Help me fill the processed meat “hole” in my breakfasts？

October 2, 2018 7:25 AM

I gave up processed meats a long time ago because of the supposed cancer risks and am looking for healthy meaty protein substitutes.

I gave up sausages, ham and bacon etc. quite a while ago. I've been trying to fill the gap with eggs and baked beans but am looking for more substantial easy meaty (can be vegetarian) savory proteins for lazy weekend brunches.

I do not eat processed soy or gluten products. Am considering tempeh and/or some kind of canned fish. Candidates must be easy to prepare and cook because I want to be relaxed on weekend mornings so no gutting fresh fish or grilling kippers etc. I am on a low budget so fancy nitrate-free gourmet processed meats are not possible. Is smoked salmon as bad as ham etc.?

What could fill this gap? Thanks in advance.

posted by whitelotus to Food & Drink (31 answers total)

Best answer: Grilled, fried or baked halloumi cheese fulfils this role in my breakfasts.
posted by mymbleth at 7:33 AM on October 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

I'd consider pickled herring on buttered bread a delightful brunch food, but I realize I'm probably in the minority on this...
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:37 AM on October 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

Do you consider regular tofu to be processed? If not, try baked, marinated tofu.

Eggplant bacon has always seemed promising to me, but I haven't tried it.
posted by blnkfrnk at 7:45 AM on October 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Not a great choice if you're watching carbs/calories, but to me, roasted potatoes with breakfast/brunch easily make up for lack of bacon/sausage. EDIT: Not a protein, so maybe not what you're looking for, sorry.
posted by skewed at 7:45 AM on October 2, 2018

You can make your own lox (I have a recipe on my recipe blog, me mail me if you're interested), but fresh salmon is probably as expensive as fancy nitrate-free ham so it still might not work for your budget.

On a related note, if you buy salmon fillets with skin on (not necessarily for making lox, but for making dinner), you can fry the salmon skin like bacon and it will get all crispy and sooo delicious! Just season with salt first. You can probably ask the fish guy at the store to slice off the skin for you, but it's fairly easy to do at home.

If you cant find halloumi, look for queso para freir in the cheese section of the store, it's cheese for frying that is eaten in Hispanic cultures.. but also check the ingredients there, there might not be nitrates but other preservatives.

What about fried green plantains? They're crispy, salty, and satisfying. I never tried the frozen ones but perhaps they're good if quickly warmed up in a toaster oven or made in an air fryer.
posted by never.was.and.never.will.be. at 7:55 AM on October 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Smoked mackerel doesn't need much prep and can be eaten cold.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:57 AM on October 2, 2018 [6 favorites]

Best answer: How about DIY sausage patties? Just get a pound of ground pork at the supermarket, add in some various spices, shape into patties and cook. Here's one such recipe from Martha Stewart.

If you're a single eater (like me) I suspect this would also be easy enough to pre-make the patties and then freeze them individually, either cooked or uncooked, so that you can only heat/cook up and eat what you need.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:57 AM on October 2, 2018 [18 favorites]

You can slice and marinate tempeh with spices and liquid smoke for tempeh "bacon", there are recipes online, I find liquid smoke and/or smoked paprika is key for the taste, slice it all up and have it in a tupperware, fry a few slices, delicious on sandwiches.

I think sausage with potatos and eggs would do the trick too.
posted by lafemma at 7:59 AM on October 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Before I went vegan, I used to mash canned sardines with mustard and green onions and put that on toast for breakfast.

When I went vegan, I switched to steel-cut oatmeal with blueberries and ground flaxseed. It took me a while to adjust to the less "substantial" breakfast, but I eventually did, and it's plenty of food for me now.

If your library has the book Vegan Brunch, that might give you some ideas too (not saying you should be vegan - but she has some things that might work for you - you can always use dairy milk instead of the nondairy).
posted by FencingGal at 8:06 AM on October 2, 2018

I often do this with chicken, which I'm bulk-cooking for other meal prep anyway. I prefer boneless skinless thighs, grilled or roasted, as they reheat better than breast. I also bulk-cook ground beef or beef and turkey, usually neutrally seasoned so they can be flavored up to my moods later, but you can certainly go for "sausage flavor" and even make patties if you want. I just got done eating a scramble with some ground meat that I took straight from the freezer (freeze flat in one- or two-person portions for best results), it was already seasoned with salt-onion-garlic-cumin and I just hit it with some ancho powder as it heated in the pan, then poured the eggs in.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:11 AM on October 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

I think about what it was the I'm replacing filled in the meal. Processed meat was fat and salt, for me, so a sliced avocado with salt sprinkled on top helped fill that gap. Also, hashbrowns or breakfast potatoes with hot sauce is A+.
posted by jillithd at 8:18 AM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Seconding DIY sausage, which can be made without nitrates. I've used this Bon Appetit recipe for breakfast sausage, which takes about two minutes to mix up and a couple minutes to cook.
posted by mishafletch at 8:20 AM on October 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

If you don't want to make your own, fresh turkey sausage from a decent market or butcher is (and correct me if I'm wrong) just flavored ground turkey.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:21 AM on October 2, 2018

Adding some detail on the two DIY sausage patty recipes - the Bon Appetit recipe uses fresh spices and Martha uses dried; but the Bon Appetit recipe has instructions for how to make-ahead-and-freeze-and-reheat. However, both are exactly the same kind of "mix stuff into ground pork, make patties out of it and cook", so you could probably synthesize both into whatever works best for ya ("I'm not going to use fresh herbs, but I like the sizes that the Bon Appetit recipe has and it doesn't call for the raw egg so I'm going to just use Martha's spice ingredient list instead").
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:37 AM on October 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

Eggplant bacon has always seemed promising to me, but I haven't tried it.

I had carrot bacon in a restaurant and it was startling how good it was. It tasted like very crispy bacon to me (it was part of a sandwich on a bagel with tomato and onion). I share this because I would have dismissed the idea as crazy before I tried it. I don't have a recipe to recommend, but there are many online.
posted by FencingGal at 8:46 AM on October 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Steak. Traditional truckers breakfast where I'm from steak with an egg on & fried tomatoes. Doesn't have to be a big one. Could be chopped up. Also you could simply get ground pork & add the traditional sausage seasonings for breakfast sausage without the processing, do a big batch, make patties & freeze them.
posted by wwax at 9:08 AM on October 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

Seconding home-made sausage. There are lots of recipes, and you can make and cook a bunch of patties and freeze them, then nuke them when you want one. (If you have a fancy mixer and want to invest in a meat grinder, it gets way cheaper per-sausage because you can buy things like pork butt and grind them, but it is an investment of both time and money.)
posted by restless_nomad at 9:10 AM on October 2, 2018

Breakfast sausage, as sold in the US, at least in the south, is normally a fresh product, no nitrates or smoking. It's just fresh ground pork plus spices, no more processed than hamburger meat. You can buy it in pre-made patties or even little links, but I think the bulk breakfast sausage sold in a chub (plastic-wrapped cylinder) is better. In Texas, the HEB breakfast sausage sold by HEB grocery stores is particularly good. Other brands contain more fat, so they shrink more during cooking. Also look for reduced-fat breakfast sausage, which you may prefer; it provides more protein per pound purchased (though maybe the same per sausage patty, once you've cooked it).
posted by chromium at 9:23 AM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

- Breakfast burgers - top homemade beef patty with fried egg, avocado, tomato, lettuce, mayo.
- Hash - put leftover meats from dinner with potatoes, sautéed or roasted veg, and fried egg (pulled pork is a great leftover for hash)
- Omelet - you can use chicken as protein in this with spinach, asparagus, mushroom, cheese in some combination
- Huevos rancheros - this is eggs on tortilla with sauce and served with black bean
- Benedict - a cost effective sub for the lox or crab bases would be a salmon patty made from tinned salmon
- Quiche - this is fine as a vegetarian dish, cheese adds protein. Again you can make a variation with chicken and spinach
posted by crazycanuck at 10:20 AM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

I do the DIY sausage thing too. I buy a 1lb chub and cut it into fourths and freeze them. When they thaw, I just pinch it in half and squish the two halves between my palms and throw it on a pan.
posted by rhizome at 12:43 PM on October 2, 2018

I buy sausage free of nitrates and nitrites - don't know if that addresses the health risk completely, but my understanding was that those were the biggest problem (?).
posted by salvia at 1:27 PM on October 2, 2018

Best answer: +1 on homemade sausage. I've made Alton Brown's breakfast sausage recipe before. It's simple and tastes great. I bought my antique grinder for $2 from a church sale, but its equivalent new, is not more than $20. While being technically processed, this is not processed food.

I'm a fan of smoked fish (trout, salmon, sardines), but there is a correlation between smoked foods and colorectal cancer, so beware. If you can deal with sardines at all, try the not smoked varieties. They're nutrient dense and since they are low on the food chain, you don't need to worry so much about bioconcentrated things like you would for consuming larger species of fish.

Also do keep in mind that it's the dosage that makes the poison, so watch the quantities and go ahead and treat yourself to bacon once in a while.
posted by plinth at 1:32 PM on October 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

Heads up that some tempeh (esp commercial ones) can be highly processed as well, so always check the ingredients!

Oats and lentils are healthy protein that are filling and lend themselves well to savoury dishes.
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 7:04 PM on October 2, 2018

I am surprised nobody has mentioned eggs or egg whites. You can buy cartons of just the whites and quickly make a full breakfast. Lots of variation is possible adding peppers, mushrooms, and cheese make this choice varied and fun.
posted by metasunday at 7:37 PM on October 2, 2018

Grilled pork tenderloin. Sear 5 minutes over direct heat on a hot charcoal grill, then rotate 1/3 and sear another 5 minutes, then rotate again and sear 5 more minutes. Once you have gone all the way around the tenderloin on direct heat and everything is attractively seared, remove to indirect heat for a few more minutes until they reach your desired temp.

They're delicious, relatively lean, and incredibly versatile. Much better than any lunch meat you'll find in an average grocery store and usable in all kinds of impromptu preparations.
posted by Nerd of the North at 10:32 PM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Nthing making your own sausage. The recipe is so simple just grind up some pork butt and mix in a small amount of rusk (gf bread for you since you are sans gluten). Add in a bit of simple table salt and some spices (sage is traditional along with some black pepper but go wild I like adding in some mace and nutmeg) and then fry it up. I like to add an egg (raw) to a batch to help it combine, but it really isn't necessary. If you don't have a mincer (just get a cast iron one they aren't that expensive and are pretty good at what they do) then you can just buy pre ground pork and mix everything with your hands. Freeze with bits of wax paper between the patties and you've got quite healthy sausage for wayyyy less than buying processed sausage from the store. When you've got the mincer it will also come with a sausage filler attachment so if you want, you can buy some sausage skins and stuff your own sausage links allowing yourself to make proper cumberland sausage or any other proper English banger and you can have a good fry-up nitrate free (assuming you leave out the bacon).
posted by koolkat at 2:55 AM on October 3, 2018

Best answer: Redirect point - for those of you suggesting grinding your own pork, whitelotus asked for easy recipes, and there are several people who neither own a meat grinder, nor would consider the grinding of one's own meat to be "easy".

To whitelotus: if you want to grind your own pork for sausage, go nuts, but ground pork fortunately also exists in supermarkets. (And is usually way cheaper than ground beef, to boot.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:44 AM on October 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Cambozola on rye toast.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:59 AM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Cold sliced roast beef, pork or chicken. Can be reheated in a frying pan. Can be frozen if you don't get around to it or else used up in sandwiches, salads, stir fries etc. Requires some organization ahead of time.

Works well with different pickles.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:56 PM on October 3, 2018

Response by poster: blnkfrnk: the eggplant bacon does sound interesting...

FencingGal: I will check out Vegan Brunch. Thanks.

I do not own a meat grinder and am definitely not up to grinding meat or making my own sausages but pork and beef mince is available from the market. I'm just not sure if I'm up to making my own patties so for now, it's marinated tempeh (I'll try the eggplant bacon seasoning on it), various cheeses, beans and canned fish.

I managed to find some "healthy" nitrate-free deli products at the supermarket but they aren't cheap. It seems that you either get to save money or save time but not both...
posted by whitelotus at 2:13 AM on October 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

A little tip from my meal-prepping: season your mince with seasonings of choice. Line a (preferably the deepest one you've got) baking sheet with foil. Mash the meat into the baking sheet with a spatula or your hands, basically making a jelly roll sponge but of sausagey mince. Bake at an average temperature (I do 350F, but if I have something else already in the oven that cooks at 375 or 400, that's fine too) until cooked through (depending on the nature of your meat, you may want to take the sheet out halfway through and pour off some liquid). Cool enough to handle, cut into squares or patties. I sometimes do 3-4 sheets of it at a time, and I'll move them around between top and bottom shelves of the oven at the halfway point.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:48 PM on October 4, 2018