Venison Sausage

[Pablo]

Hooch, you may already have a recipe for sausage and if you do, here's another one you or any other TKF hunter may consider:

Shaw's Bend Venison Sausage
Recipe by Paul, Chris, Carl - November 2003

This will make 36 pounds of sausage or about 36 - one pound links. This recipe has 40% venison (14 lbs) mixed with 60% pork (22 lbs).

Seasonings

3/4 cup - brown sugar
1/2 cup - mustard seed
1/4 cup - garlic powder
One 8 oz container - Tony Chachere's Original Seasoning
1/4 cup - black pepper (preferably coarse)

*option - we added some "kick" to about 1/3 of the batch (12 lbs)
by adding a chopped-up 32 oz can of jalapeño nacho slices

Meat

14 lbs - ground venison
22 lbs - ground pork

*helpful hint - Call the meat manager of a Fiesta and ask if he'll hamburger grind up some Pork Picnic hams for you. The meat manager at the Bellaire-Hillcroft Fiesta accommodated us unbelievably by deboning about 30 lbs of picnic hams then hamburger grinding the pork (and fat) and selling us the net 22 lbs of ground pork at the same sale price of $0.69/lb (w/ no bone)! This will save you a lot of time and effort.

Casings

You'll need about 50 ft of sausage casings. We got one "hank" (about 100 LF) of prewashed pork casings at Martin Preferred Foods (713-783-2639) located at Taylor and I-10 (south of freeway on Taylor). Cost: $14.35.
Don't forget to get some cotton string.

Prep-n-Stuff

Divide the seasoning and meat into 6 equal amounts. This will result in mixing the seasoning (1/6 total amount) into about 6 lbs. of meat. By doing this you can utilize residential sized bowls and/or pots and get the seasoning mixed into the meat better by hand. Also, by dividing the meat into 6 lb amounts, you can easily take 2 - 6 lbs bowls of meat and add the chopped pickled jalapeños mentioned above as a more "kick" option. Now stuff sausages.

Smoking

Hang sausage in the smoke chamber of BBQ pit. Heavy smoke (hickory, pecan, etc) the sausage for about 2 to 3 hours at about 200 degrees (low heat). Do not exceed 200 degrees if possible because exceeding the boiling point of water (212 deg) can cause the meat to steam and rupture the sausage casing. Keep in mind that the goal of this smoking, in addition to adding flavor, is to get the meat temp to at least 160 degrees to kill any salmonella type bacteria. You want the meat cooked. If you have the time, some recommend smoking the meat even at a slightly lower temperature for 8 to 12 hours.

Have fun,

Pablo

[Hooch]

...

[Pablo]

Hooch.

You're welcome. I forgot you are in Corpus, but I suspect you could make one or two calls to a commercial food supplier and find some pork casings.

Good Luck,

Pablo

[Pablo]

Jana and I made 114 lbs of venison-pork sausage this past weekend.

We found the yellow mustard seeds at Phonecia and had to hunt a bit for the natural pork casings but found those at B&W Meat on North Shepherd. All other items were readily found no problem. Did have to order the 66 lbs of $1.98 lb ground pork from HEB but they were happy to accommodate. Since my doc says less salt for me, we did reduce the Tony Chacha from 8 to 6 oz per 36 lb batch; however, she put the Mama Chavez dried red pepper (from our garden) shake on the seasonings to make sure the pickled jalapenos had some help with the bite.

And this year we doubled the amount of brown sugar.

Here're some pics from the festivities.

[Mikey]

Great stuff. Since the BBQ pit has limited capacity to hold a lot of sausage at once, we have used a small storage or tool shed. Suspend a couple of broomsticks from the ceiling on which to hang the sausage, and put coals and smoking wood in a metal pan on the floor of the shed. Sausage will not overheat. Periodically add a shovelful of coals to keep it smoking. Does a good job plus the lawnmower will smell like barbecue for weeks.

[castnblast]

Gonna try this! Sounds great!