Venison - Ratios

[illini40]

Hello

What ratio of venison to pork butt do you recommend for snacks sticks and/or sausage?

Or do you recommend beef over pork, for mixing with venison?

Besides jerky, I’ve never used venison for any cured meat or sausage.

 

[tallbm]

Hello

What ratio of venison to pork butt do you recommend for snacks sticks and/or sausage?

Or do you recommend beef over pork, for mixing with venison?

Besides jerky, I’ve never used venison for any cured meat or sausage.

Good question.

I just buy trimmed pork back fat and go 80% venison meat 20% pork fat. I make amazing sausage with it all the time. Should work for sticks.

I take the approach that I want as much venison in my final product as possible and only add the minimal amount of other stuff which in this case would be fat.

As for pork butts, they are already about 80% meat and 20% fat so when you add venison you basically skew the meat to fat ratio since venison has no real fat plus you wont like the flavor of venison fat so just go with the meat.

I read of guys mixing like 50/50 venison meat with pork butt, which always makes me really wonder how well their stuff comes out. It could come out just fine and only doing it would tell but conventional sausage meat to fat ration are from 70/30 to 85/15 so I'm a little skeptical on 50/50 porkbutt to venison combos.

Someone who does pork butt + venison will chime in for sure but this is some food for thought on how you may want to approach it :)

 

[indaswamp]

I like 60% venison and 40% pork. The overall meat to fat ratio being around 25% so with the venison being lean, 100% of the fat is in the pork portion. so roughly 60-65% of the pork portion is pork fat.

I rather pork fat in my venison sausages, but I do mix in beef brisket trim fat with venison for ground meat.

 

[illini40]

Good question.

I just buy trimmed pork back fat and go 80% venison meat 20% pork fat. I make amazing sausage with it all the time. Should work for sticks.

I take the approach that I want as much venison in my final product as possible and only add the minimal amount of other stuff which in this case would be fat.

As for pork butts, they are already about 80% meat and 20% fat so when you add venison you basically skew the meat to fat ratio since venison has no real fat plus you wont like the flavor of venison fat so just go with the meat.

I read of guys mixing like 50/50 venison meat with pork butt, which always makes me really wonder how well their stuff comes out. It could come out just fine and only doing it would tell but conventional sausage meat to fat ration are from 70/30 to 85/15 so I'm a little skeptical on 50/50 porkbutt to venison combos.

Someone who does pork butt + venison will chime in for sure but this is some food for thought on how you may want to approach it :)

Thanks for the input. It sounds like I need to try to find where I can source some pork back fat.

I like 60% venison and 40% pork. The overall meat to fat ratio being around 25% so with the venison being lean, 100% of the fat is in the pork portion. so roughly 60-65% of the pork portion is pork fat.

I rather pork fat in my venison sausages, but I do mix in beef brisket trim fat with venison for ground meat.

Are you using all pork back fat, or how are you getting to a 75/25 final ratio with 60% of the pork being fat? Are you using pork butt some how? Thank you for the insight.

 

[illini40]

Also, is pork belly an option to mix into venison?

 

[pineywoods]

Personally I use beef fat any time I can I think it has a taste closer to venison than pork does. If I want pork tasting sausage then I just make it with pork and save the venison.
For sausage I usually do about a 25% fat content
For burger mix I do about a 15% fat content
I also try to mix some 5% fat content to use for making meatballs and such

 

[crazymoon]

I40, I use pork butt BUT not the pork back fat. A 60-40 to 70-30 mix does the trick with a nice moist sausage. I save the pork back fat for Umai dry cure sausage with vennie.

 

[illini40]

I40, I use pork butt BUT not the pork back fat. A 60-40 to 70-30 mix does the trick with a nice moist sausage. I save the pork back fat for Umai dry cure sausage with vennie.

So what is the ratio of venison to pork butt that you use? 60 venison and 40 pork butt? Or, other way around?

 

[indaswamp]

Are you using all pork back fat, or how are you getting to a 75/25 final ratio with 60% of the pork being fat? Are you using pork butt some how? Thank you for the insight.

Yes, I use pork back fat. Here is an example:
For a 20 pound batch, I will need 12# lean venison, 8# pork. The pork butt is already 20-25% fat. The venison is 100% lean so what you need to do is figure out how much fat to add for the venison.

12# X 0.25 = 3# pork fat to achieve a 75%/25% ratio.

So I need to add 3# of pork fat into that 8# of pork, which gives me 5# pork butt and 3# pork back fat.

 

[tallbm]

Also, is pork belly an option to mix into venison?

I would imagine u can use pork belly as it seems like bacon is mostly fat haha.

If you have a butcher shop you can call them up and ask if they can save you some pork fat (back fat is usually what it is).

At meat/fat ratios of 80/20 the math is super simple. 5 pounds sausage = 4 pounds meat 1 pound fat. So 10 pounds is 8 pounds meat 2 pounds fat. Make increments of 5 or 10 pounds from there.

Depending on the type of sausage I am making I will use beef fat. Venison to me taste more like beef than pork so when I make ground venison pastrami sandwich meat (basically same as sausage but formed in loaves and smoked) I use beef fat to get that good beefy flavor since it is pastrami.
When I make venison brats or franks I use pork fat.

I always have 3-5 pounds of beef fat in the freezer that I safe from my brisket trimming. 3 pounds of beef fat means I can make up to 15 pounds of venison sausage whenever the mood strikes me. I also grind up my beef fat too anytime I'm going to grind something this way I can vac seal it and mix ground fat with 100% ground venison (how i do my venison) whenver the mood strikes me to make sausage :)

How many pounds of pure venison do you have?

You could always buy pork buts when on sale and cut the fat cap off and use that fat. I bet you can get 2 pounds or so of fat from a 10 pound pork butt. That means u could make 10 pounds of venison sausage at 80/20 (8 pounds ground venison 2 pounds ground pork fat).

Then turn around and cut chops out of the pork butts OR grind that for a less fatty pork ground meat :)