I usually keep around 50 lbs of venison to grind each year. 20 lbs of Italian Sausage, 15 lbs of Breakfast Sausage & 15 lbs of burger. Any additional grind goes toward smoked sausage of some sort. Roasts go to pastrami or pot roast. Ill have to give this a pastrami a shot. I bet it makes some great sandwiches! I bet it would also be good stuffed in a large fibrous casing and then sliced.
Sounds like you have a similar processing setup to me.
The ground venison pastrami is awesome! It is actually tweaked from a Pastrami Dog (sausage) recipe so I'm sure it will go well in fibrous casings. It would be like summer sausage but pastrami instead.
I try to do 30-40 pounds Venison brats, 20-30 pounds Feral Pork Franks (depends on size and number of hogs killed), about 10 pounds of some random Venison sausage idea for the year, and I usually look to produce 30-35 pounds pure Venison grind (no fat added). The pure grind is so versatile and I can always add fat later to make sausages but often leave as is for replacement of beef grind.
The venison scrap meat first goes to grind for sausage. I then grind the ugliest/smallest roasts to make weight for the remaining amount of sausage grind I need. The rest of the roast grind remains to for my pure Venison grind.
I keep about 15 pounds of the best roasts which usually get cooked into Venison Fajittas or anything else I can use a lean roast for.
I keep all the shanks WITH the Heal muscle attached. This may be my favorite part as I make a killer Braised Venison Shank dish. It is out of this world and IMO the only way to use the shank. To me grinding shanks is just a waste and produces poor grind meat due to all that tough silver skin, tendon, and undesirable grind tissue :)
I use the pork shanks to make authentic style (well as authentic as I can get) Japanese pork ramen noodle soup in my pressure cooker. Real ramen noodle is NOTHING like the cheap instant mess from the store. Its like thinking chef boyardee canned pasta dishes are the same as hand made noodles and home made pasta dishes... complete night and day :)
Prepare to gasp... I give my brother his weight of the haul in backstrap which is usually around 30-35 pounds. The kicker is I don't clean it up, he has to do that. Saves me about 4 hours of processing time which is HUGE when doing 90% of the processing alone over 5 days at about 12 hours a day. My upper back is killing me by the end from all the leaning over to debone/cut/grind/etc lol
We bring in 5-7 animals (usually 7) from our big hunting vacation. It is usually about 6 deer and 1 feral hog or so but the hogs can add on to increase the number of animals. Also sometimes later in the year I get a chance at hogs so I can max out at about 9 animals for the year but my freezer space is really only good for about 7 with no hog being over 200 pounds.
I look forward to hearing about your hunting haul this year and seeing what you make from it :)
