Venison Sausage – 3 Ways

Steve’s brother is an avid deer hunter. Each fall he travels from BC to hunt with friends in Alberta and  we are lucky enough to get a little portion of his deer meat in exchange for doggy babysitting. While obviously the best spoils go to the hunter, we did get a nice bag of very lean trim again this year to make some venison sausage with.

It took Alberta Fish and Wildlife forever to come back with a clean bill of health for this beast and it has been taking up an unruly amount of room in my freezer. So when the test finally came back clean I was happy to get a chance to turn the shapeless lump of frozen meat into something more tasty, and also better behaved on the shelf.

Normally we make a simple but tried and true recipe that my sister in law uses to do up her deer sausage. However, being the recipe explorer that I am I was snooping around for some new ideas when I came across the fabulous website of Hank Shaw (Hunter, Angler, Gardener and Cook – I love this moniker). Mr. Shaw is all of these things and he has some fabulous game recipes as well as lots of ideas for cooking with foraged food. His section on charcuterie is really nice and it is from here that we chose two new recipes to try this year.

I thought we had 10 lbs of meat and so planned on making two batches of sausage, but once we got cutting and weighing it turned out we had 12 lbs. With each recipe requiring 4lbs of venison it meant we could also do a small, slightly modified, batch of the family tried and true.

Sausage making is fairly easy with the right equipment but be warned it is somewhat time consuming.   We began at about 8 am and by the time I had the links drying in the fridge it was 1 pm, though this was a fair quantity and also three recipes. One batch would likely take about 3 hours or so I’d guess.

Because we only make sausage once a year purchasing a grinder and a sausage stuffer seems like overkill but a few years ago we did invest in these two attachments for my trusty KitchenAid stand mixer. Let me tell you, this is one piece of equipment that has paid for itself over and over. I wouldn’t be without it.

Like so many things in the kitchen that seem kind of intimidating, making fresh sausages (as opposed to cured ones) is really pretty simple. Grind meat and fat together, add seasonings, stuff into natural casings.

One of the nice things about doing it at home is that if you are not smoking your sausages you can eliminate the nitrites that are so prevalent in store-bought links. 

From Mr Shaw’s site we chose a Merguez Sausage flavoured with North African harissa and paprika, and a simple Juniper Berry and Sage recipe. The final batch was done up with the recipe from my sister-in-law that I use and have offered here. All of them turned out great!

Simple Venison Sausage

Author: Mia Staysko

A simple, garlicky sausage link.

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Ingredients

• 5 lb lean venison trim or stew beef
• 1 lb pork fat highest quality
• 3 Tbsp Kosher salt
• 3 Tbsp Ground pepper
• 1 Tbsp whole mustard seed
• Scant 1 C boiling water
• 1/2 head of garlic rough chopped
• 3 tsp liquid smoke optional

Instructions

1. Blend garlic, water and liquid smoke, if using, with a hand blender. Put into fridge while you chill and grind your meat
2. Place the meat and pork fat into freezer for 1 or 2 hours to make it very cold and a bit firmer
3. Cut meat and fat into about 1" cubes and return to freezer while you gather and mix your spices together
4. Add salt, pepper and mustard seed to meat with your very clean hands, thoroughly but quickly so as not to warm the meat too much
5. Run seasoned meat and fat through grinder using a coarse grinder plate. Distribute the fat evenly if possible when putting ingredients into the grinder hopper
6. Run the mixture through the grinder again with the finer grinder plate (about a #8)
7. With your very clean hands, ground meat with water and now cold garlic mixture until evenly distributed. Again, you'll want to be quick so as not to let the meat get too warm.
8. Place meat back in freezer or refrigerator while you set up your stuffer.

Stuffing

1. Place sheep casings in cold water to separate
2. Carefully guide the casings over the sausage stuffer tube, moistening as you go
3. Follow your machine's directions for feeding meat into the hopper and filling your casings
4. When links are desired size, twist several times, changing direction each time
5. Dry links on a rack in the fridge for about an hour before wrapping and freezing. I always use plastic wrap followed by freezer wrap, which allows the sausage to keep for a long time in the freezer.

Recipe Notes

If you would like to cold smoke the sausages in a smoker, you will need to add 3/4 tsp of Morton's Tender Quick to prevent bacterial growth during the smoking time. If smoking, do not add liquid smoke to this recipe.