I am not considering this Q-View as it was too cold to play with the camera outside ... lol
A first for me, I am not a fan of deer meat, but a guy I know asked me to make these for him, and since my wife likes deer meat I figured I would trade my skillz for some of his deer meat,
I told him I wasn't sure how much pork or beef to add he said he didn't care which I added beef or pork, but that he like it mixed at a 50/50 ratio of vension to beef or pork, so I decided to use 80/20 beef and some pork fat
this was a 10lb batch
First I ground up the pork fat through my fine plate around 3/16
I went straight into the Venison from here, I had the Venison chilled almost perfectly.
at this point I started to have trouble I heard people complain about grinding venison that is was kind of stringy, and that it tends to clog up grinders faster than beef and pork, but this just seemed like it plugged to quickly , so I threw the venison back in the freezer and started tearing apart the grinder, to this day I still am not 100% sure why I had this problem except for possible human error of placing the knife in my grinder backwards some how, I didn't notice that it was on backwards, but after I tore it apart and put it back together the grinder worked perfectly..
I then added in the pork fat and the 80/20 ground beef and mixed in the cure, and seasonings
Then I put the nice mound of meat mixture into my 11lb Weston Stuffer and proceeded to stuff some 19mm mahogany casings, this is where problem 2 started,
I had never used collagen casings b4, normally I would use 22/24 sheep casings, but I noticed a lot of guys using the collagens here so I thought I would try it out for a couple of reasons
1) casing are already colored so there is no need to go through the drying period of natural casings, in order to get them to accept smoke and to take on that nice red hue
2) Since you don't have to worry about the casings coloring you can actually space them a little closer together.
both of these should save you time
Sometimes saving time isn't worth it, the casings seemed harder to work with I had blow outs with this stuff, could have been the casings were old or some thing even tho I just bought them, ya never know how long they were on the shelf b4 you get them, but they did get easier by the time I was done playing with them
When my tray would get full I use the drying rack I built for when I stuff natural casings (even tho these dont need drying)
so after I got them all stuffed I moved them from the rack onto smoke sticks and then off to the MES30
I had let these cool down at room temperature and then I tried them, the casings were pretty tough, I put them in a paper bag and into the refrigerator they went and a day later the casings had become softer and more pliable and 2 days later they were perfect
a third reason I bought these collagen casings was I thought they might be a cheaper alternative to naturals, at around $30.00 a hank for 22/24 sheep casings,
but after playing with collagen and finding that one tube of collagen only lets you stuff around 8lb of meat, and one hank of naturals lets you stuff 60 to 70lb of meat
well 8X8=64lb so that would be 8 tubes at around 5 bucks a tube is $40.00
you might get a better price than I did on collagens or a worse price on naturals then I get so I suggest if the price is a factor for you to do your own math...LOL
here is the recipe I used It is a tweeked version of a recipe I found that looked good, everyone loved them and are looking for more
this is for a 10lb batch
4.5lb venison
4.5lb 80/20 beef
1lb pork back fat
2tsp of instacure#1
5TBS of salt
1TBS of black pepper
1TBS of brown sugar
1TBS corn syrup solids
1TBS ground corriander
1tsp ground ginger
1tsp whole mustard seed
1tsp ground mustard
1tsp garlic pwdr
1tsp ground ceyanne
I put in a preheated smoker 125 degrees for an hour, then bumped up the temp every so often till I got the MES up to bouncing between 165 and 170 degrees
took the IT to 152
Thanks for looking
Harry
A first for me, I am not a fan of deer meat, but a guy I know asked me to make these for him, and since my wife likes deer meat I figured I would trade my skillz for some of his deer meat,
I told him I wasn't sure how much pork or beef to add he said he didn't care which I added beef or pork, but that he like it mixed at a 50/50 ratio of vension to beef or pork, so I decided to use 80/20 beef and some pork fat
this was a 10lb batch
First I ground up the pork fat through my fine plate around 3/16
I went straight into the Venison from here, I had the Venison chilled almost perfectly.
at this point I started to have trouble I heard people complain about grinding venison that is was kind of stringy, and that it tends to clog up grinders faster than beef and pork, but this just seemed like it plugged to quickly , so I threw the venison back in the freezer and started tearing apart the grinder, to this day I still am not 100% sure why I had this problem except for possible human error of placing the knife in my grinder backwards some how, I didn't notice that it was on backwards, but after I tore it apart and put it back together the grinder worked perfectly..
I then added in the pork fat and the 80/20 ground beef and mixed in the cure, and seasonings
Then I put the nice mound of meat mixture into my 11lb Weston Stuffer and proceeded to stuff some 19mm mahogany casings, this is where problem 2 started,
I had never used collagen casings b4, normally I would use 22/24 sheep casings, but I noticed a lot of guys using the collagens here so I thought I would try it out for a couple of reasons
1) casing are already colored so there is no need to go through the drying period of natural casings, in order to get them to accept smoke and to take on that nice red hue
2) Since you don't have to worry about the casings coloring you can actually space them a little closer together.
both of these should save you time
Sometimes saving time isn't worth it, the casings seemed harder to work with I had blow outs with this stuff, could have been the casings were old or some thing even tho I just bought them, ya never know how long they were on the shelf b4 you get them, but they did get easier by the time I was done playing with them
When my tray would get full I use the drying rack I built for when I stuff natural casings (even tho these dont need drying)
so after I got them all stuffed I moved them from the rack onto smoke sticks and then off to the MES30
I had let these cool down at room temperature and then I tried them, the casings were pretty tough, I put them in a paper bag and into the refrigerator they went and a day later the casings had become softer and more pliable and 2 days later they were perfect
a third reason I bought these collagen casings was I thought they might be a cheaper alternative to naturals, at around $30.00 a hank for 22/24 sheep casings,
but after playing with collagen and finding that one tube of collagen only lets you stuff around 8lb of meat, and one hank of naturals lets you stuff 60 to 70lb of meat
well 8X8=64lb so that would be 8 tubes at around 5 bucks a tube is $40.00
you might get a better price than I did on collagens or a worse price on naturals then I get so I suggest if the price is a factor for you to do your own math...LOL
here is the recipe I used It is a tweeked version of a recipe I found that looked good, everyone loved them and are looking for more
this is for a 10lb batch
4.5lb venison
4.5lb 80/20 beef
1lb pork back fat
2tsp of instacure#1
5TBS of salt
1TBS of black pepper
1TBS of brown sugar
1TBS corn syrup solids
1TBS ground corriander
1tsp ground ginger
1tsp whole mustard seed
1tsp ground mustard
1tsp garlic pwdr
1tsp ground ceyanne
I put in a preheated smoker 125 degrees for an hour, then bumped up the temp every so often till I got the MES up to bouncing between 165 and 170 degrees
took the IT to 152
Thanks for looking
Harry
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