The Lazy 2-Ingredient Breakfast You'll Want To Make Over And Over

If your weekday mornings are too hectic to make a full breakfast but that slice of toast or packet of instant oatmeal just isn't keeping you full, you might embrace one of the many unique ways to upgrade ordinary pancake mix: Adding a hit of savory, delicious protein from griddled sausage patties. While you might not have time to make these two foods separately, combining them creates a quick-and-easy meal that you can look forward to making a few times a week.

To ensure everything comes together quickly, you need boxed pancake mix and fully cooked breakfast sausage patties. You can even whip up a batch of pancake batter the night before and pop it in the fridge overnight. That way, all you have to do in the morning is preheat your skillet with some melted butter, dip your sausage patties in the batter, and plop them into the pan. They should start to sizzle immediately, and you know they're ready to flip when the batter stops bubbling around the bottom edge of the sausage patty.

Once finished, you can enjoy your sausage-stuffed pancakes with a drizzle of syrup and a little butter, or go more savory with honey mustard. You can even eat them on the go the same way you would a breakfast sandwich since the pancake batter corrals excess grease from the sausage. Bonus points if you complete your morning meal through amping up your instant oatmeal by swapping out water for black coffee.

Meal prep mavens immediately notice that you can save time and money in the morning by making your own pancake mix and storing it in an airtight container in your pantry until it's needed. Not only does this cost less than most boxed mixes, it also lets you easily customize the ingredients and flavor. For instance, you might use gluten-free flour, infuse the mix with cinnamon, or even add savory seasonings, such as black pepper and garlic powder, if you intend to use it solely for sausage-stuffed pancakes. Homemade mix can still be blended into batter the night before for more convenient mornings.

This same thought process also holds true for the sausage patties. Feel free to mix up your own pork, chicken, or turkey sausage patties (upgraded with fennel seed of course), cook them through, and freeze them to give your wallet a break and experiment with flavors. Savory flavors might be traditional, but sausage also goes very well with sweet flavors. Mixing in some dried blueberries, craisins, or a touch of maple syrup creates tasty flavor combos you can't find in store-bought varieties. Finally, if you find your sausage patties are steaming and getting watery in the pancake batter, it's perfectly okay to sear them a bit first in a pan or air fryer. This evaporates away much of the excess moisture and also gives the sausage that savory brown crust everyone loves.