Venison Summer Sausage & Snack Sticks

Last week I was given a cooler full of venison that included some of these:

10 tubes (1 1/2 lb ea.) of very lean ground venison. I used 10 1/2 lbs

Because the venison was too lean for sausage I picked up some beef fat trimmings from the butcher and ground up 2 1/2 lbs to give me roughly an 80/20 mix.


The Summer Sausage cure mix: pickling salt, Cure#1, fresh cracked Pepper, mustard seed & powder, coriander, garlic, brown sugar & powdered buttermilk.


Mixed it all up and covered tightly to keep air out, then into the fridge for the 2-3 day curing process.


This gives me 13 pounds of summer sausage mix. 10 pounds will be use for summer sausage 3 pounds will have additional spices mixed in to make some slim jim style snack sticks.

See you in a few days !

can't wait. ya ho....

cool, waiting almost patiently......

So Cliff, are you making this VSS to bring to the NEPA SO?

Art

Nice when you got good friends that bring ya game for making sausage.

Yeah bring some to PA

Looks great Tent!

ACW3 said:

So Cliff, are you making this VSS to bring to the NEPA SO?

Art

Click to expand...

I am trying to work it so I can get that weekend off (its suppose to be my weekend both to work & lead music at church). Keeping my fingers and toes crossed!

nepas said:

Nice when you got good friends that bring ya game for making sausage.

Click to expand...

It is definitely nice! Some of this summer sausage will go to the fellow who brought me the venison, retired educator & local football legend Coach Rudy Sharky (the local stadium is named after him). It was a huge deer he harvested this past hunting season.

Progress Update:

After 3 days curing in the fridge 10 lbs of the sausage was stuffed into cotton casings and the other 3 lbs had additional spices mixed in to make pepperoni snack sticks.

Additional pepperoni spices: Paprika, Cayenne Pepper, Red Pepper Flakes & ground Fennel Seed.


Cold smoked for 4 hours using Sugar maple pellets in foil pouches for smoke (I love the smell & flavor this gave).


Raised pit temp and cooked to an internal temp of 150° brought inside to cool & bloom on some wire racks.


Some of the pepperoni sticks went into the dehydrator to dry a bit overnight and per NePas' suggestion the rest went into a paper bag to dry in the fridge for a couple days. I'll be interested to see the taste/color difference.


A couple of closeup shots:




They taste good!

They look good, too.

Art

Whooo, nice!

What Art & Squirt said!

what deb said also.

Good looking stuff there Cliff! Can't wait till fall when things slow down I really want to give sausage making a try, and yours and Nepas stuff is great inspiration.