Just butchered a doe I shot last week. Canned some and made this venison summer sausage. 2 days in the fridge to cure and then on to the smoker. These are 3 lb logs. I fried up a little at the end. My goodness, it is delicious even before the cure and smoke. I can't wait to serve this to friends!



I bought a new stuffer from Vevor. So far, it works like a champ.

Looks great!

I'll be your friend...

I grew up in Pa. and we used to have venison sweet bologna made in 10 pound logs. Man I miss that stuff!!!

.. you don’t mess around fin .. good looking result

Did you mix your own seasonings or buy a pre made kit?

My first attempt at summer sausage. I looked at a bunch of different recipes and tweaked them to make my own. I'm telling you, it's awesome! I've been hunting and butchering my own deer for 40+ years, I can't believe I've never done this before.

Looks good. I just butchered a couple deer yesterday and I have 15lbs ground for summer sausage myself. I'll be adding some ground pork to it so it'll make quite a bit. Had a little pile of back strap steaks for supper tonight as well.

Son and son in law were out this weekend and we cut up a few too. Might have to look into doing some summer sausage!

Yea, I do 50-50 pork and venison for sausage and ground. I always make medallion steaks out of the straps and save the tenderloins, obviously. Sometimes I'll cut a roast out of the hind quarter but often, I just can it. I love canned deer meat.

NICE! LOL! I use a Sawsall too!

No jerky? I sliced 2 hind quarters just for whole meat jerky and I'll use probably 10lbs of ground for jerky as well. I do it in my dehydrator, I have about 8 hours left on the first batch I put in earlier today.

A doe only goes so far

Tis the season! Boiled down some bones overnight too and ended up canning 7 quarts of broth.

Do you care to share it?

The recipe? Sure, I'll have to translate my chicken scratch and measurements, but I'll post it if anyone is interested. Not a big secret, just good eat'in. I won't do it tonight but in the coming days, sure.

Never heard of a 50/ 50 mix?
What cut of pork are you using?

My brother makes great SS and i think he does 75/25 .

Shoulder or butt. Most people I know do 50-50 for ground or sausage. Stretches the venison and keeps it pretty moist when cooking.

I need to make some of this, I have a big Cabelas grinder and they’re big stuffer with the power option. Have had it for about 10 years always too dang busy. I went to a meat cutting school 40 years ago, so I remember how just need to find the time. What kind of smokers are you guys using? I’m guessing I could use my smoking Tex.

Western Wildlife Services

I've made hundreds of pounds of summer sausage also. I've gone to just putting it in the oven and bringing it up to temp instead of putting it in the smoker. The reason being is the smoke doesn't seem to penetrate the mahogany casings. The smoke will stick to the outside of the casing and into your fingers when you eat it though. Between the smell in your nose and the residue on your fingers you will get that smoked flavor.

I would like you reveipt and would try with beaver meat.

I made some with bear meat this year. 12lbs bear/3lbs pork with a cracked pepper and garlic mix from
Hi mtn seasonings. I’ll definitely make it again. I smoked with hickory till 160f internal(everything I read for bear said 160). I’m interested to see your recipe as well.

been making it for years, we cold smoke it for 6-8 hours, defiantly gets the smoke flavor,

Nice!
Was just talking about this last night.
We used to.make 30# of summer sausage every year, HI Mountain Kit.

Now I'm hungry!

We canned 9 quarts, made 1 hind quarter into jerky and made 13lb of sweet bologna, the jerky and bologna isn’t best I ever had but decent, still a work in progress. Definitely need a stuffer or some sort of homemade press to get the bologna socks packed tighter.

I've about given up on making summer sausage. It always seems to taste... grainy? for lack of a better word. The flavor is good, the texture is just never right.

Looks great, nice job!

I just made a 25 lb. batch of summer sausage for christmas gift baskets. I stuff them in 1lb mahogany casings and then chamber seal them. I also made some elk bacon and snack sticks for the basket. The wife blended her bbq spices that we put in a pint mason jar with a shaker top and a pint of homeade blueberry jam. i like a little sour bite in my summer sausage. Here is the receipt: 50 percent beef, elk of deer and 50 percent pork butt for 25 lbs.so 12.5 prok to 12.5 deer ,beef ,elk bear .
2 1/2 tb. ground black pepper
3/4 cup salt
2/3 cup powdered dextrose
5 tsp insta cure number 1
2 1/2 tb ground coriander
2 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
2 1/2 tsp. ground mustard
2 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 cup non fat dried milk or corn syrup solids
4 oz encapsulated citric acid this is optional leave it out if you don't want a sour bite.If using eca instead of corn syrup solids the eca needs to be mixed after the meat has cured in the refrigerator for 24 hours.I use sodium ethorbate which activates the cure so I can stuff the summer sausage and smoke the same day.
4 tb of mustard seeds
I do 3 hours of smoke at 130 degrees damper wide open then ramp to 150 degrees and smoke over night. The way i do it is stuff my sausage and hang and start smoking by 11:00 am after I get my temp set to 150 it runs at that temp. until 6:30 when I check temps it is usually at 130-135 in the summer sausage then I ramp it to 175 degrees till it hits 155 internal. Pull it and ice bath to cool. I use a masterbuilt 40" electric smoker with the optional cold smoke generator.

What size grinder plate are you using and what temp are you pulling the summer sausage from the smoker?

My grinder came with a coarse, medium and fine plate and I use medium. According to the website that plate is 4.5mm. I believe I pulled it somewhere between 150-155 but it's been a year or two so not positive.

I’ll share. I finished a batch last week. I went with Walton’s Habanero BBQ seasoning with 2lbs ghost pepper high temp cheese. It has a good spice kick to it. 20lbs of venison to 5lbs of Chuck Wagon bacon. Used 3”x12” mahogany casings. Cold smoked for an hour in my pellet smoker. Pulled off the sausage then turned the smoker on P6 setting (was about 135*). Loaded back sausage on grill for 3-4 hours. Then raised temp to 165* to finish. About 8 hours start to finish. Pulled sausages at 152-155* and dunked in ice and water to bring temperature to about 100*. Brought one to work and put on the break table for the guys to try. I didn’t tell them what it was. They all ran to the water fountain. I didn’t think it was over the top spicy. It was good though. I did do another batch the next day of jalapeño seasoning with high temp cheddar cheese. Very mild with good flavor too.

Yote trapper I'd try the fine plate. I'm using a 3/16th size plate and then hand mixing my spices.

Walton's is where I get my encapsulated citric acid, they make some good premixs.

Good choice on the stuffer - I have used mine on several deer for the past two seasons without an issue. I like the two crank ratios. Mine came with an extra gasket but I almost tossed it because I didn't see it in the packing materials. If you didn't get one check the box...

Just a quick review on a related topic, I just got some deer jerky out of the dehydrator this morning, I used LEM Backwoods cracked pepper seasoning. It turned out real good. I added 5 cups of water to the seasoning mix and cure (2 pkgs) and then added 10lbs of sliced meat to it and mixed well. Left it in the fridge for 24 hours, then put 5 pounds in the dehydrator for 12 hours. Once cool it is real good. It may be too spicy for some. If you can't handle a little cayenne pepper, better stick to the original. The second batch has about 8 hours to go left on it.

I’ve been looking at the Vevor electric stuffer for a while now.Are you getting any leakage around the plunger?I got a vevor chamber vac that is really a great machine.

I haven't had any issues with mine. I've probably stuffed a little over 100 lbs with it the past two years. After each cleaning I put a little food safe pan coating spray on the silicone gasket.

The hand crank model has two speeds depending on which gear you attach the handle to. You can stuff a 3 lb casing with just a few cranks on the higher gear.

We have made venison summer sausages for 20 years. Started out making our own seasoning but now we buy it and the casings from Townsend supply. Link here https://townsendspice.com/shop/details/Summer-Salami

It comes with the cure and everything. After stuffing, we hang in meat cooler for 48 hours to let the cure work evenly. We us 50/50 pork venison mixture. We cold smoke under 100*F for 12-14 hours with green apple wood. We then bump smoker to 350* and cook the sausages to 155* internal temp and immediately dunk them in ice water bath to stop the cooking process. They will still get close to 160 by time we get them all pulled from smoker. We have quite the setup, attached some pics

That’s an awesome setup.What are you using for cooling the cooler?

We have an old walk in cooler that still runs off of R12 refrigerant, so we are on borrowed time . If it ever quits well will put in a window AC will the coolbot controller. https://www.storeitcold.com/product/coolbot-pro/

That’s where I’m at right now. Thinking about the coolbot controller but I haven’t seen one in action yet.

My son and I took his buck to the wahoo locker and about a week later we walked out with quite a load of summer sausage, snack sticks, and jerky all in a variety of flavors. Awesome stuff with crackers and cheese.
Jim

Here's the recipe that I made up. The powdered tomato and jalapeno are from romas and peppers I grew in the garden and dehydrated. I grind them up in a coffee grinder. I have a coffee grinder for herbs and one for spices. Oddly enough, I don't have one for coffee ? My coffee pot grinds its own.

This is the same recipe, just two different amounts, a 2 pound version and a 5 pound version. I'm letting the sausages age for 48ish hours before smoking. I'll bring them up to 150 degrees internal and let them cool to room temp. I'll then put them back in the fridge to firm up, dry out a little more, then vacuum pack everything before freezing.

Summer venison sausage
2 pounds Venison-pork
¼ cup diced celery
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
2 tablespoons whole mustard seeds
1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1 tablespoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon powdered jalapeno pepper
1 tabelspoon powdered tomato
1/2 teaspoon pink curing salt
1 tablespoon white sugar

5 pounds Venison-pork
¾ cup diced celery
2 ½ tablespoon garlic powder
2 ½ tablespoon smoked paprika
5 tablespoons whole mustard seeds
1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 ½ tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon powdered jalapeno pepper
2 ½ tabelspoon powdered tomato
1 teaspoon pink curing salt
2 1/2 tablespoon white sugar

Ok thanks

Oh my! This turned out very well to say the least. I'll be making more of this in the future. I would say 100% success.

Hope tastes as good as it looks.

It's downright delectable.

Looks great!

Looks great really nice color

Got 5 lbs of ground jerky in the dehydrator a little bit ago... the sliced meat jerky is about gone already....

we are 16 pounds in on the whole meat jerky

we are starting the ground jerky tomorrow