Jimmy Dean makes a whole universe of breakfast sandwiches, as well as several creative spins on traditional breakfast foods (like their pancake-coated sausage on a stick). But did you know they also dabble in basi breakfast meats? We certainly didn’t — not until we stumbled upon the Jimmy Dean All Natural Original Pork Sausage Links in the breakfast section of our local grocery store.
The box includes instructions for both the microwave and stovetop, but really, the only real true way to cook a breakfast sausage is in a skillet! If you heat these directly from frozen, the stovetop process shouldn’t take more than ten minutes or so. If you’d like to read the full cooking instructions, check out our package scans at the bottom of this review. However, we should point out that we modified these instructions a bit — we find that adding a little bit of water to the skillet will prevent these from getting overly dried out during the cooking process.
Overall, these are some decent-quality sausage links. They have a nice texture and they’re not too rubbery (which is a problem with a lot of varieties of frozen breakfast sausage — turkey sausage is often the worst offender). They have a nice snap when you bite into them, and they taste pretty good. However, they’re a bit less spicy than a lot of other breakfast sausages. If you like your links with some spice to them, these probably won’t be what you’re looking for.
Breakfast sausages are more of a side dish than an entree, so the box’s recommendation of three links seems appropriate. Those three links will run you 280 calories (240 from fat) and 440 mg of sodium. That wouldn’t be terrible for a breakfast burrito, but those calories are a little high for something that works much better with a stack of pancakes than on its own.
The Jimmy Dean All Natural Original Pork Sausage Links are pretty good, though they lack the spiciness of a lot of their competitors. If you’re looking for a basic breakfast sausage, these will more than do the trick. But if you’re craving a sausage on the spicier end, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere. Even the 365 Everyday Value pork sausages, which you can find at Whole Foods, beat these ones in a spiciness contest (though the Jimmy Dean links are the better tasting option of the two overall).
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these breakfast sausage links, check out our package scans below.
