Smoked venison sausage
A smoked sausage for deer season: trimmed venison brought up to 70/30 with pork back fat, seasoned with coarse black pepper, garlic, mustard seed, sage and a little juniper, which suits game well. Salt sits at 1.7%, a touch lower than the basic recipe, so the venison comes through.
Load this recipe into the calculator →Opens Linkulator with this recipe ready. Enter your own meat weight and it works out every amount.
Ingredients
Use venison trim, shoulder, neck or roasts, with the silverskin, sinew and deer fat cut away. Deer fat tastes waxy and coats the mouth, so the fat in this sausage is pork back fat. Fatty pork shoulder works instead: tell Linkulator how fatty it is in Advanced mode and it works out the rest.
| Ingredient | Per 1 kg meat | Per 5 lb meat | % of meat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meat block (lean + fat), 30% fat | 1 kg | 5 lb (2.27 kg) | 100% |
| Salt (plain) | 14.8 g | 33.5 g (1.2 oz) | 1.47% |
| Cure #1 (Prague Powder #1, 6.25% sodium nitrite) | 2.4 g | 5.4 g | 0.24% |
| · Coarse black pepper | 5 g | 11.3 g | 5 g/kg |
| · Garlic granules | 4 g | 9.1 g | 4 g/kg |
| · Mustard seed | 2 g | 4.5 g | 2 g/kg |
| · Rubbed sage | 1.5 g | 3.4 g | 1.5 g/kg |
| · Juniper | 1 g | 2.3 g | 1 g/kg |
| · Chilli flakes | 1 g | 2.3 g | 1 g/kg |
| Milk powder | 30 g | 68 g (2.4 oz) | 3% |
| Ice-cold water | 60 g | 136 g (4.8 oz) | 6% |
Makes about 7 links (6″ / 15 cm, in 32–35 mm hog casing) per kg of meat.
Method
- Trim the venison of silverskin, sinew and any deer fat, cut it into cubes and weigh it. Weigh out the pork back fat Linkulator gives you for 70/30.
- Chill the meat, fat and grinder parts until very cold, close to freezing (0–2 °C / 32–35 °F).
- Grind the lean and fat through a medium (6 mm) plate.
- Weigh the salt, curing salt, spices and milk powder on a scale. Weigh the curing salt on a gram scale, never by spoon.
- Add them to the meat with the ice-cold water and mix for 2–5 minutes, until the mix is tacky and sticks to your hand.
- Stuff into 32–35 mm hog casings, pushing out air pockets, and twist into 6″ (15 cm) links.
- Rest the links uncovered in the fridge overnight (at least 12 hours). The curing salt needs this time, and the casings dry for a better colour.
- Smoke low, around 70–80 °C (160–180 °F), raising the heat gradually. Cook until the centre of the thickest link reaches your cooking temperature: at least 71 °C (160 °F, the USDA minimum for ground meat); 75 °C is the usual target in Ireland. Check with a probe thermometer.
- Cool the links in iced water to stop the cooking and keep the casings snappy, then refrigerate. Reheat to serve.
- Venison is very lean, so most of the weight you add is pork fat. Enter the venison as your lean meat and Linkulator works out the fat for 70/30.
- Grind venison twice, coarse then medium, if it has a lot of connective tissue. Keep it near freezing between grinds.
Work it out for your batch
Load this recipe into the calculator →
Opens Linkulator with this recipe ready. Enter your own meat weight and it works out every amount.