Ground venison & pork
Whitetail Deer
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What cut of pork do you guys use to mix with the ground venison?
Depends on what your trying to do (burger or sausage). I generally use boston butt for sausage. Look around, you might find them on sale for about a dollar a pound and they usually weight 7-9 pounds, bone in.
yep ......... pork butts ........ our local IGA has em on sale several times a year ........... just a few weeks ago you could buy em for .89/lb .......... btw ....... while your at it ,buy some extra and make your own pork sausage ........... once you eat sausage made from 100% pork butt you will not buy commercial sausage again
Yup -pork butts/pork shoulder, 7-8 lbs. Local Grocery store had them $.99/lb a week ago, limit one per customer. Case price at Sam's club is up to $1.12/lb, eight per case. Sometimes we will divide up a case with the guys at work. The fat caps can be trimmed before barbacueing, and saved for sausage makeing also.
Thanks for the replies.
Do you trim any fat or skin off the pork butt before you grind it? Or do you just de bone it and use it all?
You should grind everything except the skin. Even then you may not have enough fat for certain sausages.
You'll find it better if you consume the sausage within about three months. After that, while edible, the quality goes down. Beef fat lasts longer, but even that has a "shelf life".
It's why I store my excess grind meat in large blocks and grind several times a year.
Hey, while we are on topic with pork, the last few times I've taken Venison I've cleaned myself (to make sure ALL of the white connecting tissue is carefully removed) to the butcher to make burger I've had him use pork fat with my venison. And it comes out GREAT.
OK here is the guestion - if I buy one of those sausage grinder attachments for the wifes mixer, can I just go the to the grocery store and buy a couple of tubes of pork sausage and mix that with the venison as the pork fat component?
granitesun, keep it semi froze. It helps it go thru the grinder without becoming mush.
i usually just grind my venison straight, no fat added whatsoever. i like it lean! i made some chili this week and added ground pork to the ground venison and it came out great. we raise our own pigs and i butcher them myself, so the pork was well trimmed and very lean. (dogs get all the fat as well as the birds for suet) obviously the pork had a little fat in it, and it was a great addition to the venison chili. i hate the taste of fat, i don't eat beef(hate it) and i like my meat extremely lean. meat was meant to be eaten lean so we taste the meat and not the fat. good luck...........
Actually, the fat is what most primitive cultures craved and valued the most. It has the calories necessary to survive northern climates. Why you can about starve on a diet of snowshoe hares.
Nothing like a hot dripping tail off a porterhouse steak or porkchops with the fat fried crisp.
Better let my belt out another notch.
My kids really enjoyed these sausage "scramblers" that are sold frozen ready-to-use, so now we make our own:
2 lbs ground super clean venison + breakfast sausage spices + 1 lb ground pork. Mix, let sit overnight in fridge, then fry until just done, drain in colander, crumble and spread in single layer on cookies sheets and freeze. Dump into 4 gallon zip lock bag and keep in freezer. Dump in 2 pound bag diced frozen potatoes, 8 oz frozen white corn, 8 oz frozen frozen shelled Edamame. Then dice up red bell pepper, sweet onion, really young zucchini, fresh carrots and freeze in single layers on parchment paper (to absorb loose juice). We do this over a few days as keeping it frozen lets you take your time. Scrape into bag with other ingredients, mix well, and then split into 1 pound aliquots in vacuum bags. To cook, pour into pan, drizzle a tablespoon cooking oil and fry medium until potatoes are soft. Then crack 2 eggs per person into pan, stir to scramble and serve when eggs done to your likeness.
OK thanks LKH, DBBoss. Seasons are closed in Kansas so it will be until at least October before an opportunity to try it arrises but rest assured I will! If I remember will look this thread back up and post up some pictures of the results1
I get pork fat free from the butcher but if you make summer sausage in the colagen casing the fat will liquify and kind of get messy. I find it best to use that kind of fat for burgers or chili. On the grill most of the fat liquify's but you still get a moist burger.
The butcher told me that pork butt's are the way to go with summer sausage because that doesn't liquify. Makes sense.
if your fat liquifies and drips out of your summer sausage or any other smoked sausage it is because it is being cooked at too high a temp ......... I cant see there would be a difference between pork fat and the fat in pork butts .......... the fat in pork butts is pork fat too !!!!!! .............. LOL
In the past I always mixed venison with pork then tryed it with beef, now it's straight venison unless I'm making sausage, brats, or wieners. That straight venison for burgers, or anything else is the way to go for me.
The local grocery store has 10-12lb pork loins on sale for 99 cents a lb. Do you guys think the loin is to lean, or should i go with the butts?
loin is too lean ............ pork butts is the way to go
I use the cheap "ends and pieces" packages of bacon when I greind my deer meat meat and make sausage. Works great and gives it a bit of a smoky flavor as well. Mix 3lb package of the cheap bacon with approx 9lbs of deer trim and it's perfect.
I buy sweet Italian sausage and mix it with my venison. Two pounds of venison for one pound of sausage. Makes a great meatloaf and meatballs.
carbonarcher, I do the exact same thing. People that eat it can't believe that the deer is mixed with bacon.
I go to local butcher shop & he sells me lean trim pieces by the pound (cheap), great for ginding & mixing.
the bacon thing is great for deerburger ............ sausage and deerburger are not the same thing ......... I like 10lb deer meat , 2 lbs beef suet ( or fat...... suet has the best flavor IMO ) 1 lb bacon for my deer burger ........... 99% of people will never know they are eating deer .
for sausage making,pork is the way to go .
buckhunter... i disagree. that's like saying buying a t-bone steak is the same as sirloin, ground chuck, etc.. The pork fat that I get free from the butcher is a totally different consistency than pork butt.
I cook my summer sausage at 170 degrees and the pork fat liquifies where the pork butt does not. Canokie, I have seen the same thing. That brownish/transparent gel is the fat that liquified then hardened again. It could not escape from your colagen casing or aluminum foil that you cooked in.
What I have started doing is only using 10 percent pork fat instead of 20 percent... that eliminated most of that issue with the gel.
there are differences in fats .......... for instance beef suet ( internal fat) is much different than regular beef fat . It melts at a lower temp ,but has much better flavor .
However I have never heard of pork suet (although it may exist) and I am not convinced that the fat on and in a pork butt is different than the fat on the rest of the pig . Once upon a time ALL the fat on a pig was rendered down and allowed to re-solidify and was called LARD.
the gel stuff ya'll are talkin about is normal and is in all smoked salamies/summer sausage/snack sticks .......... it is what gives salami its texture . Without it slices of salami would just crumble when sliced,more like the texture of a hamburger ......it is a product from the salt used in your spices and the collegen present in the meat and the fat .... the reason you are finding pockets of it is because you left air pockets in your salami when you stuffed it and it naturally fills the voids.
it is very difficult to do a really good job stuffing sausages with a grinder stuffing attachment . Invest in a sausage stuffer if you havent already done so.
It's been years since my family has used pork,other than sausage. We mix beef with the venison. It keeps a little better than a pork mix. My daughter-in -laws {that don't hunt} prefer this to straight hamburger. Less fat and they prefer the taste.
I have same experience at IBOWHUNT above. I use beef and my hamburg and sausage last a full 9 months in freezer. I use 1/3 medium ground beef hamburger to the venison weight. In other words, 30 pounds of pure venison gets 10 pounds of medium beef hamburger. So easy and tastes fabulous. Best regards from Canada.
I butcher my own deer as many of you do. Lately I have been buying a whole pig. I butcher it almost the same as the deer - I fillet the loin section and use the rest for sausages and ground beef.
How about 100& pork fat over Pork butt??
Ive used pork fat for over 30 years. about 15 -20 %. Still way leaner than 85% lean chop meat from the store.
Not sure if it's available nation wide, but here in Colorado and probably New Mexico we have pork for green chili we can buy. Not sure what cut it is, but probably butt. It's already cubed when you buy it and is ready to go in the grinder, just open the package and grind! I generally do 10-15% by weight pork to venison. Makes a delicious burger!
I mix 10% beef suet with my venison and elk burger.
For ground meat my ratio is 2:1 venison to pork. Then add 20% pork fat to the mix. Provides for a very good lean meat combo.
If I'm mixing anything into my ground venison, it's pork belly. Most Costco's have it in big slabs. Pork fat and bacon basically, far more fat in it than meat (bacon). If I wanted to make pork sausage I'd make pork sausage with a pork butt. But the pork belly adds a good deal of moisture and a bit of flavor.
I only add it to grinds meant for burgers, about half of what I grind. The rest used for tacos, meatloaf, etc. I don't add anything. It crumbles better when browning and anything else is added very easily.
If you've studies much cooking (I watch Alton Brown for the science of it as well as stay in Holiday Inns) fats (oils) are what transports savory flavors to the taste buds, while not changing a great deal by their own flavor (some, but not a lot) they promote a great "connection" of the flavors to the taste sensors...... coats them with flavor rather than washing quickly away and adds to the sense of "moist" that water soluble does not. A "juicy" steak is not so much perceived so because of water in the meat. See: dry aged.... and wet aged...
I always shoot a few wild hogs each year which I mix with venison for sausage but I do have to add pork fat since the hogs are usually so lean. This year the loins alone had over two inches of fat on them.
As to making summer sausage and that fat is melting out it is because of one of two things, cooking too hot too fast or you didn't get proper protein extraction. As to the temp to make summer sausage you have to start low for a few hours to set the fat and then increase 125F for 1 hour 140F for 1 hour 155F for 2 hours 175F until internal meat temp of 160F When they have reached 160° internal temperature remove from the smoker and put them in an ice bath to bring the heat down and help set the casing.. As to protein extraction, you have to mix really well by hand, like for twenty minutes or use a meat mixer for about eight minutes. Check out Waltons seasonings for instructions.