Sausage making with game

Both boards are acceptable.

I guess it’s all going to depend on your hog and the quality of the meat. You need fat. Typically, smoked sausage has 20-30 percent fat. You need at least 20 percent.

Fat is flavor. Fat makes it juicy. Fat makes it not dry.

You can mix 50% deer with 50% pork (with fat)

Or simply mix deer with 30% pork fat (No pork meat). That’s my favorite since it’s all deer meat and not half pork.

That was what I was looking for. We clean our deer and hog soooo good that I am thinking it has like no fat in its own. Is that possible? We didn’t save any back fat from hog and deboned everything and then took out all silverskin, all tendons and anything else white. But it’s not gamey at all. Maybe to lean? Do y’all grind up deer fat and pork fat from the kill with the meat?

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Do y’all grind up deer fat and pork fat from the kill with the meat?

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I would be careful with this and use venison fat sparingly. The fat has a stronger flavor and may be too pronounced in the final product.

See that is good info. Sooo many recipes suggest that a store bought pork butt added to deer in a 20-80 mix pork to deer is perfect and I’ve done that and it’s dry dry.

If you take a pork butt and grind it (meat and fat) to make pork sausage, it’s usually a very good fat ratio.

If you add lean deer meat to that, then it’s no longer a good ratio because you are diluting the fat.

If you’re making sausage, you really want 30% fat. Anything less than 25% is going to be dry.

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My question is about mixing venison and wild hog together to make sausage and how to prevent it from wising up dry.

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Just made an awesome venison jalapeño popper sausage this weekend. Used deer sirloin roast and after weighing out the deer I added 30% pork fat. Came out perfectly moist.

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My question is about mixing venison and wild hog together to make sausage and how to prevent it from wising up dry.

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deer and wild hog are both too dry to make a traditional fresh or smoked sausage alone

boston butt is the best, go-to, when it comes to adding fat to sausage. you could trim the fat cap and go straight with that at 10-15% or mix in the whole cubed up butt (my preference) at around 33-40%

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Do you add water and a binder like non fat dry milk?

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Yes to both.

Friend and I made sausage for the first time a few weeks ago and we skipped some crucial steps. The sausage had great flavor but a texture like meatloaf. Fail.

A few weeks later we tried again after some research and this is what we did:

1. Cubed meat the night before and seasoned with all spices (excluding milk powder and liquid). This allows the meat to brine and also the spices to rehydrate.

2. Before grinding, mix in the milk powder (3% of weight) and for the pork we did ice cubes (8% of weight) and for the deer we did heavy cream (again 8%).

3. After grinding we hand mixed thoroughly, treating it like a dough until the mix was nice and tacky. We then stuffed inside casings and let sit in the fridge overnight so casings could dry and meat could relax.

What we were left with were some of the best sausage we'd ever had.

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If you take a pork butt and grind it (meat and fat) to make pork sausage, it’s usually a very good fat ratio.

If you add lean deer meat to that, then it’s no longer a good ratio because you are diluting the fat.

If you’re making sausage, you really want 30% fat. Anything less than 25% is going to be dry.

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Agreed. OP call one of your local meat markets and see if you can get some back fat or fat trimmings from them to add to your game. Wild pigs are usually lean unless they have piglets or maybe if its real cold.

I have used milk powder for binders and added water. Check out the sausage maker website they have a lot of gear.

I wouldn't use chicken or duck fat with a pig/deer sausage but I would with the chicken sausage I have made. Thighs with the skin on.