convert I will say their gluten free version worked very well in this recipe.
The original recipe calls for onions and mushrooms. While i’m not a huge fan of mushrooms, I will eat them. My kids on the other hand will not. Then my oldest has onion radar. I swapped these ingredients out for spinach. I used between 1/2 to 1 cup. Yes, my kids have no issues with spinach they actually love spinach.
A big question when it came to preparing these were to cook or not to cook the sausage beforehand. The recipe calls for cooking the sausage, allowing it to cool and then mixing in the other ingredients and baking again. If you are lazy like me you can just mix the uncooked sausage with the other ingredients and bake. The recipe turns out perfectly.
Lastly, the type of sausage you use does not matter. The mild sausage works just as well as the hot. It is a preference of taste and in my case laziness won again. I could not find ground hot italian sausage so I used mild. I just didn’t feel like uncasing the sausage.
Now try these pop-able bites of yumminess for yourself and let me know how you like them!
- 1 (16 ounce) package Johnsonville® All Natural Hot Ground Italian Sausage
- 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
- 1¼ cups gluten free baking mix
- ½-1 cup chiffonade, fresh baby spinach
- ¼ cup milk
- In a skillet, cook and crumble sausage over medium heat until no longer pink and lightly browned; drain. In a large bowl, combine sausage, cheese, gluten free baking mix, spinach and milk; mix well. 2. Shape mixture into approximately 36 walnut-size balls and place on a lightly greased, shallow baking dish.
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and let rest for 5 minutes before serving.
- Serve with barbeque or chutney sauce.
- Alternative cooking method-
- Sausage can be combined uncooked with other ingredients, formed into balls and baked for 20 minutes if desired.
