Changing Fresh Venison sausage to "smoked"

[Bearcarver]

A few weeks ago I asked if anyone had ever taken "fresh" Venison sausage, and dry cured it and smoked it. It seemed a little dumb to most, but I'm not set up to take it apart & mix cure in it, and re-stuff it. Anyway, I decided to try it & let you all know how it worked. The fresh stuff was very bland & boring, and the only deer meat left from the 3 deer that were put in that freezer last year. Below are my results so far. I will be smoking this tomorrow along with 8.7 LBs of pork loin for CB. I am posting the CB smoke on the "Bacon" category.

Here is one of the Venison "fresh" sausage rings:

After 4 days of dry cure (TQ)----test for salt:

All bland Venison Fresh Sausage, before curing & smoking:

All Cured & Smoked:

Sliced:

Closer Look & ready for bagging & packing:

 

[mballi3011]

Man that sausage sure looks good there Bear. You said that the first stuff was bland and you decided to cure it so how did it taste after the cure. I hope really good for all the work that you had to do. Question thou do you carve anything else than bears if so I would like to see some of your stuff. I like stuff.

 

[tasunkawitko]

looking good so far, bear.

 

[Bearcarver]

LOL-----ALL BEARS, since the first thing I ever made (cobra) when I was just getting used to the chainsaws. The first thing I did was a cobra coming out of a basket (all one piece). It's not great, but it was my first attempt.
I haven't done anything since I found I had heart problems (need a new Aortic valve), and I have a pretty big thoracic anneurysm. It was all caused at birth, but never found until I was 59 years old. I get a cat-scan every November to see if the anneurysm has grown, and an echocardiogram every June to see if my Bicuspid aortic valve has shrunk any more.
All of that crap was from birth. The only thing I did to myself is the severe Emphysema (I used to smoke a lot of cigarettes, instead of meat). My breathing isn't great, which is very tuff to chainsaw very long at one time. I may try again sometime, but I'd have to feel a lot better than I do now.

Smoking meat seems to be a little easier physically.

Every now & then I'll change my "Avatar" to a different bear pic---stay tuned.

Thanks for askin',
BC

 

[Bearcarver]

Hmmm, below is the link to my new Canadian Bacon post with Qview. For some reason it hasn't made it to the "New Post" page, like this one did.
I'm smoking both together, but I didn't know where to put that, so I split them into two posts---"Sausages"---and---"Smoking Bacon".


http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/for...ad.php?t=83518




mballi: It tastes pretty good, but I expect even better after smoking tomorrow.

 

[scpatterson]

Thats some good looking sausage.......

 

[Bearcarver]

Thanks guys,
Now that we know you really can take frozen fresh sausage, thaw it out, throw a dry cure on it & cure it for a measured number of days, and smoke it, turning it into smoked sausage, I can assure you the rest of those bland tasting fresh deer sausages will be getting the same treatment.

It's not hard to do, or much effort----"Pricking" wasn't needed.
It's no different than turning pork loin into CB.


One question: Am I right in assuming it's ok to freeze this finished product, even though it was frozen before I did this to it. I figure the pork loins we turn into Canadian Bacon were frozen before they got the same treatment. Then we freeze that again.

 

[Dutch]

Yep, go ahead and freeze it. Use your vac-sealer and it will keep longer.

Cooking or in this case smoking meats changes the cell structure by removing moisture. It's the thaw and re-freezing that creates ice crystals in the cells that breaks down the cells and give the meat a "mushy" texture.

 

[Bearcarver]

Thanks Dutch,
Will do today.

Qview probably won't be until tomorrow.

BC

 

[pineywoods]

I have taken sausage out and hot smoked it without curing then just warmed it up when ready to serve but I haven't cured already made fresh sausage. Interesting idea

 

[Bearcarver]

Here's the final product:
As you can see, the color shows the cure worked fine, both with and without pricking the casings. I can also tell you right now that the taste is even better than it looks. Even the skin (casing) is no longer like chewing on a rubber band. I no longer even notice the casing is there.
The rest of that Venison Fresh Sausage from our local butcher will be removed from the freezer & will be dry cured & smoked exactly like this little batch was. It was really very easy to do, as I did the same thing I do in making Canadian Bacon, except I did no additional seasoning of this smoked sausage.

You really can turn bland fresh venison sausage into Great Smoked Sausage !


After Blooming:

Slicing:

Ready to eat (cold or hot):

Bearcarver

 

[Bearcarver]

I think I got this posted on the original thread too late, after it got buried, so here is the final product again:

Thanks again guys (and gals),
BC

 

[scpatterson]

Man..It looks like you really brought it around...looks great

 

[Bearcarver]

NOTICE!!!​

This was an old one, and all of the pictures were gone.
I fixed them the last time we had a platform change, but something made them go away again.
There was a similar question lately about curing sausage already made, so I brought this one back to life. I found the pictures in an old thumb drive, and drug them out & put them in this old thread. So here it is:

What I did here was take some Venison mixed with pork & beef, that had been made into some very bland Fresh Sausage. Then I cured the pieces exactly the way I always do Bacon, in Ziplock bags, without injecting.
Some I pricked the skins & some I didn't, but it didn't matter---It wasn't needed. They all came out Awesome!!!
My test was a success!!!

So go back to the start on this thread, and find something out that you may not even believe, but it worked great, and it was Outstanding!!

Bear