Red Lobster Sausage Balls with Cheddar Bay Mix

Cheddar bay sausage balls are what happens when somebody looks at a box of Red Lobster biscuit mix and decides the biscuits were never the point. Four ingredients go into one bowl, get rolled into balls, and come out of the oven twenty-five minutes later craggy, cheesy and salty enough that a tray of thirty-six disappears before the game starts.

The classic version of this appetizer has been made with a plain baking mix for sixty years. Swapping in the Cheddar Bay box does two jobs at once: the garlic and herb seasoning is already in the packet, and the mix carries its own dried cheese, so the whole thing tastes seasoned rather than merely salty. That is the entire innovation, and it is a good one.

What Are Red Lobster Sausage Balls?

Sausage balls are a Southern potluck standard: raw breakfast sausage, grated cheese and a dry baking mix, worked together and baked. No binder, no egg, no browning the meat first. The fat in the sausage and the cheese does the work that butter would do in a biscuit.

Red Lobster sausage balls take that formula and replace the plain baking mix with the boxed Cheddar Bay biscuit mix sold for making the Red Lobster copycat biscuits at home. The box contains the dry mix and a small packet of garlic and herb seasoning, and both go into the bowl.

Red Lobster sausage balls come out denser than a biscuit and looser than a meatball. The outside goes deep golden and slightly crisp where the cheese has caramelized against the pan, and the inside stays soft. They are eaten with fingers, standing up, usually near a bowl of ranch.

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Ingredient Notes

• Cheddar Bay biscuit mix. One box, and tip the seasoning packet in with the dry mix rather than saving it for a butter topping. There is no butter topping here. If you cannot find the box, there is a workaround in the variations below.
• Ground pork sausage. One pound, raw and bulk rather than in casings. Hot or mild, whichever you like. The seasoning in the sausage is doing half the flavoring, so a bland supermarket roll will give you a bland tray.
• Sharp cheddar. Two cups, grated from a block. Bagged cheese is coated in starch to stop it clumping, and that starch soaks up moisture the mixture needs. Grating a block takes four minutes and the difference is obvious.
• Cream cheese. Four ounces, softened. This is the ingredient the original recipe does not have and it is the reason these stay tender for hours instead of turning into dry pebbles by the time the guests arrive.

Four Ingredients and Nothing Else

It is worth being clear about what is not in Red Lobster sausage balls, because plenty of versions online add things that the shoot for this post never used. There is no egg, no milk, no butter, and nothing from a spice tin. The box seasoning is the seasoning.

You also do not need a leavening agent. The biscuit mix already contains baking powder, which is what gives the finished bites their slightly open, crumbly interior rather than the tight bounce of a meatball.

Skipping the extras matters more than it sounds. Every liquid you add loosens the mixture, and a loose mixture spreads on the tray instead of holding a round shape. If you want them taller and craggier, add nothing and chill the rolled balls for ten minutes before they bake.

Choosing the Sausage

The pork is doing more work here than the name of the recipe suggests. A pound of bulk breakfast sausage brings its own sage, black pepper and salt, and those flavors carry through the bake far more strongly than anything in the biscuit mix does. A cheap roll with very little seasoning gives you bites that taste mostly of flour.

Look for a sausage with visible flecks of herb and pepper through the meat, and check the fat content if the label gives it. Something around 70 to 80 percent lean is right. Very lean sausage leaves the mixture crumbly and refuses to bind, and very fatty sausage floods the pan and leaves the bottoms greasy.

Hot Italian sausage is a good swap if you want to go somewhere else entirely, though it pushes the whole tray toward fennel and chili rather than the Southern breakfast flavor these are supposed to have. Whatever you buy, use it raw. Red Lobster sausage balls depend on the meat cooking inside the mixture, and pre-browned sausage will not hold on to the flour at all.

How To Make Red Lobster Sausage Balls

First, heat the oven and line a sheet pan. 350 degrees, parchment on the pan. Parchment is not optional here, because the cheese that leaks out will weld itself to bare metal.

Next, put everything in one bowl. The dry mix, the seasoning packet, the raw sausage, the grated cheddar and the softened cream cheese, all at once. No creaming, no order of operations.

Then mix until it just holds. A stand mixer with the paddle takes about a minute on low. By hand it takes three or four minutes and your hands will be a mess. Stop the moment the mixture clumps together when you squeeze it, because overmixing develops the flour and the bites turn tough.

Why the Cream Cheese Matters

A standard sausage ball has one source of moisture: the fat that renders out of the pork. In the oven, that fat leaves, and what is left behind is dry flour and browned meat. Cream cheese stays where you put it. It does not render out the way pork fat does, so it holds the crumb open and keeps the middle soft even on the second day.

After that, roll and space them. Scoop generous tablespoons and roll each one into a ball a little over an inch across. You should get about thirty-six. Set them on the pan with an inch of space around each, because they need dry heat on all sides to brown.

Finally, bake for twenty to twenty-five minutes. They are done when the tops are deep golden and the pools of cheese at the base have gone lacy and brown. Let them sit for five minutes before you move them; straight out of the oven they are fragile.

How To Tell When Red Lobster Sausage Balls Are Done

Color is the first tell. The tops should be a proper golden brown, not blond, and the edges where cheese has run out should be crisp and darker. Underbaked ones look pale and feel soft when you press them.

The reliable test is temperature. These contain raw pork, and the National Pork Board puts the safe cooking temperature for ground pork at 160 degrees. An instant-read thermometer pushed into the center of the largest ball settles the question in three seconds.

If they are golden but the thermometer reads low, they were rolled too large. Give them another three minutes and roll smaller next time.

Make It Ahead

The mixture can be made a day ahead and kept covered in the fridge. It firms up considerably when cold, which makes it easier to roll, so this is genuinely the easier way to do it rather than a compromise.

Rolled and unbaked, they will sit on a covered tray in the fridge for a full day. Take them out while the oven heats and bake as written, adding two minutes if they are still cold.

Baked ahead is the least good option but it still works. Bake them in the morning, leave them at room temperature, and warm them for eight minutes at 325 degrees before serving. They lose a little of their crisp edge and nobody has ever complained.

Storing Red Lobster Sausage Balls

Baked and cooled, Red Lobster sausage balls keep in an airtight container in the fridge for four days. Let them come back to room temperature or reheat them, because cold cheese and cold pork fat make for a heavy bite.

Reheat in the oven rather than the microwave. Eight to ten minutes at 325 degrees brings back the crisp exterior, where a microwave steams them soft. An air fryer at 350 for four minutes does the same job faster.

Left out at a party, they are safe for two hours. That has never been the limiting factor in my experience.

Freezing and Reheating

Red Lobster sausage balls freeze best raw. Roll the balls, freeze them on a tray until solid, then bag them for up to two months. Bake straight from frozen at 350 degrees and add four to five minutes, and check the temperature rather than the clock.

Baked ones freeze too. Cool them completely, bag them, and reheat from frozen at 325 degrees for fifteen minutes. The texture is slightly drier than fresh, which is the trade for having a tray of appetizers on standby.

Variations and Substitutions

No Cheddar Bay mix. Use two and a quarter cups of a plain biscuit baking mix, one extra cup of grated cheddar and a teaspoon of garlic powder. It is not identical but it is close, and it is what people made before the box existed.

Hot sausage. Swap the mild pork for hot, or add a quarter teaspoon of cayenne. The mix itself is savory rather than spicy, so there is room.

Pepper jack. Replace half the cheddar with grated pepper jack for a milder, creamier heat that runs through the whole bite instead of hitting at the end.

Jalapeno. Two tablespoons of finely diced pickled jalapeno, drained well. Fresh works too and is sharper.

Turkey sausage. It works, though it is much leaner, so add an extra ounce of cream cheese to compensate for the fat you lose.

Mini muffin tin. Press the mixture into a greased mini muffin tin instead of rolling. You get flatter, crisper edges all round and you skip the rolling entirely.

What to Serve with Red Lobster Sausage Balls

A dip, first of all. Ranch is the default and it is the right one, and a bowl of homemade Wingstop ranch next to the tray does more for these than any garnish would. Honey mustard, spicy brown mustard and a warm cheese dip all work.

On a party table they sit well beside other things you eat with your fingers. A cranberry pecan cheese ball gives people something cold and sweet to balance the salt, and a second tray of pancake sausage balls covers anyone who wanted breakfast instead.

They also make a genuinely good breakfast with eggs, or a lunchbox item, or the thing you eat standing at the counter at eleven at night. Nobody is judging.

Red Lobster Sausage Balls FAQ

More Questions About Party Appetizers

Red Lobster sausage balls belong to the category of party food that costs almost nothing, takes almost no time and always empties first. If that is the kind of tray you are building, Bisquick sausage balls are the version this one grew out of, and they are worth knowing too.