Simple Homemade Venison Summer Sausage Recipes

GRAMPS' VENISON SUMMER SAUSAGE

Steps:

• Place the venison in a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle with the curing mixture, mustard seed, garlic salt, pepper, and liquid smoke. Mix well with your hands until the mixture is evenly blended and begins to stick together, about 2 minutes.
• Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 days, mixing well each day.
• Preheat an oven to 200 degrees F (95 degrees C).
• Divide the mixture into 5 one-pound logs, place onto a broiler pan, and place a sheet of aluminum foil on top to cover.
• Bake in the preheated oven until the logs are no longer pink in the center, and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center reads 160 degrees F (70 degrees C), 6 to 8 hours. Turn the meat once or twice during cooking. Allow to cool before slicing thinly and serving.

VENISON SUMMER SAUSAGE

Steps:

• Cut the meat and fat into chunks that will fit into your grinder. Trim as much sinew and silverskin as you can. Put the fat into a container in the fridge. Mix the dextrose, salt and curing salt with the meats and put it in the fridge overnight. This helps develop myosin, which will give you a tighter bind when you stuff the links later.
• The next day, put your grinding equipment - blade, coarse and fine die, etc. - in the freezer. Mix the ginger, cloves and half of the remaining spices with the meat and fat. Put the mixture into the freezer and let everything chill down until it hits about 30°F or so. It won't freeze solid because of the salt. Normally, this takes about 90 minutes. While you're waiting, soak about 15 feet of hog casings in a bowl of warm water, and put the malt vinegar in the fridge.
• When the meat and fat are cold, take them out and grind through the coarse die of the grinder; I use a 10 mm plate. Test the temperature of the mixture, and if it's 35°F or colder, go ahead and grind it all again through a fine die, like a 4.5 mm. If it's warmer than 35°F, put the mix back in the freezer to chill. This might take an hour or so if you've let the meat warm up too much. Use the time to clean up, and to dissolve your starter culture in the distilled water.
• Once the sausage has been ground twice, test the temperature again to make sure it's 35°F or colder. I prefer to chill the mix down to 28°F to 32°F for this next stage. Chill the mix and when it's cold enough, take it out and add the remaining spices, the vinegar and the water-starter culture mixture. Now, mix and knead this all up in a big bin or bowl with your (very clean) hands for a solid 2 minutes-your hands will ache with cold, which is good. You want everything to almost emulsify.
• Stuff the sausage into hog casings rather loosely. For this sausage, you want long links. First cut lengths of casing about 2 feet long. Stuff each with a little more than 1 foot's worth of sausage, leaving with plenty of extra casing on either side. Do this with all the sausage before moving on.
• When you're ready, gently compress the long links. Keep an eye out for air pockets. Use a sterile needle or sausage pricker (set it aglow in your stovetop flame) to puncture the casing over all the air pockets. Gently compress the links together to squeeze out the air pockets; this takes practice. Tie the ends of the casing together in a double or triple knot.
• Hang the links from a clothes rack or somesuch. I use "S" rings you buy from the hardware store to hang them from the clothes rack rods. Now you need to ferment your links, keeping them warm and moist. I do this by putting a humidifier under the hanging sausages and then tenting the whole shebang with big garbage bags that I've sliced open on one end. I also use a water sprayer to spritz my sausages a couple times a day. Doing this prevents the casings from hardening. Keep your sausages hanging at room temperature (65 to 80°F) at about 85 percent humidity for three days.
• Move the sausages to your smoker and smoke them over very low heat for up to 4 hours of continuous smoke. It is vitally important that you do not cook your links here, so put ice in the water tray of the smoker and smoke on a cold day or in the early morning. Don't let the smoker rise above 100°F at all. If it gets too hot, open the door of the smoker or just take the links out.
• Now you need to dry your sausages and turn them into salami. Hang them in a place that is about 50°F to 60°F with about 80 to 90 percent humidity. In most cases you will need to put a humidifier under your links. I also spritz them with water once a day for the first 2 weeks. After the first week of hanging, drop the humidity to 70 to 80 percent. On the third week drop it again to 65 to 70 percent and hold it there until a total of 4 to 8 weeks has elapsed since the salami went into the chamber.
• You now have boerenmetworst. To store long-term, vacuum seal them individually and keep in the fridge. They will last indefinitely this way, and the vacuum sealing will keep them from becoming rock hard. You can also freeze them.

VENISON SUMMER SAUSAGE

Steps:

• In a large bowl, mix together the ground venison and pork sausage. Season with mustard powder, mustard seed, liquid smoke, garlic powder, onion salt, and meat tenderizer. Mix in just enough water to make the mixture sticky. Cover, and refrigerate for three days, mixing once a day.
• On the fourth day, preheat the oven to 160 degrees F (70 degrees C). Form the mixture into 2 inch rolls, and place them on a baking sheet.
• Bake for 6 hours in the preheated oven, until firm and cooked through. Wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until needed.