Lean Wild Protein, Big Breakfast Flavour
Elk is remarkably lean, which makes it a superb breakfast protein but means it needs a little help in the pan. Seasoning it as a classic breakfast sausage with sage, thyme and a whisper of maple, then cooking it in beef tallow, keeps it tender and gives you that unmistakable morning-sausage aroma. Mushrooms and capsicum round it out into a full skillet breakfast.
Ingredients
Serves 4 | Cost: $8.50 per serving | Total: $34.00 | Ready in 25 min
- 450 g (1 lb) ground elk
- 1½ teaspoons dried sage
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- ½ teaspoon fennel seeds, lightly crushed
- 2 tablespoons beef tallow
- 200 g (7 oz) cremini mushrooms, sliced
- 1 green capsicum, diced
- 4 large eggs
- Fresh chives, finely sliced
- Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Season the elk. Mix the ground elk with the sage, thyme, crushed fennel seeds, a generous teaspoon of salt and plenty of black pepper. Work it briefly with your hands and let it rest for 5 minutes so the seasoning takes hold.
- Brown the sausage. Melt 1 tablespoon of the tallow in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the elk in rough clumps and cook for 5 minutes, turning occasionally, until browned but only just cooked through. Lift out onto a plate.
- Cook the vegetables. Add the remaining tallow to the same pan. Cook the mushrooms undisturbed for 3 minutes to colour, then add the capsicum and cook for a further 4 minutes until both are tender and any liquid has evaporated.
- Bring it together. Return the elk to the pan and stir through the vegetables. Make four wells and crack an egg into each. Cover and cook over low heat for 4–5 minutes until the whites are set.
- Serve. Season the eggs with salt and black pepper, scatter over the chives, and serve straight from the skillet.
Nutritional & Dietary Notes
Gluten-Free
Every ingredient in this recipe is naturally free from wheat, barley and rye. If you are cooking for someone with coeliac disease, double-check any stock, sauce or spice blend you buy in, as gluten-containing thickeners and malt derivatives are common hidden additions in commercial products.
Keto
Carbohydrates are kept deliberately low here. The bulk of the energy in this dish comes from quality protein and natural fats, so it slots neatly into a ketogenic day without pushing you out of ketosis. If you are tracking closely, weigh any starchy vegetables and adjust the portion to suit your own daily carbohydrate target.
Paleo
This recipe sticks to whole, unprocessed ingredients: quality meat, vegetables, herbs, natural fats and spices. There are no grains, legumes, refined sugars or industrial seed oils, so it fits cleanly within a paleo framework.
Featured HOTRO.ca Product
This recipe is built around Ground Elk from HOTRO.ca. We source premium BC-raised and ethically farmed meats and slow-simmered bone broth, so the quality of the core ingredient does most of the work for you. Substituting a lesser product will change the result more than any other single change you could make to this recipe.
Lean ground elk seasoned as breakfast sausage and crisped with peppers, mushrooms and eggs.