Friend bringing some ground Elk and Venison

[jmtyndall]

Hey all, a friend just bought a house and wants me to have a little BBQ to celebrate. Her dad gave her some ground Elk and Venison and she was thinking burgers. I read a bit on here that they could probably use some added fat. I don't have a way to grind up anything like bacon, but we always have some bacon grease around. Maybe this is a stupid question, but could I mix in some bacon grease to accomplish the same goal? Never cooked these kinds of meats before so I don't want to screw them up.

 

[pc farmer]

I wouldnt use bacon grease but maybe get some store bacon and cube it up small and mix in.

 

[fivetricks]

Bacon grease will not work for what you're looking for.. you need uncooked fat for your purposes. As mentioned a over, you could maybe by some bacon and dice it fine, but you will have to dice it very, very fine to mix it in with ground. I would suggest diving it as fine as possible, freezing it for 2/3 hours and discing again. Perhaps even a 3rd time. You're going to want to mimic the texture of your ground wild game as much as possible.

 

[chopsaw]

I've actually hand chopped bacon before to add to ground beef . This is how I did it .
I rolled the bacon strips up long way ( individual strips ) , then as mentioned put it in the freezer for a few hours .
Take them out , using a sharp knife cut strips ( same direction as the roll ) close to the same size as the grind of the meat , again as mentioned above .
Then take those " disc " of bacon and cut those to size needed . Works pretty good . Take your time , leave some in the freezer while you work on the rest .

 

[tallbm]

I eat a lot of 100% ground venison with no fat added.

If your heart is set on burgers then I would recommend you make smaller not so thick buggers, basically sliders.

A good way to do this would be to use your bacon grease in a hot skillet on the stove, get it good and hot. Form the slider patties, season and then skillet cook them... kinda smash burger style but without the need to really smash the crap out of the patty.

Sear em good but dont over cook them. The less cooked the wild game is the better it taste. This doesn't mean to cook it rare or anything, just understand that it doesnt take as much cooking and it cooks faster/harder than ground beef.

Honestly a better and likely more successful 1st time dish with 100% Elk/Venison would be ground taco meat.
Simply season with salt, pepper, garlic, onion, a little ground cumin, chili powder, and then add paprika in place of more chili powder if you don't want the heat from more chili powder.
Add a DRAINED can of diced tomato and chili as it cooks and u will have good taco meat.

Make taco salads, nachos, hard tacos, or get real flour tortillas and make good soft tacos.

This will give you some good experience on what to expect when cooking 100% ground venison so that you don't go in blind if/when you attempt to make burgers.

No matter which way you choose to go let us know what u do and how it turns out :)

 

[buzzy]

You also could just get cheap ground beef 70/30-75/25. Then mix 1# GB to 4# elk/venison. This is how we always mix our deer burger. Just enough fat without over powering the wild game taste. Not that we are trying to cover it. Just with the big batches we make & freeze for up to a year it turns out best. Like tallbm said let us know what you do & how it turns out.

 

[mike243]

Most folks have a food processor, a quick zip with the bacon in it will do what you want, 10 minutes in the freezer before will make it chop better, be careful about to much, grease fires can be ugly lol

 

[jmtyndall]

Thanks for the help all. I think try to chop or food-process some bacon to add it in. I'll let you know what I do and how it comes out. I think I have some time to plan because of this COVID thing