I was fortunate to receive from a friend at church a large amount of venison & elk, some ground, mostly steaks & the like. I thought I'd go ahead and make some summer sausage with the ground. Using Len Poli's 'venison SS' recipe. First the dry ingredients:
Had four pounds of ground venison and four pounds of ground elk. Looked quite lean.
To this lean meat, I added 1.5 pounds of fresh-ground pork fat:
Next came the dry ingredients. I mixed the NFDM & Fermento with water and poured this into the meat mix:
After a good, thorough mixing, this was stuffed into four 2.5" mahogany casings. The leftover from the stuffer I fried up (chef's sample!). It tasted really good! The apple-wood smoke will only improve what I thought was an excellent tasting sausage!
This was my first taste of venison in over 15 or 20 years.
Into the smoker. These will get about 3-4 hours of applewood pellet smoke.
After the smoke, a quick poach and we're about finished... Oops!.....not quite!
Sometime during the 3-hour smoke, I must have had a huge temperature spike because when I opened the door to the smoker I saw this...
Four shriveled chubs hanging above pool of rendered fat!
I attribute the temp spike to my pellets catching fire and raising the internal temp of the smoker to well-past the 'fat out' stage.
I also blame myself for not keeping a diligent eye on the smoke (trying to do 10 other things) and so the results were less than satisfying. Shriveled, grease-filled chubs.....Our great dane got an unexpected treat.
Good news I've plenty more venison to use. So I'll give this another shot in the near future.
Kevin
Had four pounds of ground venison and four pounds of ground elk. Looked quite lean.
To this lean meat, I added 1.5 pounds of fresh-ground pork fat:
Next came the dry ingredients. I mixed the NFDM & Fermento with water and poured this into the meat mix:
After a good, thorough mixing, this was stuffed into four 2.5" mahogany casings. The leftover from the stuffer I fried up (chef's sample!). It tasted really good! The apple-wood smoke will only improve what I thought was an excellent tasting sausage!
This was my first taste of venison in over 15 or 20 years.
Into the smoker. These will get about 3-4 hours of applewood pellet smoke.
After the smoke, a quick poach and we're about finished... Oops!.....not quite!
Sometime during the 3-hour smoke, I must have had a huge temperature spike because when I opened the door to the smoker I saw this...
Four shriveled chubs hanging above pool of rendered fat!
I attribute the temp spike to my pellets catching fire and raising the internal temp of the smoker to well-past the 'fat out' stage.
I also blame myself for not keeping a diligent eye on the smoke (trying to do 10 other things) and so the results were less than satisfying. Shriveled, grease-filled chubs.....Our great dane got an unexpected treat.
Good news I've plenty more venison to use. So I'll give this another shot in the near future.
Kevin
