I did some running around this morning. Went to the meat market and picked up 12 pounds of beef fat. Went to the local farmers market and picked up about 50 Honeycrisp apples. And finally drove down to a small grocery store/butcher shop to pick up the super secret seasoning mix.

It was created by the original owner of the store back in 1952. I’ve been trying for 30 years to get the various butchers that work there to tell me the ingredients, but it is a heavily guarded secret.




Combined with my 50 pounds of venison trimmings I should get a yield of between 70 and 75 pounds of venison apple sausage next weekend.

Sounds like a plan! Good luck.

Nice! I bet with all those apples, the sausage is not dry at all eh?

One of these days I’d like to make deer sausage

We expect photo updates during the process.

I like the addition of fruits in recipes . I often stuff a chicken or some other poultry with raisins or apricots or prunes if I have them around. With some onions and celery n sage. Mouth watering. Can’t wait to see results of your hard work

That sounds delicious. I've got some venison scraps that I need to do something with. I'm thinking breakfast sausage links.

A question Lugnut, why are you using beef fat instead of pork fat? You did good on the honey Chrisp apples. There the best eating apples around.

Smoked or fresh?

I'm curious about the process with the apples. Chopped? Ground?
I made a batch of snacks sticks called Brandy Old Fashion. It came with dried cherries in the seasoning packet. I ran the season threw grinder on the second finer grind. I do that with my other sticks and sausages helps mix things.
But my son thought made cherries to fine should have mixed it after grind.
So at what point and how are you adding the apples?
Its more a texture thing I think than flavor?

Mac

Not dry at all JP, the 20% beef fat helps with that as do the apples.

I used pork trimmings and pork fat for many years. I switched to beef fat a few years ago after some folks here on Tman suggested it. IMO, it's better with the beef fat.

Fresh patties, should be about 140 of them this batch. Years ago real pork casings got very expensive around here do to some new FDA rulings that even the Amish had to comply with. I used to stuff all of the sausage in casings, bought it by the half-hank. I refuse to used synthetic casings so to save money I started making half in casing and half in patties.

Almost everybody preferred the patties so that's all I make now.

The apples are washed and sliced into eight slices with a tool that slices and cores at the same time. The slices get run through the grinder at the same time as the partially frozen venison trimmings and beef fat. We try to keep every thing proportional and evenly distributed throughout the mix. The grindings go into big stainless pans and are hand mixed, the seasoning is added then stuff is mixed again and intermixed between the pans.

After that we thaw our frozen hands. Then we start patting.

Do you refreeze all the patties or cook then freeze. Didn't know about thawing meat then refreezing

We freeze them prior to vacuum-sealing so they hold their shape, freeze them overnight on baking sheets and vacuum-seal in four and six-packs the next day.

I've often heard the same about refreezing raw meat but never had a problem in the thirty-plus years I've been doing this. And we keep it as cold as possible while processing.