This probably has an obvious answer I'm missing. To make a long story short, my mother helped us out with an event several months back involving having to serve breakfast to a large number of people including breakfast sausage, a mix of links and patties. Afterwards, as is her habit, she packaged up the leftovers in a plastic bag and handed them over to us. We set them in the chest freezer and frankly forgot about them for some time. We now have about 3-4 lbs of precooked sausage in a single frozen lump. I've tried breaking them off and cooking then in my cast-iron skillet in the mornings, but the patties break apart more than break off of the main mass, and when the patties are just about to turn into hockey pucks, the links are still frozen on the inside.
I'm a bit hesitant to thaw the mass because we'd just be refreezing it again, and my understanding is that it's a bad idea to repeatedly thaw and freeze meat. Is there a better way to handle this that doesn't involve us trying to eat a few pounds of processed meat at once or risk wasting it?
Best Answer
One option: reheat slowly in the microwave and until it is barely unfrozen enough to break apart. Then break it down into meal-sized portions, take the part you want for now and wrap the remaining bits in cellophane so they don't freeze together again. (My advice as a self-judged microwave expert is to heat it up at low power in 3 minute increments at first, then 2 minute increments. Fairly early, you will find that some parts thaw faster than others. Once this temperature difference becomes apparent, you can wait like 5 minutes in between bouts of heating it up to allow the heat to even out over the lump.)
Given that the freezing and thawing will probably not do anything good for the texture, you might consider breaking the sausage up and adding it to something like sawmill gravy or strata (or just scrambled eggs) where you won't be eating it in large chunks.