Favorite way to make deer sausage?

I’m wanting to process my deer this year to save some money. I’ll of course save the backstraps and a couple of roasts. I have a small cheap grinder/sausage stuffer, a pellet grill, and a dehydrator.
So what are your favorite recipes for the roast meat and trim meat? Thanks!

I would use someone’s tried and true recipe before I would use one out of a book. All of the recipes I have tried out of game books have been very lacking in good taste. I am a fan of Curlys premix and have not found a bad one. I have made Polish and Old fashion hot dogs mix and love them both. I have used 80/20 ground beef and had excellent results by following his method which is mix the day before and once stuffed smoke for 2 hours. Careful with your cheap grinder /stuffer. You don’t want the meat to get up to room temp and if it is slow be sure to make in smaller batches.

What kind of sausage? Summer sausage? Snack sticks? If you want to give it a try I suggest running to Scheels or Fleet Farm and pick up a sausage kit that’ll do maybe 5 or ten pounds that also includes the casings, otherwise attempting to piece together everything you need is going to be pretty expensive. Weigh your meat and buy pork shoulder to match that weight and get enough kit to do that amount of sausage. Follow the kit’s directions. Decide if you think that you want to expand your horizons from there.

I’ve been making my own sausage for almost 40 years and have the grinder and stuffer and use commercial seasonings from Waltons.com. I often end up with extra trim and simply use the High Mountain seasonings that these stores sell to use the meat up and will give the chubs or whatever sausage I’ve made away to friend.

If you’re thinking of jerky you have two directions to go: cut muscle or ground and pressed. I don’t do the ground stuff. I make cut muscle and its by far a nice jerky. Again you can start by buying the seasonings at either of the mentioned store that will make 2 to 10 pounds. Trim away all of the fat on any jerky meat and do not mix with pork if you are doing the ground variety.

Take your time and make keeping things clean a priority and I think you’ll find making your own sausage/jerky quite rewarding.

I just stuffed 60 pounds of summer sausage this morning. 30 pounds jalapeño cheddar. 30 of cheddar.

Thank you. Yeah I plan to use a pre-made cure/seasoning – are there some in particular you really like? I’ve made a lot of beef jerky before just with the basic Nesco seasoning and that worked great, thinking something similar with the deer jerky. Also Thinking breakfast sausage and possibly some snack sticks.

Greenhorn wrote:

Thank you. Yeah I plan to use a pre-made cure/seasoning – are there some in particular you really like? I’ve made a lot of beef jerky before just with the basic Nesco seasoning and that worked great, thinking something similar with the deer jerky. Also Thinking breakfast sausage and possibly some snack sticks.

For breakfast sausage I really like the backwoods maple flavored. It’s my go to. But the regular back woods is good to. I keep it simple and use lem or backwoods on all my sausages besides blood sausage which I only make every few years

I do a lot of ground jerky in the dehydrator and the LEM Hickory is my favorite for that. Really easy, too.

For ground sausage type things we primarily stick with hot italian packed in 1lb. packs, breakfast sausage, and summer sausage if we get more than 2 deer. We like venison stew a lot though so I’ve been saving more and more “grinding” meat for that instead. We also do a fair amount of jerky, usually the high mountain “hunter” blend.

Here’s a simple spicy breakfast sausage recipe I have used. It’s good for 50/50 venison and pork, too. I prefer to skip the brown sugar and ground cloves and typically add 1/2t cayenne or other spicy chili powder. I also skip the stuffer altogether and portion approx. 1lb into quart freezer bags. Spread the sausage inside the bag by flattening on the counter, zip 95% shut, then squeeze out the rest of the air and seal. Easy peasy. Easier to stack in the freezer vs a chub.

1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons dried sage
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon dried marjoram
⅛ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 pinch ground cloves
2 pounds ground pork

ive used many of the backwoods seasonings and they have all turned out good for different things

Most meat markets sell their spice mixes as well now, so if you have a place you really liked getting it processed at you can probably get the mixes from them and try and replicate at home. Just my .02, we get our stuff done at Thielen’s, and I have done our own, and I’ve tried dozens and dozens of other peoples, and nothing is close to Thielen’s quality imo. Plus it’s labor intensive and I just don’t have the time. Good luck, and hope it turns out great for you!

frabonis breakfast sausage seasoning is pretty good stuff. we start with that as a base and add maple syrup and red pepper flakes to it. real good stuff.

Waltons will have everything you need . Never been disappointed with their seasonings . As stated earlier, Curlys is good also , can buy kits that have premixed seasoning, cure , and casings . I like their pepper sticks , everything else I buy from Waltons

For the first time this past year I used LEM seasoning instead of my uncle’s homemade and perfected recipes for italian and breakfast. Only because I haven’t gotten up to his house in ages to buy some. It is okay, not my favorite but passable. I used their brat seasoning as well to make brat burger and it gave me intense heartburn. Not sure what that was all about, it isn’t too bad but hopefully it was something else I ate that day and not actually the brat burger.

I mix 50/50 with pork shoulder when I do my grind and make a lot of sausage. I rarely keep roasts anymore… sausage goes further. I just keep my grind vacuum packed and frozen until shoulder goes on sale for 99c/ lb and then I stock up and get it done.

KPE wrote:

I just keep my grind vacuum packed and frozen until shoulder goes on sale for 99c/ lb and then I stock up and get it done.

A lot of air gets put into ground meat and vacuum packing anything going to the freezer for any length should be the norm or that air can lead to burning or spoiling. Especially finished sausage and jerky-like meats.

I have been using a very good LEM sealer for maybe fifteen years but just porked out about $350.00 on a new sealer yesterday because the current one has started to wobble a little while I need to be sealing without a bunch of starting and stopping.

On any sealer, make sure you take time to wipe the sealing edges of the pouches before putting thru the sealer and make sure you take time to clean the sealing rings if something gets on them. Or under them. I was being dealt fits with my sealer a year ago until I found a HAIR on one corner of the sealing ring that was all but invisible. Just keep the rings clean.