Homemade juicy sausage balls make for the perfect meal accompaniment with pasta, rice, or even noodles. They are incredibly simple to prepare and are often among the only foods that a picky toddler likes! So sausage balls are often the go-to meal item for busy households.
What concerns most people however is whether it is possible to keep sausage balls prepared ahead of time. In today’s age, keeping your dinner prepped and ready to go so that you only need to reheat it after coming home from a long workday can save you a lot of time and energy. So will meal prepping work for sausage balls? Let’s find out.
Refrigerating sausage balls
If you are buying premade sausage balls from the store, you will generally find detailed instructions regarding the storing options on the package. Usually, it is safe to refrigerate sausage balls in an airtight container for 2 – 4 days.
In the case of homemade sausage balls, it is always advised to first let your sausage balls cool down to room temperature before transferring them to a refrigerator. Once cooled properly, put them in an airtight container and you can safely store them in your refrigerator for a maximum of one week. It’s important not to cross the one-week mark!
Reheating sausage balls
The best part about storing sausage balls is that you can reheat them without any loss of taste or juiciness. You can reheat the sausage balls in a microwave, oven, or air fryer. The important thing to remember while reheating is that you need to let your sausage balls thaw if they are frozen, and even in the case of simple refrigeration, you should let the sausage balls warm up a bit before reheating.
For microwave reheating all you need to do is dampen a paper towel/napkin and wrap it around the sausage balls. Then reheat for around 5 – 10 seconds. You will get sausage balls that taste fresh and juicy just like when you made it the first time! It is important to note that you should only heat a few sausage balls at a time in order to get equal heat distribution.
If you are using an air fryer, the recommended temperature to heat is 375 ° F. You should place the sausage balls carefully on the tray, maintaining a little space between each ball, and heat for 4 mins on one side, and about 2 – 3 mins on the other.
Heating in an oven is the most popular method in most households. Preheat your oven to 400°F for a few minutes and then place the sausage balls within the oven, arranged neatly on a baking tray. Heat for 10 mins. Voila, you can now feast on hot and fresh delicious sausage balls!
Freezing sausage balls
Many people are confused about whether you can store the sausage balls in the freezer. You absolutely can! You can store both cooked and uncooked sausage balls in the freezer. However, it is better to store uncooked, raw sausage balls in the freezer rather than cooked ones.
If you are freezing uncooked sausage balls, you can keep them in the freezer for six months safely. They will retain the taste and the flavor and not cause you any health hazards. However, it is not recommended to keep cooked sausage balls in the freezer for a long time. This is because cooked goods in the freezer have a tendency to become dry and leathery. You will be left with chewy and tasteless sausage balls even after reheating.
Thawing frozen sausage balls
Thawing is a very important step before reheating or cooking frozen sausage balls. Before reheating (in case of cooked) or cooking (in case of uncooked), you must allow your sausage balls to completely thaw out. There are two ways to do this. You can either place the frozen sausage balls in the refrigerator for a few hours and bring the temperature down or you can directly put it on the counter and allow it to thaw at room temperature.
For safety, please only thaw the number of sausage balls that you are planning to reheat/cook right now. It is not advisable to freeze thawed sausage balls once again.
In a nutshell
Sausage balls or any other food for that matter always taste the best when we have them fresh and hot. However, due to many reasons sometimes it may be practical to make small batches of the item and keep them stored to eat throughout the week. If you have ever wondered how to store sausage balls accurately, we hope this article will be helpful for you. Using our methods and tips you can safely store your delicious sausage balls in the freezer or refrigerator and reheat/cook them when necessary.
I am Anand, and I am a business owner and consultant in my day job. I have spent years studying what’s inside the products we buy. ‘Feedrer’ is a wordplay on you-know-who and talks about all things food.