A incredibly delicious recipe I made for brunch one weekend was this Rosemary and Cheddar Breakfast Sausage dip.

The original inspiration that I only did minor tweaks came from the Food Should Taste Good website recipe for Brunch that users breakfast sausage, maple syrup, cheddar cheese and fresh rosemary. They got the recipe courtesy of Amanda Paa of heartbeetkitchen.com. My minor change as that I used sage breakfast sausage and removed the use of salt as I’m not a huge fan of too much salt and I also had some leftover sage that I minced and added as well to help highlight the sage in the sausage I used.

I’ve written about Food Should Taste Good chips before based on an event I attended and made a Mexican Street Corn dip with their Blue Corn Chips, and then again with a Caramelized Onion Jam and Goat Cheese with Sweet Potato Chips.

These  are the Food Should Taste Good multigrain tortilla chips that are paired with this dip are gluten free, GMO free, and include healthy ingredients such as brown rice flour, flax, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, quinoa, and stone ground corn as well as rosemary extract, which will echo the bit of rosemary in the dip.

And, it was a great way to use some of the leftover grated cheddar cheese I had grated (I grated 36 ounces of it for the cheddar fondue recipe I posted earlier on Monday!)

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces of breakfast sausage
• 1/4 cup minced onion
• 3 cups freshly grated cheddar cheese (9 ounces)
• 2 1/2 tablespoons corn starch
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 tablespoon of maple syrup
•  bag of Food Should Taste Good Multigrain Chips for serving

Directions:

1. In a medium sized skillet over medium high heat, add the 8 ounces of breakfast sausage. Crumble it as much as you can as you add it to the plain skillet, and as you cook the sausage crumble it some more to break it up and stir.
2. When sausage has just a little pink remaining, add the 1/4 cup of minced onion and continue cooking, until meat is no longer pink and onions are translucent. Drain meat (separate it from the oil that emerged – I save the oil in a container to use for fried rice or something else) and set aside to cool.
   
3. In a bowl, toss together the 3 cups of freshly grated cheddar cheese, 2 1/2 tablespoons of cornstarch, 1 1/2 teaspoons of rosemary, and 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder. If you use pre-grated packaged cheddar cheese it already has cornstarch and other preservatives in it – I recommend grating the cheese fresh!
4. In a medium sized saucepan, combine the 1 1/2 cups of milk and 1 tablespoon of maple syrup. Turn the heat to medium and stir constantly while it warms to steaming but not burning. Once it starts steaming, add your cheese rosemary dry mix and continue stirring as the cheese melts.
   
5. Once the cheese is melted and smooth, add the sausage and stir is to distribute the sausage evenly. Pour into a container and serve with the chips!
   

This dip is so good I can imagine folding a few spoonfuls into an omelette as well. This feeds 6 people and refrigerated well – I just warmed it up before serving again. I served mine in mini-ramekins with the chips. It’s great for if you have guests staying over for a little fancy extra breakfast side, or just to treat yourself on a cold morning – I justified the healthy multi grain chips as making this cheese and mat dip totally balanced.

If it looks sorta fondue-y… you’re right I thought the same thing! Obviously this isn’t vegetarian, which I wanted for my party, but for brunch for myself, sausage and bacon are fair game right?

What’s your favorite breakfast?