# Venison Summer Sausage



## dwick (Oct 31, 2011)

The second Elk/Deer season in Colorado did not yield much this year because of work obligations from my son's employer..... unfortunately we had to leave early. We did however harvest one small buck and I decided to put the entire critter into Summer Sausage.... Venison style.

It came out WONDERFUL. Attached are some photos of the casing stuffing process.








The first grind is of course through the course plate. This is just boneless venison. Shortly it will be combined with the course ground pork butts and then the spices will be mixed and allowed to mellow for about 24 hours.







This is the course ground pork sitting next to the seasoning that will be throughly mixed soon.







My new STUFFER. This thing is awesome. Solidly built and saves a lot of wear and tear from my grinder that I usually used to stuff the casings.







The casings are stuffed and ready for the smoker. The casings are a fibrous casing so the meat really soaks up the smoke. I used a mix of apple and cherry with a hand full of hickory thrown in. Any wood might have worked but I have really started to use of lot of this mix. Sometimes I substitute mesquite for the hickory.

The casings are preprinted with "Venison Sausage" logo and a buck head. I get off on this type of thing but I also did some plain clear casings. The cost was the same..... why would anyone order them when you can get these... at least if you are doing venison.

The sausage came out INDESCRIBABLE ! ! ! I have been stuffing sausage since I was 6 years old and had to stand on a box to reach Dad's grinder in his meat shop. I still love messin' with this process.


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## fpnmf (Oct 31, 2011)

Looking good!!

  Craig


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## SmokinAl (Oct 31, 2011)

The sausage looks really good!

Great looking grinder & stuffer too!


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## werdwolf (Oct 31, 2011)

Nice post.  I bet you love that stuffer compared to the grinder for stuffing!


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## ptcruiserguy (Oct 31, 2011)

Very nice lookin Sausage. I have a kit here for Summer sausage just don't want to put it

through the grinder to stuff. Guess I will wait till I get a stuffer.

Mike


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## boykjo (Oct 31, 2011)

looks great..........................
	

	
	
		
		



		
		
	


	





....

Joe


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## ronnies (Nov 14, 2011)

Looks good, I am getting ready to attempt some Jalapeno/cheese summer sausage out of a deer I got.

About how much pork to deer would you suggest using?

I am going to use 1lb of cheese to 10lbs of meat and mix a cup of peppers into that.


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## africanmeat (Nov 14, 2011)

Looks like a great job


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## frosty (Nov 14, 2011)

Wow, looks delicious, and one mighty professional job!


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## dwick (Nov 25, 2011)

Thank you for all the positive posts ! ! In response to the person that asked about the amount of pork. I used pork butt (shoulder), kept it lean and used about 40% shoulder to venison ratio because of the extreme lean quality of the venison. Good Luck.... 

Dave


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## stitan06 (Nov 28, 2011)

can you give a lil info where to get the casing how long to smoke what temp and all that stuff my dad wants me to smoke some for him


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## coffee_junkie (Dec 2, 2011)

stitan06 said:


> can you give a lil info where to get the casing how long to smoke what temp and all that stuff my dad wants me to smoke some for him




I can't account for this posters recipe but I have made summer sausage quite a bit using pre-packaged kits, it is a great way to start out and is very rewarding. The kits I use (still do) are from Hi country snack and foods (lincoln MT) or High mountain (somewhere in WY). It includes everything you need to make 30lbs of sausage includeing casings, cure, and spices, usually around $15 which is a bargain compared to buying all of the spices. I always cut my game 50/50 with pork for summer sausage or cotto salami. You don't need a stuffer for the bigger casings but if you have one it makes it easier. If you plan on suffing with your grinder...forget it, just make little balls and twist the meat into the casing, kinda like tooth paste. Good luck and have fun!


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## BGKYSmoker (Dec 2, 2011)

VERY NICE

I like your grinder. I been kicking around getting a Hobart buffalo chopper/grinder for a couple years but my wife just gives me the look.

Welcome to the SMF Sausage junkie area...lol


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## owlcreeksmoker4 (Dec 2, 2011)

Great lookin sausage


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## rbranstner (Dec 2, 2011)

Sausage looks great. So what are the stats on the smoke? Times, temps, etc.??


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## redheelerdog (Dec 6, 2011)

Really nice Dwick,

I am gearing up to do some my self, looks like yours turned out great!


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## tony111 (Dec 7, 2011)

Very nice job ....and love that old Hobart, My area is full of that old school equipment.  Keep passing on the tradition...again good job!


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## bluebombersfan (Dec 7, 2011)

Great job!!!!!!!!!


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## smokealilsmoke (Dec 8, 2011)

Can you use fresh jalepenos in your sausage or do they need to be of a special kind?


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## schmokin (Dec 8, 2011)

I vac packed then froze jalapenos without any cooking. Take a package out and while still frozen run through grinder with meat. It grinds them pu and mixes in good. Even with all the seeds and low temp cooking they still loose quite a bit of their heat.


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## ronnies (Dec 9, 2011)

I used fresh ones and chopped them in a food processor.  They do loose a lot of heat, I used 3/4 cup for 15lbs but it is not spicy enough for me, next time I am going to go 1 to 1 1/2 cups next time.  Good luck!!


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## smokealilsmoke (Dec 9, 2011)

I just finished stuffing 10lbs of SS and chopped up 1/2lb of fresh jalepeneos which probably yielded somewhere around 1 1/2 cups ground up. We will see if it is enough. I like my SS on the nice and spicy side as well.


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## dwick (Aug 23, 2012)

Ronnie, I use a 40-60 ratio. 40% lean pork butt. I like to use pork butts.... some people use just pork fat but I prefer to spend a little more (actually a lot) and I know it makes a better product.

Good luck

Dwick


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## smokinhusker (Aug 23, 2012)

Good lookin sausage! I've only made some Elk SS and used 40% combination of fatty petite sirloin steaks (more fat than lean) and pork butt.


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## smoker510 (Aug 28, 2012)

Looking good


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## jeazor (Sep 18, 2012)

Hunting bow season is a couple of weeks away for us here in Pa cat wait to take an early deer cuz im out of all the venison goodies!!!

BTW nice job with the sausage.


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## dwick (Sep 18, 2012)

Thank you.... the sausage is amazing. Good luck in the hunt. Hope you hang some venison.

Dave


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## ljumstot9718 (Oct 15, 2012)

What method is used to cook venison summer sausage? Give as much detail as you can please...smoke,bake,time,temp...extra things required...I am tired of paying someone else to do this for us. Thanks.


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## dwick (Oct 16, 2012)

The recipe below is of course for one batch. The whole project will be determined by the amount of wild meat (or domestic in place of wild) one has, then the rest of the mix will be a percentage based on this. If you use beef instead of wild meat the proportions would remain the same ie. 30 pounds of beef shoulder.... then use 20 pounds of lean pork butts. I have much better luck buying my meat.... especially pork items, from Sam's. They are minimally processed and are not pumped full of nitrates like most pork items from other stores. You are going to get some of this stuff in the recipe mix anyway so it is best not to over do it.

3 lbs. wild meat-boneless

2 lbs. pork butt-boneless

1 cup water

1 teaspoon garlic powder

2 teaspoon mustard seed

2 teaspoon black & crushed red pepper. (Mix this to your taste... if you like it hot hit the crushed red pepper heavier etc.)

1.5 teaspoons liquid smoke

4 *tablespoons*  of Morton's Tender Quick (Morton's Tender Quick is available in most WalMarts. I ordered mine from R.G Wood in Denver since I had some meat tubs coming from them anyway.)

I recommend that you run the meat through a course grinder plate one time. I run pork and wild meat separate. Then mix it together. By now you have your spices mixed to the proper proportions and you are ready to mix all products together.  Put on a good quality pair of rubber gloves to keep your hands from getting too cold and completely mix the pork and game together.  Mix this until you think your hands are going to fall off. When this is really well mixed you will need to run it through the grinder again. I use what we called the "sausage plate" for this grind. The sausage plate has bigger holes than the fine plate and allows for much fast grinding with less mushing of the product.Then put the spice mixture in and start mixing again.... and mix that until you think it is time for the second coming. When you are sure that the mixing is complete stick the whole batch in the refrigerator to season the spiced meat. The recipe calls for 1 to 3 days of seasoning. I did mine for 24 hours and called it good. I personally don't think that it needs to be longer. But that is up to you. BUT you do need to give the spices time to WORK.

You will have to "stuff" your casings with the product you just seasoned. I bought a stuffer (and love it) but I have stuffed tons of sausage with the grinder and a stuffing cone on the head. There are a lot of options out there if you don't have one now. I bought the casings on line and just grabbed the first one I came across because we were leaving soon for hunting. They were rather pricy and I think if I search the internet some more I can get the price down. But I was very happy with the casings I bought.

Since I am talking about casings I will go over your choices in case you are unfamiliar with them. First is natural casings. These are sheep or hog intestines. They will come in what they call a hank and be covered with salt. The processor flushes the "stuff" out of them and winds them into this hank I mentioned. You have to re-flush them and soak them to get the salt off, they are a slippery slimy mess. They tend to break easily causing the person that is doing the stuffing to use some very colorful language. These casings are edible but I personally  do not recommend these because the artificial casings make it so much simpler...... but natural add a great flavor to certain sausage.

You next choice of casings is what they call collagen casings. These are edible and are made from grinding up beef hides and forming them into stuffing tubes..... again, not of me.

Then comes one of the man made casings. These are easy to stuff, don't break and are an all around good casing. Make sure you get the casings that permeable.... this allows the smoke to get to the meat and make really good sausage, some casings are solid and do not allow the smoke to get in.

OK..... it is time for the smoking ! ! ! 

I set my smoker to run at 170 degrees. CAUTION..... don't allow you smoker or oven to run over 170 degrees for an extended period of time. The temps will fluctuate and probably go over 170.... you don't have to panic but don't let the temp stay there. If you cook over 170 degrees you will render the fat in the meat. This will alter the taste and could screw up the whole works. When you render the fat it separates into two things...... a liquid and a solid..... and they both suck. BUT the temps are very important because for safeties sake game and pork should reach 160 degrees for at least an hour to kill all the "little buggers". Yeah, yeah...... I know I am a little "over the top" when it comes to food safety but it comes from years of being responsible for what some of the dumbest bastards in the world are doing. Just be glad you did not work for me. I'm a little annal.

I smoke for two hours. I use a mixture of apple wood, cherry wood (about 50-50) and a handful of hickory thrown in for that pungent hickory flavor.

After the 2 hour smoking I recommend finishing in the wife's  oven (on baking pans in case they leak a little) (at least 4-5 hours). This will keep you out of the dog house. 

This is where the duel temp probe thermometer earns it pay. Again set the oven at 170.

My experience on this blew me away..... I had no idea that an oven could be that far off. 

Our oven is reasonably new and is a name brand. I set the temp to 170 and settled in to wait. Two hours later the temp was 145 ! ! ! I though WTF ? ? So I set the temp to 205 and it settled in on 171.... which was great. BUT you can see the problem that I would have had if I had not had my Handy Dandy Thingy.

Our oven was all over the place...... I won't bore you with the tests I did on the oven..... but I will tell you that our oven sucks.  

If you can swing it I HIGHLY RECOMMEND a Maverick.

Now the next thing to keep in mind is the item that has made my smoking and sausage making much more successful and enjoyable. I was struggling with my smoked items and very unhappy with the results I was getting. I did some research on the internet and some of the smoking/BBQ sights and saw a thread that made sense to me. To get consistent results you need to know what your smoker/grill/oven is doing temperature wise. I bought a Maverick Model # ET-732 Duel Probe Thermometer. WHAT A DIFFERENCE IT MADE. While I thought my temp setting on my smoker were reasonably accurate I was blown away to find out how screwed up they were. My smoker is what I would refer to a reasonably middle of the road home smoker. I have a Smokin' Tex smoker and they run about $600 now. Of course, one can spend as much as you want on one but that is as high as I wanted to go. If you decide to get one I have a site that sells them for $50 with free shipping and no tax. 

Oh, I didn't tell you the best part. The Maverick comes with two units...... one is a sending unit and the other a receiver. This allows Old Fat Guys to go to the "Dave Cave" and take a nap. Alarms can be set to rouse you if the temps go over or under your target. It shows both temps at the same time......... IS THAT COOL OR WHAT ! ? ! ?

OK..... the only thing left now is to remember to fill you sink with cold water before you take the finished product (160 degrees) out of the oven. When you take the product out plop them into the cold water. They don't have to be in there long.... just a couple of minutes. This will allow the casing to just drop off the slices when the sausage is sliced.

Eat and Enjoy ! ! ! 

If you have any question let me know. I will read this over to see if I missed anything but feel free to contact me if you have something come up.


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## ljumstot9718 (Oct 16, 2012)

Thank you so much, your reply answered most all of my questions, however I was wondering if I can use those brown papery casings in the meat market, you know, the ones printed venison sausage? I know that may be a dumb question but I don't want to assume that it is ok to use them. These casings are about two foot long and brown/mahogany color, when we would pay to have our sausage made it came in these. Other than that, I think you covered my topic very well. Stuff, smoke and bake...no hotter than 160. My tip is on freezing...we can't eat these fast enough believe it or not so I tried many methods for freezing, some without success as the venison would spoil. Cut the sausage in serve-able sizes, what you would consume in a few days, wrap each in wax paper, then in paper towel and then vacuum seal. This is the only way I can keep the venison from spoiling. Of course, we are only able to keep it around for a few months but I have found it keeps better and thaws just like fresh sausage. Maybe someone has a question about freezing...anyway thanks again for posting a reply. I will keep you posted with our results, my son and hubby are eager to fill the meat locker with venison!


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## dwick (Oct 16, 2012)

The casings I used were just like you mentioned. You have to make sure they are a permeable casing so that the smoke can get through to the meat. As far as freezing goes I wrap my sausage in the hole stick form without cutting. I wrap it in a very good quality poly coated freezer wrap. If you have a large quantity it might be a good idea to double wrap it in this freezer paper. AGAIN, make sure it is a very high quality poly coated freezer wrap..... there is some real garbage out there for freezer paper, you don't want to use the cheap stuff.... it may just ruin your whole batch in a short time. The big thing is to keep it from drying out, the moisture will escape through the casing.


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## countryboy-q (Sep 11, 2014)

Thanks.  Definitely going to give this a try!


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## dwick (Feb 12, 2015)

The recipe below is of course for one batch. The whole project will be determined by the amount of wild meat (or domestic in place of wild) one has, then the rest of the mix will be a percentage based on this. If you use beef instead of wild meat the proportions would remain the same ie. 30 pounds of beef shoulder.... then use 20 pounds of lean pork butts. I have much better luck buying my meat.... especially pork items, from Sam's. They are minimally processed and are not pumped full of nitrates like other pork items. You are going to get some of this stuff in the recipe mix anyway so it is best not to over do it.

3 lbs. wild meat-boneless

2 lbs. pork butt-boneless

1 cup water

1 teaspoon garlic powder

2 teaspoon mustard seed

2 teaspoon black & crushed red pepper. (Mix this to your taste... if you like it hot hit the crushed red pepper heavier etc.)

1.5 teaspoons liquid smoke

4 *tablespoons* of Morton's Tender Quick (Morton's Tender Quick is available in most WalMarts. King Soopers has discontinued it. Since you live out of town... call around first. I ordered mine from R.G Wood in Denver since I had some meat tubs coming from them anyway.)

I recommend that you run the meat through a course grinder plate one time. I run pork and wild meat separate. Then mix it together. By now you have your spices mixed to the proper proportions and you are ready to mix all products together.  Put on a good quality pair of rubber gloves to keep you hands from getting too cold and completely mix the pork and game together.  Mix this until you think your hands are going to fall off. When this is really well mixed you will need to run it through the grinder again. I use what we called the "sausage plate" for this grind. The sausage plate has bigger holes than the fine plate and allows for much fast grinding with less mushing of the product.Then put the spice mixture in and start mixing again.... and mix that until you think it is time for the second coming. When you are sure that the mixing is complete stick the whole batch in the refrigerator to season the spiced meat. The recipe calls for 1 to 3 days of seasoning. I did mine for 24 hours and called it good. I personally don't think that it needs to be longer. But that is up to you. BUT you do need to give the spices time to WORK.

You will have to "stuff" your casings with the product you just seasoned. I bought a stuffer (and love it) but I have stuffed tons of sausage with the grinder and a stuffing cone on the head. There are a lot of options out there if you don't have one now. I bought the casings on line and just grabbed the first one I came across because we were leaving soon for hunting. They were rather pricy and I think if I search the internet some more I can get the price down. But I was very happy with the casings I bought.

Since I am talking about casings I will go over your choices in case you are unfamiliar with them. First is natural casings. These are sheep or hog intestines. They will come in what they call a hank and be covered with salt. The processor flushes the shit out of them and winds them into this hank I mentioned. You have to re-flush them and soak them to get the salt off, they are a slippery slimy mess. They tend to break easily causing the person that is doing the stuffing to use some very colorful language. These casings are edible but I personally  do not recommend these.

You next choice of casings is what they call collagen casings. These are edible and are made from grinding up beef hides and forming them into stuffing tubes..... again, not of me.

Then comes one of the man made casings. These are easy to stuff, don't break and are an all around good casing. Make sure you get the casings that permeable.... this allows the smoke to get to the meat and make really good sausage, some casings are solid and do not allow the smoke to get in.

OK..... it is time for the smoking ! ! ! 

I set my smoker to run at 170 degrees. CAUTION..... don't allow you smoker or oven to run over 170 degrees for an extended period of time. The temps will fluctuate and probably go over 170.... you don't have to panic but don't let the temp stay there. If you cook over 170 degrees you will render the fat in the meat. This will alter the taste and could screw up the whole works. When you render the fat it separates into two things...... a liquid and a solid..... and they both suck. BUT the temps are very important because for safeties sake game and pork should reach 160 degrees for at least an hour to kill all the "little buggers". Yeah, yeah...... I know I am a little "over the top" when it comes to food safety but it comes from years of being responsible for what some of the dumbest bastards in the world are doing. Just be glad you did not work for me. I'm a little annal.

I smoke for two hours. I use a mixture of apple wood, cherry wood (about 50-50) and a handful of hickory thrown in for that pungent hickory flavor.

After the 2 hour smoking I recommend finishing in the wife's  oven on baking pans in case they leak a little (at least 4-5 hours). This will keep you out of the dog house. 

This is where the duel temp probe thermometer earns it pay. Again set the oven at 170.

My experience on this blew me away..... I had no idea that an oven could be that far off. 

Our oven is reasonably new and is a name brand. I set the temp to 170 and settled in to wait. Two hours later the temp was 145 ! ! ! I though WTF ? ? So I set the temp to 205 and it settled in on 171.... which was great. BUT you can see the problem that I would have had if I had not had my Handy Dandy Thingy.

Our oven was all over the place...... I won't bore you with the tests I did on the oven..... but I will tell you that our oven sucks.  

If you can swing it I HIGHLY RECOMMEND a Maverick remote temperature monitor.

Now the next thing to keep in mind is the item that has made my smoking and sausage making much more successful and enjoyable. I was struggling with my smoked items and very unhappy with the results I was getting. I did some research on the internet and some of the smoking/BBQ sights and saw a thread that made sense to me. To get consistent results you need to know what your smoker/grill/oven is doing temperature wise. I bought a Maverick Model # ET-732 Duel Probe Thermometer. WHAT A DIFFERENCE IT MADE. While I thought my temp setting on my smoker were reasonably accurate I was blown away to find out how screwed up they were. My smoker is what I would refer to a reasonably middle of the road home smoker. I have a Smokin' Tex smoker and they run about $600 now. Of course, one can spend as much as you want on one but that is as high as I wanted to go. If you decide to get one I have a site that sells them for $500 with free shipping and no tax. Most sites get 600 and the tax and shipping  charges are all over the board.

Oh, I didn't tell you the best part. The Maverick comes with two units...... one is a sending unit and the other a receiver. This allows Old Fat Bastards to go to the Dave Cave and take a nap. Alarms can be set to rouse you if the temps go over or under your target. It shows both temps at the same time......... IS THE COOL OR WHAT ! ? ! ?

OK..... the only thing left now is to remember to fill you sink with cold water before you take the finished product (160 degrees) out of the oven. When you take the product out plop them into the cold water. They don't have to be in there long.... just a couple of minutes. This will allow the casing to just drop off the slices when the sausage is sliced.

Eat and Enjoy ! ! ! 

If you have any question let me know. I will read this over to see if I missed anything but feel free to contact me if you have something come up.


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## boykjo (Feb 12, 2015)

Mortons tender quick calls for 1.5 tsp per lb of ground meat. You need to adjust your cure amount for 5 lbs of meat. Cure amount should be 2 tbs plus 1.5 tsp for 5 lbs of meat....


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