What Is Beyond Breakfast Sausage?
Beyond Meat spent years chasing the burger and the brat before it turned its attention to the breakfast table. Beyond Breakfast Sausage is the company's plant-based answer to the links and patties that show up next to scrambled eggs and pancakes at diners and drive-thrus across the country. It's sold frozen, comes in link and patty formats, and is built around pea and rice protein rather than the soy base Beyond Meat has historically leaned on for some of its other products.
The pitch is simple: a sausage that cooks in about five minutes from frozen, browns in a pan the way pork sausage does, and doesn't force you to choose between a plant-based breakfast and one that actually tastes like a breakfast. Beyond Meat markets it as containing no cholesterol and less saturated fat and sodium than the average of leading pork sausage brands — claims worth checking against the actual label, which we do below.
It's positioned as a mainstream grocery product, not a specialty health-food item, and it's turned up in the frozen cases at Kroger, Sprouts Farmers Market, Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, and most major regional chains. If you're trying to figure out whether it's actually vegan, how it stacks up nutritionally against the pork sausage it's replacing, and whether it's worth the extra cost, here's what we found.
Ingredients
Per the current label, Beyond Breakfast Sausage (Classic) lists:
Water, Pea Protein, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Natural Flavors, Inactivated Yeast, Rice Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract (Niacin, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Folic Acid, Vitamin B12), Apple Extract, Salt, Pomegranate Extract, Vinegar, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Sunflower Lecithin, Beet Juice Extract (for color), Carrot.
A few things stand out. Pea and rice protein do the structural work instead of soy, which is why the product carries a soy-free claim — useful if you're avoiding soy but still eating plant-based. Coconut oil supplies most of the saturated fat you'll see on the nutrition panel, and canola oil (expeller-pressed rather than chemically extracted) provides the rest of the fat. Beet juice and carrot handle the reddish-pink color you'd otherwise get from cured pork, and apple and pomegranate extracts appear to be doing double duty as mild preservatives and flavor rounding rather than anything you'd taste directly. Methylcellulose is the binder — the same plant-derived thickener used in most modern meat alternatives to hold everything together as it cooks.
Nothing on this list is unusual for the category, and nothing requires an ingredient-by-ingredient investigation the way a product with vague "natural flavors" sourcing sometimes does. If you want to double-check any packaged food against a running list of animal-derived additives, the spvegan.com ingredient checker is built for exactly that.
Is Beyond Breakfast Sausage Vegan?
Yes. Beyond Breakfast Sausage is vegan. Every ingredient on the label is plant-derived — there's no egg, dairy, honey, gelatin, or animal-derived flavoring hiding in the "natural flavors" line, which is a legitimate concern with some processed sausage substitutes. Beyond Meat also confirms the product contains no cholesterol, which tracks with an entirely plant-based formulation, and the company lists it as kosher and halal certified, both of which require third-party verification that rules out animal-derived cross-contamination in those specific certifications.
This is worth flagging because not every "veggie sausage" on the shelf next to it is actually vegan. MorningStar Farms' Original Veggie Sausage Links, for example, are labeled vegetarian rather than vegan and contain egg whites and sodium caseinate (a dairy protein) — easy to grab by mistake if you're moving fast in the frozen aisle and assuming "veggie" means "vegan." Beyond Breakfast Sausage doesn't have that problem, but it's a good reminder to check the label on any plant-adjacent sausage rather than trusting the front-of-package branding.
Nutrition Facts: Beyond Breakfast Sausage vs. the Alternatives
Here's how the Classic links compare to a standard pork breakfast sausage, a competing plant-based sausage, and the vegetarian-but-not-vegan option most likely to sit next to it in the freezer case. Serving sizes differ by brand because that's how each company packages and labels its product, so we've noted the actual serving weight for each rather than force-fitting them to a single number.
| Product | Serving | Calories | Total Fat | Sat. Fat | Sodium | Protein | Vegan? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beyond Breakfast Sausage (Classic) | 2 links (59g) | 100 | 5g | 0.5g | 240mg | 9g | Yes |
| Jimmy Dean Original Pork Sausage Links | 3 links (68g) | 270 | 26g | 9g | 490mg | 8g | No |
| Impossible Sausage Links (Spicy) | 1 link (95g) | 240 | 16g | 7g | 570mg | 14g | Yes |
| MorningStar Farms Veggie Sausage Links | 2 links | 70 | 3.5g | n/a | 330mg | 8g | No (egg whites) |
The saturated fat number is the one worth sitting with. At 0.5g per serving, Beyond's Classic links land dramatically lower than both the pork original and the Impossible link, mostly because Impossible's formula leans harder on coconut oil for a fattier, more pork-like mouthfeel. If saturated fat is your main concern, Beyond comes out ahead of every plant-based competitor we compared it to, not just the pork version. If you're optimizing for protein per serving instead, Impossible's link wins clearly — 14g in one link versus 9g in two Beyond links is a meaningful gap for anyone eating this as a protein source rather than a flavor add-on.
Taste and Texture
Cooked from frozen in a nonstick pan, the links brown reasonably well and pick up some color and a bit of char on the exterior, similar to what you'd get pan-frying real pork links rather than microwaving them. The texture is springier and slightly more uniform than pork sausage — there's none of the fat pockets or grain you get from ground meat, which is either a non-issue or a giveaway depending on how closely you're paying attention. It doesn't have the greasy pan residue that pork sausage leaves behind, which is a byproduct of that much lower fat content rather than a trick.
Flavor-wise, it leans into a fairly standard "breakfast sausage" seasoning profile — sage-adjacent, a little peppery, mildly sweet — rather than trying to replicate a specific brand's spice blend. It reads as sausage-flavored and sausage-shaped without being a dead ringer for any particular pork product, which is roughly what you'd expect from a formula built around pea and rice protein instead of animal fat and connective tissue. Next to eggs, on a biscuit, or chopped into a breakfast hash, it does the job it's designed to do. Eaten on its own with nothing else on the plate, the difference between this and pork sausage is more noticeable — texture in particular gives it away faster than flavor does.
Beyond Breakfast Sausage vs. the Competition
| Beyond Breakfast Sausage | Impossible Sausage Links | MorningStar Farms Veggie Links | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vegan | Yes | Yes | No (egg whites) |
| Soy-free | Yes | No | No |
| Saturated fat per serving | Lowest of the three | Highest of the three | Not disclosed |
| Protein per serving | Moderate | Highest | Moderate |
| Best for | Lower-sat-fat, soy-free diets | Higher protein, meatier bite | Not applicable — not vegan |
Who Should Buy Beyond Breakfast Sausage?
It's a solid pick if you're specifically trying to cut saturated fat without giving up the breakfast-sausage format entirely, or if you need something soy-free in a category where soy protein is common. It also works well as a straightforward drop-in for anyone cooking breakfast for a mixed household — vegan and non-vegan eaters alike tend to accept it without much complaint, especially folded into a burrito or biscuit sandwich where texture matters less.
It's a weaker fit if you're eating this specifically to hit a protein number — Impossible's link delivers noticeably more protein per serving, even if it costs you saturated fat and sodium to get there. And if minimally processed food is the priority over any specific macro, no sausage alternative on this list, Beyond included, is going to satisfy that bar; this is squarely a convenience product, not a whole-foods one.
Where to Buy and What It Costs
Beyond Breakfast Sausage is a mainstream grocery item at this point rather than a specialty find. Beyond Meat's own retail rollout puts it on shelves at Kroger and its regional banners, Sprouts Farmers Market, Whole Foods Market, Walmart, Target, and most major supermarket chains, typically in the freezer case near other plant-based breakfast items rather than with fresh meat. Pricing follows the pattern of most Beyond Meat products — a modest premium over a comparable pork sausage package, though exactly how much varies by region, retailer, and whatever promotion happens to be running that week. If price is a deciding factor, it's worth checking your specific store's shelf tag rather than assuming a number, since Beyond Meat pricing has moved around more than most packaged goods over the past couple of years.
The product ships frozen and is meant to be cooked from frozen rather than thawed first — Beyond Meat's instructions call for a nonstick pan over medium heat, turning occasionally, for roughly five to seven minutes until browned and heated through. It also microwaves and air-fries reasonably well if you're optimizing for speed over browning. Like most plant-based frozen foods, it's best cooked fresh rather than reheated a second time; the texture gets noticeably softer and less sausage-like after a round trip through the fridge.
Final Verdict
Beyond Breakfast Sausage does what it says on the box: it's a genuinely vegan, soy-free, low-saturated-fat sausage that cooks fast and tastes like breakfast sausage rather than like a compromise. It's not going to fool anyone who eats pork sausage every week, and it's not the highest-protein option in its category, but as an easy swap for a Sunday breakfast plate or a make-ahead breakfast sandwich, it holds up.
Rating: 7.8/10 — Reliable, clearly labeled, nutritionally sound where it matters most (saturated fat and cholesterol), and let down only by a texture that's a little too smooth compared to the real thing and a protein count that trails the competition.
