I've been lurking over
Bearcarver
's index lately and decided to try out his Bear Logs (you can find the step-by-step recipe here). A friend of mine needed to clean out his freezer for a moose he just shot, so I got a whole bunch of his ground mule deer from last year's kill.
I began with 9 lbs of ground venison and started the curing process Monday evening and had 'em smoked on my MES30 by Wednesday evening. I used a 12" AMZNPTS filled with oak pellets.
My kids love meat sticks, so I took 2lbs off the top of this batch and rolled up some meat sticks to cook along with these loaves. Like
Bearcarver
I didn't use any casings and I found the rolling of the sticks to be quit relaxing.
These things are delicious! They will definitely be my go to when I need to clean out the freezer.
A few observations from my experience:
For some reason, I had a heck of a time getting them up to temperature. I followed
Bearcarver
's cooking method, but by Wednesday evening they still weren't rising in temp. I thought they'd be done before I went in for church, but they were still at 129° when I had to leave. So I just left 'em and decided to hurry home afterwards. When I got home (3 hours later) they were up to 135°. So I set the oven to 350° and brought 'em inside. They rose to 165° in about 15 minutes. I can't figure out for the life of me why they hovered in the 130° area for so long when my smoker temp was in the 195°-205° range. The upside to this was that they got some serious smoke laid on 'em since they were in the smoker for so long.
I'm very grateful for the free packages of ground venison from my friend, but he packages his deer straight, whereas I normally mix in beef tallow to give mine an 85/15 fat mixture. I decided to just go with the straight lean deer and see how it turns out. Next time I'll add in some fat. They're a bit on the dry side, but no matter - these things are still delicious and definitely won't make it past hunting season.
My wife suggested today that I should throw in mayonnaise to give them moisture. We do this when we make burgers and it makes the juiciest burgers ever. 2 TBSP per pound of ground meat. I don't know how that'll work on the smoker, but I'll give it a shot and update everyone how it worked.
I mixed a few loaves with jalapeno and cheddar. Mmmmm! And I think the cheese gave off a little bit of that needed fat moisture the lean deer needed.
And here's the group photo (you can see the grainy texture from the lean deer)
Bearcarver
's index lately and decided to try out his Bear Logs (you can find the step-by-step recipe here). A friend of mine needed to clean out his freezer for a moose he just shot, so I got a whole bunch of his ground mule deer from last year's kill.I began with 9 lbs of ground venison and started the curing process Monday evening and had 'em smoked on my MES30 by Wednesday evening. I used a 12" AMZNPTS filled with oak pellets.
My kids love meat sticks, so I took 2lbs off the top of this batch and rolled up some meat sticks to cook along with these loaves. Like
Bearcarver
I didn't use any casings and I found the rolling of the sticks to be quit relaxing.These things are delicious! They will definitely be my go to when I need to clean out the freezer.
A few observations from my experience:
For some reason, I had a heck of a time getting them up to temperature. I followed
Bearcarver
's cooking method, but by Wednesday evening they still weren't rising in temp. I thought they'd be done before I went in for church, but they were still at 129° when I had to leave. So I just left 'em and decided to hurry home afterwards. When I got home (3 hours later) they were up to 135°. So I set the oven to 350° and brought 'em inside. They rose to 165° in about 15 minutes. I can't figure out for the life of me why they hovered in the 130° area for so long when my smoker temp was in the 195°-205° range. The upside to this was that they got some serious smoke laid on 'em since they were in the smoker for so long.I'm very grateful for the free packages of ground venison from my friend, but he packages his deer straight, whereas I normally mix in beef tallow to give mine an 85/15 fat mixture. I decided to just go with the straight lean deer and see how it turns out. Next time I'll add in some fat. They're a bit on the dry side, but no matter - these things are still delicious and definitely won't make it past hunting season.
My wife suggested today that I should throw in mayonnaise to give them moisture. We do this when we make burgers and it makes the juiciest burgers ever. 2 TBSP per pound of ground meat. I don't know how that'll work on the smoker, but I'll give it a shot and update everyone how it worked.
I mixed a few loaves with jalapeno and cheddar. Mmmmm! And I think the cheese gave off a little bit of that needed fat moisture the lean deer needed.
And here's the group photo (you can see the grainy texture from the lean deer)
