TallBM:
What lean meat cut are you using for your sausage? I don't have access to any venison until next season but may get a few wild pigs if my friend does his job killing animals. I'll stop by a local butcher shop this week to see if they'll sell fat trimmings for a reasonable price.
The stuffer EDD is tomorrow along with some seasoning packets from Owens BBQ. I ordered their Sweet Italian Sausage and Ground and Formed Bacon packs for 25# of meat. Their instructions say to use 50/50 venison or beef and pork. They also list a couple of different ratios but a during a phone call with them they advised against all pork.
We may grind up some meat for dog food first just to get the hang of things.
The grinder was delivered by UPS. The package looked beat up but the inside packaging seemed OK. That 1.5 HP grinder is a beast! I need to get a table on wheels and leave it there so I can roll it around the kitchen when needed. Lifting it each time would definitely be a strain on the back. I was thinking of getting a small stainless bottom tool chest because it has several drawers to store attachments and things. I don't know if the Boss Lady will go for that though.
Fair warning, I don't think I'm capable of a short post lol :D
The good thing about deer and feral hogs is that they are generally very lean. You may get a feral sow now and then with a good amount of fat and you can use it but most of the time they don't have any usable fat and when you process the animals and you follow good meat processing practices you will end up removing any of the little useless fat on the animals. Plus humans don't really like the taste of venison fat if there is any. We are mostly beef and pork fat lovers.
After I thoroughly clean my animals while processing (clean meaning removing all non edible, non desirable tissue and bone) I have very very good meat for sausage and grind.
Here is a HUGE nugget of information I learned when it comes to processing and it is one of the major reasons I have such good quality meat and have never ever had gamey meat of any kind.
If you have something on the meat or animal you would NOT throw into a skillet and immediately eat then it should NOT go into your sausage or pure grind!!!!
Follow that rule and you will clean off hand fulls of thin translucent skin on the outside of muscles, sliver skin, tendon, piddly bits of useless fat, cartilage, and blood shot tissue.
So what do you do with cuts like the shanks, necks, and other pieces with excess undesirable tissue? You don't grind them. You use those for long low temp cooks like braised dishes or long smokes at like 225F+ so all of that undesirable tissue breaks down and imparts great flavor for that kind of cook. You will NOT get great flavor out of that tissue in a sausage or quick fry up where the undesirable tissue doesn't break down at all
For sausage I grind the following:
- all of the scrap meat which comes as I debone front legs, back legs, loins, backstrap, and any big pieces from portions like the neck if I kept the necks. I generally don't keep venison ribs, flanks, or necks because TX does and spikes don't have much meat in those areas and I find myself lucky when i get over 90 pound does and spikes. I meat hunt. Hogs don't really have much of a neck and I head/neck shoot them. I always try to keep the hog ribs if I can!
- I use front legs strictly for sausage grind because
- The smaller, uglier, roasts from the back leg (top round, bottom round, chuck, etc.)
- With hogs I never have enough deboned pork from the pig to be picky and almost all deboned cuts gets ground for sausage (not including the shanks, flanks, and ribs). If I any left over weight I try to keep backstrap or the plumpest back leg roast for cooking other pork dishes :( When you need need 24-32 pounds of pork for sausage the whole animal will basically get ground.
My pure grind:
- I use all but the best roasts from the back leg (top round, bottom round, chuck, etc.) to hit my pure grind numbers. If I am keeping 15 pounds of roasts then I pull the best 15 pounds and the rest of the roasts go for pure grind and/or sausage grind.
- Don't gasp... I use venison backstrap and tenderloin
. I don't fry much food and it is by far the best way I have eaten backstrap and tenderloin so one year I decided to speed up my processing time and just grind all of my cleaned backstrap and tenderloins. It turned out AMAZING!!! I will never hesitate to grind those pieces again.
Parts Not to Grind:
The following cuts of the animal are not worth the time cleaning for grind because they are riddled with undesirable tissue and by the time you clean it all you have spent 45 minutes to get enough meat to fit in the palm of 1 hand. These cuts have way better uses or can be discarded to the pets, buzzards, etc.
- Shanks plus the Heal - WAY too much silver skin, tendon, and other junk that makes them bad for grinding. If you would not or could not eat this after throwing in a skillet then it is not for grind. HOWEVER this is probably the BEST cut of the animal that people have no clue about and is possibly my favorite! Do a quick clean up of these guys and then braise or slow cook these guys for about 3.5-4 hours at 325F in the oven and you have out of this world food! This applies for both Venison and Hog shanks.
- Flanks - there is hardly any meat on these guys. For hogs you might be able to do bacon from them. For Venison you toss these or chop for dog food. Attempt to pull the meat out of one and you will see they are pointless to full with on wild animals.
- Necks - Much like the shank the neck is riddled with connective tissue and will fool you into thinking it is full of meat you can use for grind. If your deer is big enough (140 pounders or so) you can cut as one entire piece around the entire neck and you will have a flappy neck roast cut. You can slow cook or braise style cook the neck for pulled bbq venison or something like that. Smaller venison necks are dog food scrap or not worth fooling with. I only have so much cooler space so venison necks take up too much space for such little return and do not make the trip back home. Hog necks... what neck lol.
When you process deer or wild hogs you will have to make sacrifices based on how much sausage and/or pure grind you want. Meat processors kind of condition you to think it is the other way around, often by allowing you to pick all the cuts in the world and then saying what is left over will be grind. Guess what, they often are adding pork butts or brisket to your sausages for "fat" which really turns into a 100 pound deer producing 200 pounds of meat :P
I have found the best approach to simply be:
- Debone and clean all front leg meat, back leg meat, backstrap, and tenderloins
- Weight the meat to figure out how much you have
- Determine how much sausage grind and how much pure grind you want to have
- Whatever is left over, if anything is, will be your steaks and roasts
- Do not count necks, ribs, shanks (keep the heal on the shank), and flanks as part of your overall weight as they are not desirable for grind and/or not worth the hours you will spend to separate the little bit of meat from the rest of the tissue
- Grind your sausage grind and keep separate
- Grind your pure grind and keep separate
- Make sausage from sausage grind
- Bag your pure grind
- Realize this has taken about 3-4 days to do and then take a couple of days off from meat processing
- Enjoy the food :)
I have found some amazing videos of a REAL butcher breaking down a deer into all of the meat cuts. Its about a 5 part series and ABSOLUTELY beats the crap out every other "processing" video you will likely find on youtube (there is a lot of poor meat processing video out there).
Let me know if you are interested and I'll make a post about it for you and everyone else to see how to properly break down a deer. It is about 95% the same for feral hogs so the info is invaluable for us meat processing hunters :)
I hope this manifest of info helps :)
