Skillet Polenta with Sausage and Apple
Quick polenta, dried apple, and shelf-stable sausage in one pan. A hot breakfast that does not need a cooler.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 113
- protein
- 19 g
- serves
- 3, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 15 min
- total time
- 20 min
- water
- 700 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Breakfast
- Canister stove
- Campfire coals
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Backpacking
- Winter / snow
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Quick-cooking polenta | 1 cup | instant, not the 45-minute kind |
|---|---|---|
| Water | 3 cups | |
| Salt | 1 tsp | |
| Hard summer sausage or shelf-stable breakfast sausage | 6 oz | diced small |
| Dried apple slices | 1 cup | chopped into strips |
| Maple syrup | 2 tbsp | or 2 tbsp maple sugar to save weight |
| Ghee or olive oil | 1 tbsp | stands in for butter, no cooler needed |
| Ground cinnamon | 1/2 tsp |
Method
- Heat the ghee in the pan and brown the diced sausage over moderate heat. Two or three minutes, until the edges crisp.
- Add the dried apple and cinnamon. Splash in about 50 ml of water and stir until the apple plumps and goes soft, another two minutes. Scrape it to one side of the pan or tip it into a mug.
- Pour in 650 ml of water with the salt and bring it to a boil.
- Rain the polenta in slowly while stirring. Keep the heat low and stir often for five minutes, scraping the bottom, until it thickens.
- Fold the sausage and apple back in, pour the syrup over, and serve straight away.
The original version of this is a cooler recipe: fresh sausage, a fresh apple, butter. None of that travels well past day one, so all three got replaced. Hard summer sausage browns nearly as well as raw sausage and needs no refrigeration. Dried apple rehydrates in the pan and holds its shape better than fresh, which tends to collapse into juice. Ghee stands in for butter and keeps for weeks.
Cooking the sausage and apple first is the point of the one-pan order. The fat and browned bits stay in the pan and end up in the polenta. Add the polenta slowly and keep stirring, because it thickens fast and will catch on the bottom the moment you walk away. If it stiffens past the point of eating, a splash of hot water loosens it.
Packing
Polenta, salt, and cinnamon go in one labeled bag with the water amount written on it. Sausage and dried apple ride together. Syrup in a small leakproof bottle, or carry maple sugar in with the dry mix and skip the bottle.
Variations
- Powdered milk stirred into the dry polenta makes it richer without a cooler.
- Swap the sausage for a foil packet of chicken if you want it leaner.
- Dried cranberries in place of apple, same handling.
https://camprecipes.com/skillet-breakfast-polenta-with-maple-sausage-and-apples