What Is Beyond Breakfast Sausage?
Beyond Breakfast Sausage is Beyond Meat's answer to the classic diner-style breakfast patty — the round, loosely-packed sausage puck you'd normally find next to scrambled eggs at a hotel buffet or stacked into a fast-food breakfast sandwich. It's sold frozen, comes six or seven patties to a box depending on the size, and is available in Original and Spicy flavors. Unlike Beyond's flagship burger patties or Beyond Sausage links (the bratwurst-style ones in a casing), Beyond Breakfast Sausage is unshaped and un-cased, mimicking the loose "griddle sausage" format popular at breakfast chains.
Beyond Meat built its reputation on pea-protein burgers that bleed with beet juice, so a breakfast sausage was a fairly logical extension — breakfast sausage is one of the easier meats to imitate, since it's ground, heavily seasoned, and doesn't need to hold a steak-like bite. The question is whether Beyond nailed the format as well as it nailed the burger, or whether this is a weaker entry in the lineup. We'll get into that below.
Ingredients
Here's the full ingredient list for Beyond Breakfast Sausage (Original), as printed on the package:
Water, pea protein, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, natural flavors, inactivated yeast, rice protein, methylcellulose, yeast extract, apple extract, salt, pomegranate extract, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, sunflower lecithin, beet juice extract (for color), carrot.
A few things stand out. There's no soy and no gluten-containing ingredients, which puts it in different territory from most of its plant-based competitors (more on that in the nutrition section). The protein base is pea protein plus a smaller amount of rice protein — a combination Beyond leans on across its whole product line, since the two aminos-acid profiles complement each other reasonably well. Methylcellulose (a plant-fiber-derived binder, not an animal product) holds the patty together, and beet juice extract does the pink-tinge-when-raw, browning-when-cooked color trick that mimics ground pork.
If you're checking a product against your own restrictions — soy-free, gluten-free, or otherwise — running the label through the spvegan.com ingredient checker is a faster way to flag anything that might be a problem for you than reading it cold.
Is Beyond Breakfast Sausage Vegan?
Yes. Beyond Breakfast Sausage is 100% vegan. Every ingredient on the list is plant-derived — there's no dairy, no egg, no honey, no gelatin, and no animal-derived flavoring or coloring. Beyond Meat's entire product range is vegan by design (the company doesn't make any animal-based products), so there's no cross-formulation risk the way there sometimes is with brands that make both meat and plant-based lines. The beet juice and pomegranate extract that give it its pink color and tang are both plant-sourced, not the animal-derived cochineal/carmine coloring that shows up in some processed meat substitutes and snack foods.
It's also worth noting Beyond Meat's products carry no shared-equipment warnings with animal meat that we could find on the current packaging, and the company markets the line explicitly as vegan and kosher. If you're vegetarian rather than vegan and specifically looking for something that avoids soy or gluten too, this is one of the cleaner options in the breakfast sausage aisle on that front.
Nutrition Facts: Beyond vs. the Competition
Serving sizes vary by brand and patty size, so we've listed each product as labeled rather than force-normalizing them — check the per-100g math yourself if you want an apples-to-apples comparison, since Impossible's patties in particular run noticeably larger than the others.
| Product | Serving Size | Calories | Total Fat | Sat. Fat | Sodium | Carbs | Protein |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beyond Breakfast Sausage (Original) | 2 cooked patties (58g) | 180 | 12g | 4.5g | 270mg | 6g | 11g |
| Impossible Sausage Patties | 1 patty (95g) | 240 | 16g | 7g | 570mg | 8g | 14g |
| MorningStar Farms Original Sausage Patties | 1 patty (38g) | 70 | 2.5g | 0g | 220mg | 4g | 10g |
| Lightlife Gimme Lean Ground Sausage | 2 oz (56g) | 80 | 3g | 0g | 320mg | 5g | 9g |
A few takeaways. Beyond sits in the middle of the pack on fat and calories — noticeably richer than the wheat-gluten-based MorningStar Farms and Lightlife patties, but leaner than Impossible's soy-based version, which is the heaviest hitter here on both fat and sodium. Beyond's saturated fat (4.5g) comes mostly from coconut oil, which is the tradeoff most pea-protein-based meats make to get a more "marbled" mouthfeel; the wheat-gluten patties (MorningStar, Lightlife) skip that fat almost entirely but also tend to have a springier, less greasy texture as a result. None of the four contain any cholesterol, which is the one category where all plant-based sausages will beat real pork sausage without exception — a standard 2-patty serving of pork breakfast sausage runs somewhere around 35-45mg of cholesterol.
Taste and Texture
This is where opinions on Beyond Breakfast Sausage genuinely split, and we think it's worth being upfront about that rather than pretending there's a consensus. Some reviewers and home cooks describe it as well-balanced — savory, a little sweet, with a coarse, slightly chewy texture that crisps up nicely in a pan and holds together well in a sausage-egg-and-cheese sandwich. Cooked properly (a hot pan, not a soggy microwave reheat), it browns and develops a real crust, which goes a long way toward selling the illusion.
Other reviewers have been considerably harsher, ranking it toward the bottom of breakfast sausage taste tests and describing the texture as rubbery or "puck-like" when overcooked or reheated from frozen without enough direct heat. The complaint that comes up most often isn't that it tastes fake — it's that the seasoning leans hard into salt and umami without much of the sage-and-fennel spice blend that makes traditional breakfast sausage taste like breakfast sausage specifically, rather than just "savory meat." If you're expecting a dead ringer for a diner sausage patty, it may read as one-note; if you're expecting a decent plant-based stand-in that's good in a sandwich, it generally clears that bar.
Our take: cooking method matters more here than with most plant-based meats. Pan-frying on medium-high heat until both sides develop real color gets you a noticeably better result than baking or microwaving, which tends to leave it pale, wet, and closer to the "rubbery puck" complaints. If you've only tried it steamed in an air fryer straight from frozen without flipping, it's worth giving it a second shot in a skillet before writing it off.
Beyond Breakfast Sausage vs. the Alternatives
| Product | Vegan | Base Protein | Soy/Gluten-Free | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beyond Breakfast Sausage | Yes | Pea + rice | Both free of soy and gluten | Soy/gluten allergies, sandwich patties |
| Impossible Sausage Patties | Yes | Soy | Contains soy, gluten-free | Highest protein, richest flavor |
| MorningStar Farms Original Sausage Patties | Yes (reformulated) | Wheat gluten + soy | Contains both | Budget option, lowest calories |
| Lightlife Gimme Lean Ground Sausage | Yes | Soy | Contains soy and wheat | Crumbling into recipes, DIY seasoning |
Worth flagging: MorningStar Farms has reformulated several of its "veggie" lines to be fully vegan in recent years after historically relying on egg whites in some sausage and burger products, so it's worth double-checking the specific package in front of you rather than assuming based on older reviews — the current Original Sausage Patties are labeled vegan, but MorningStar still sells other items (like some of its egg-based breakfast bowls) that are vegetarian only.
Price and Availability
Beyond Breakfast Sausage typically runs somewhere in the $5-6 range for a box of six to seven patties at major grocery chains, putting it roughly on par with — sometimes a bit above — Impossible's version, and noticeably more expensive per patty than wheat-gluten-based options like MorningStar Farms. Pricing varies by region and retailer and tends to move around with sales and store loyalty discounts, so it's worth checking a couple of stores before assuming one price is standard. It's stocked in the freezer aisle (not the refrigerated case, unlike some Beyond products) at chains including Walmart, Target, Kroger, Safeway, Sprouts, and most regional grocery banners, plus delivery through Instacart and similar services.
One point worth flagging for budget-conscious shoppers: because this is a frozen, shelf-stable-in-the-freezer product, it's a reasonable one to stock up on when it goes on sale, unlike fresh plant-based meats that need to be used within a few days of opening.
Storage and Prep Tips
A few practical notes that make a real difference in how this product turns out. First, resist the urge to microwave it — every negative review we found that mentioned a "rubbery" or "wet" texture also mentioned microwaving or steaming rather than pan-frying. A cast iron or nonstick skillet on medium-high heat, uncovered, gives the fat a chance to render out and the surface a chance to actually brown, which is most of the difference between a good and disappointing result. Second, don't overcrowd the pan — cooking too many patties at once traps steam and works against getting a crust. Third, once opened, treat leftover frozen patties like any other frozen food: reseal the box tightly or transfer to a freezer bag to avoid freezer burn, and use within the timeframe printed on the package for best texture.
Who Should Buy Beyond Breakfast Sausage?
Beyond Breakfast Sausage makes the most sense if you want a sandwich-ready patty rather than a crumble, and if soy or gluten is a concern for your household — it's one of the few widely-distributed plant-based breakfast sausages that's free of both. It's also a reasonable pick if you're feeding a mixed household of vegans and omnivores who want something that at least resembles a fast-food breakfast sandwich patty in shape and size.
It's probably not the best pick if you're chasing the leanest possible option (MorningStar and Lightlife both run meaningfully lower in fat and calories), or if you want the single most "meaty" flavor and don't mind soy — Impossible's version generally scores higher on richness in side-by-side taste tests, at the cost of more fat and sodium. And if your priority is a crumble for casseroles, breakfast burritos, or homemade sausage gravy rather than a whole patty, a loose product like Gimme Lean gives you more control over final texture.
Final Verdict
Beyond Breakfast Sausage is a solid, unambiguously vegan option that lands in the middle of the pack nutritionally and gets mixed-but-generally-positive marks on taste when cooked right. It's not the leanest, not the most protein-dense, and not universally loved for seasoning, but its soy-free and gluten-free formula is a real point of difference if that matters to you, and it holds up well in a sandwich when pan-fried properly.
Rating: 7/10 — a reliable, allergen-friendly option that rewards a hot skillet and loses points for inconsistent reviews on seasoning and texture when reheated the wrong way.
