Venison Brats

Anybody have any recommendations for seasonings for some venison brats? Might try to do some on our own this year. Do you smoke them or leave them fresh?

I have had good luck going to von Hanson’s and using their seasoning and recipe for there wild rice brats. I use natural sheep casings well cleaned of course, twist brats as you go and leave them hang to air dry and firm up a little before packaging. My little trick to venison brats to make them taste like a normal pork brat is to add 4 pounds of bacon. I usually will do a 25 pound batch and do a 50/50 blend of venison and pork, but part of my pork is 4 pounds of bacon and the rest pork shoulder. I also add high temp cheddar to my brats. 2 to 3 pounds of cheese. Von Hanson’s will sell you any of seasoning they use for there own products. I also use their maple and pepperoni stick recipe and seasonings. I’ve had great results with both.

Waltons.com has a ton of info/directions and seasoning

We leave them fresh, and use the German brat seasoning mix from Cabelas. They’re quite tastey and it’s always fun making innapropriate jokes while stuffing sausage.

Brats are typically fresh. You’ll need cure in them if your going to smoke them.

While all I make are the pork brats, I make all fresh and stuff them right away. And I use pork casings, not the collagen. I’m not a fan of smoked brats.

Waltons gets my not for the seasonings and I have, in fact, a package of their Blue Ribbon seasoning sitting right here now. LEM’s Backwoods brat seasoning for fresh brats does a real nice job and works fairly well if you want to toss in some wild rice. I have some of the LEM brats in the freezer.

If you like a smoked product try Chicago hot dogs. Grind 18 pounds of venison with 7 pounds of pork butt, fat and all. Add seasonings, cure and water and then re-grind using the fine plate. I like hot dogs but don’t want to mess with hot dog sized casings or the cost of natural casings sized for hot dogs. I used the Waltons hotdog/ring bologna seasoning and cure packet and stuff the meat into pork brat casings, hang them for a day, then give them a light smoke, maybe three hours. As soon as the heat from smoking is out of the links bag and seal them. These are a truly man-sized hot dogs and the taste is out of sight. Grill only. No more of those skinny suckers for this guy. I use Waltons seasoning to make these.

Thanks for the info. Gives us something to try and we can go from there. I appreciate it!

Any recommendations for grinders and stuffers? We would be doing maybe 50 or so lbs. of venison a year plus pork.

I looked into the Walton’s seasonings. Got a couple in the cart to order. The hot dog one comes with the cure it says. Brat one needs no cure if they are fresh. Do we need anything else besides the casings to make hotdogs and brats?

Tom, are you using the same casings for both then? Where do you hang them prior to smoking and at what temp? You mention 3 hours smoke. How high is the temp during the smoke?

Any other tips or tricks? Been reading through some of the older posts to hopefully avoid any pitfalls.

Thanks again everyone! Been kicking around doing this for a few years now but it’s looking like this year might become reality!

Keep your work area clean and have a ice cream bucket handy with a mild soap and bleach mix in it for washing knives and dampening a towel to wipe work surfaces off occasionally. You can never be clean enough. Staying neat and clean helps eliminate the pitfalls. I’ll add here that keeping your knives, the ones you cut the meat with, sharp. And I mean shaving sharp. This is no place for a dull knife. If you have a butcher’s mess glove, wear it on the meat holding hand. You can thank me later. And be darned sure to give that glove a good rinsing in the soapy bleach water between uses. Of course have some fresh water to rinse the bleach water off anything cleaned. Extra dry towels are always handy to have on deck.

I’d also suggest to keep the number of people involved small so distractions and people in the way are avoided. A couple people working together is plenty, maybe three, until you get used to the equipment and develop a “system” that lets what you’re doing flow well. Keep in mind that there are steps you go thru and you should be working towards getting a working plan worked out so everything can go from one aspect of the process to another allowing for a good cleaning between steps.

Most all of Waltons products that call for cure will include a cure packet. The casings for both brats and the Chicago Hot dogs are the same pork casings. I get the Backwoods Pork casings at Scheels. They do 25+ pounds and are high quality. The only need rinsing like the ones you get at Waltons but less expensive in the end if you go pick them up.

Don’t hurry yourself. Stop and think about what the next step is and get things ready as you need them to be ready. Don’t work in clutter.

I have a LEM Big Bite #8 grinder and a simple 5 pound canister stuffer. As mentioned I have three knives for the grinder’s 3 plates and when I change a plate I change the knife matched to it. I clean these right away so they do not get mixed up too. I do somewhere in the 200 pounds a year of grinding and stuffing and these pieces of equipment don’t hardly seem to be worked very hard. I can’t imagine needing anything bigger for what you describe bearplotts.

For hanging I have some hooks in the garage joisting that I hang dowels on to hang the sausages on to rest before smoking and some to dry after the cooking process or smoking is complete. If you can find one of those folding wood apartment type clothes drying racks, grab it. These are handier than heck for hanging sausages up to and including brats and polish sausage and snack sticks. For larger sausage the dowels have stainless hooks for hanging sticks of summer sausage and ring bologna.

The hotdogs get just enough smoke to help flavor them and three hours is about all I give them. No idea on smoker cabinet temp though. When they begin to take on some color I pull them as I don’t want to have the smoke overbearing on them. You can “finish” the hot dog in boiling water once they’re smoked but I think they get dry doing that so as soon as they are cool after coming from the smoker I either hang them for a day and bag the following day or cut them into individual dogs and seal in vacuum bags….which I highly recommend, but isn’t mandatory. The hot dogs do have to be thoroughly cooked though, the cure is simply a safeguard while smoking them. I do mine on the grill and they are some kind of good.

The internet is a super good source of information and one cannot get too much reading on this. Keep an open mind since there will be a lot of thoughts floating your way and most are the same in principle but differ in practice. You get to sort it out. lol You’ll enjoy this and the more you do it and try new aspects of the “art” you’ll just get more and more enthused. And you’ll soon find that there is nothing on this planet better for the stomach and the mind than turning a carcass you shot into table fare that has people complimenting your skills.

Thanks a bunch Tom!

Hopefully in the coming weeks I’ll have some pics of some finished product. We process our own venison and you are right about having good, sharp knives! Nothing worse than working with dull junk!

Well we made the maiden run at brats this weekend. A friend gave me his personal recipe and helped us out so we were able to avoid an major mistakes. We ground the pork butts and venison Saturday morning. 60/40 heavy on the pork as he recommended it to keep them from getting dry. Seasoned it up and refrigerated overnight and stuffed them this morning. 20 lbs. plain and 20 with blue cheese. If they taste anything like the plugs we fried up I’ll be pretty happy!

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Thanks for taking the time to type all that, Tom! You’ve got it dialed in! We should form an exchange. Great way to enjoy more flavors.

…and yes, keep everything clean!

Great looking brats bearplotts. That blue cheese sounds good…. I love blue cheese.

Bob Schultz wrote:

Well we made the maiden run at brats this weekend.

WOW look at the expertize in the twists and the fill!
I wouldn’t call that a “Maiden Run!”

Thanks guys! Like I said we had some help from a friend who has been making them for a long time. He stuffed the first few casings and twisted them and then sat down and let us take over. My wife had made a huge batch of cut out cookies a day earlier and we filled a tray full of those and I picked up a bottle of his favorite as well. It was a good trade! Now with what we learned this weekend, and from tidbits I have picked up here from Tom and a number of others, we are going to make a run at some hot dogs and maybe a few other things early next year.

Tom Sawvell wrote:

Great looking brats bearplotts. That blue cheese sounds good…. I love blue cheese.

We were going to do them with swiss, but the store was out of it. So it was either cheddar, mozzarella, hot pepper or the bleu. I considered doing them all plain, but picked up a bag of the blue. Both are good, but I’m pretty sure these blues are going to disappear faster than the plain.

Home Butcher Supplies in Gleason is where we got the cheese. I think they only have it in 5 lb. bags, but it was considerably cheaper than anywhere I found it online. $4.69 a lb. I think it was.

Finally tried some of the brats. They are pretty tasty I think. Blue cheese ones get the nod. One thing I think we need to refine a bit is the grind. The Big Bite #8 has 2 plates. A 3/8″ and a 3/16″. My buddy recommended only grinding once using the 3/8″. The meat is a bit course. What do you guys recommend for brats? Hot dogs? Pressed jerky?

For brats, breakfast and Italian sausage and polish/keilbasa I double grind thru the coarse plate. Weiners, ring bologna, the pressed jerky, grind thru the coarse plate first then the smaller hamburger plate.

For everything we do, we course grind once and then 1 time through the “hamburger plate” as Tom calls it.

We do only some small batches. Stay tuned for mid January when we start our brats, baloney and weiners.

130# of bellies thawing and going into smoker in a couple weeks. Just a pic of a couple bellies.

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riverruns wrote:

For everything we do, we course grind once and then 1 time through the “hamburger plate” as Tom calls it.

We do only some small batches. Stay tuned for mid January when we start our brats, baloney and weiners.

130# of bellies thawing and going into smoker in a couple weeks. Just a pic of a couple bellies.

Bacon, Bacon, BACON!!!

Thanks guys! We are doing some more brats and a batch of hot dogs in the next couple weeks. We will do as suggested.

My brother started doing bacon last spring. That stuff is some kind of good! Too good!

Going to make a run at some hot dogs tomorrow. Everything I read says you have to get the meat emulsified. Recommendations include either running the meat through a food processor or grinding it up to 3 times. I assume this is more critical if a person is smoking and then taking them to a final temp of 152 in one way or another? I’ve read quite a few stories of guys ruining entire batches and hope to avoid that!

I’ve done it both ways and I’m totally satisfied just grinding 2x in a fine plate and running back through to stuff off the same machine which mixes it even that much more.

For any sausage that we boil to eat, (polish, brats, ring abloney) I like to add powdered milk to the mix. It does little to nothing to the flavor, but absorbs water when cooking and makes for very juicy, but not greasy sausage.

Bob Schultz wrote:

Going to make a run at some hot dogs tomorrow. Everything I read says you have to get the meat emulsified. Recommendations include either running the meat through a food processor or grinding it up to 3 times. I assume this is more critical if a person is smoking and then taking them to a final temp of 152 in one way or another? I’ve read quite a few stories of guys ruining entire batches and hope to avoid that!

You do not need to run through the grinder 3X. You also do not need to take them too a final temp unless your going too eat them cold out of the package and not cook them.

We smoke ours cold smoke if you want too call it that but do not bring up to temp to finish. We decided why the extra step since we all cook it before we eat it anyhow.

Do your hotdogs just like Riverruns says he does his and you’re good to go. That emulsifying thing is a joke….you’d end up with baby food to stuff if you ran it through a blender or food processor.

You’ll end up with great hotdogs if you smoke them cool and bag/freeze as soon as they’ve cooled off.

Great! Thanks everyone!

25 lbs. of Chicago dogs are stuffed to be smoked tomorrow. Half plain and half with cheddar cheese as we won’t need the entire bag of cheese for the brats we are doing tomorrow.

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I’ll be sick of doing dishes by the time we are done tomorrow!!! Ha ha!!!