Decided to give this a try, Deer Brats. Being such a nice weekend the kids (grown kids) and I decided to break out the meat grinder and Smoker! We found a receipe on here that Richie had posted and substiuted pork shoulder and some local whitetail deer! http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/244929/beef-brats-recipe-plated-shot. We used a 70/30 blend Pork and Deer, it was heavy on the pork, our first time so we went conservative for the whole family.
It was a start, lay everything out, 2 grinders and some seasoning.
30pounds of brat mixture, we used the recipie for the basic start, then we decided to spit it up and add "other flavors".
so we split it up into bowls 5lbs in each bowl and we started to blend. I had seen here somewhere, that someone added chrushed pineapple, another added apple pied filling. so we did. We ended up with the following.
5# pineapple brats
5# apple pie filling brats
10# jalapeno (chopped whole jalapeno's) brats
10# cheese (we used sharp cheddar) brats
Using hog casings we started to fill and twist, tried to average 5 inches in length. Then into the smoker they went, smoked with just a charcoal base, we didn't want to overpower them, at 250 for about a hour, then put them in a hot water bath to get them to tempature, then into a ice bath before putting them into freezer bags.
And the final product. We taste tested each one of versions, putting them on a grill to simulate what we will do with them out of the freezer , and not suprising the jalapeno was the biggest hit, but the apple pie filling came in second, you really could tast the apples and cinnamon. The pineapple and cheese were good, but I think I would next time change the amounts to get a more flavor from them.
Thanks for looking,
Have a Good Day!!
It was a start, lay everything out, 2 grinders and some seasoning.
30pounds of brat mixture, we used the recipie for the basic start, then we decided to spit it up and add "other flavors".
so we split it up into bowls 5lbs in each bowl and we started to blend. I had seen here somewhere, that someone added chrushed pineapple, another added apple pied filling. so we did. We ended up with the following.
5# pineapple brats
5# apple pie filling brats
10# jalapeno (chopped whole jalapeno's) brats
10# cheese (we used sharp cheddar) brats
Using hog casings we started to fill and twist, tried to average 5 inches in length. Then into the smoker they went, smoked with just a charcoal base, we didn't want to overpower them, at 250 for about a hour, then put them in a hot water bath to get them to tempature, then into a ice bath before putting them into freezer bags.
And the final product. We taste tested each one of versions, putting them on a grill to simulate what we will do with them out of the freezer , and not suprising the jalapeno was the biggest hit, but the apple pie filling came in second, you really could tast the apples and cinnamon. The pineapple and cheese were good, but I think I would next time change the amounts to get a more flavor from them.
Thanks for looking,
Have a Good Day!!
