Hunting season was quite rewarding this year. I wound up with about 100 lbs of deer meat and 100 lbs of wild hog. Of course this meant it was time to make some sausage. I found my old sausage stuffer that is about 100 years old and set up my Kitchen Aid mixer with its grinder attachment. I ground up all the meat once with the course grinding plate and then again with the small plate. I also ground up 30 pounds of fatback. Fatback is excellent to use in sausage because it does not give a strong flavor. You can use it and still get the flavor of what is your primary meat. The ratios I used for the sausage was 4:1:5 Deer to fat to pork. This gave me a nice sausage that was not to fat. If I would have been using pork shoulder or Boston Butts I could have left out the fatback, but the wild hog is much leaner than pork that you will buy at the grocery store. I make many different type of sausage, breakfast, hot and mild, hot italian, polish, keilbasa, jalapeno and cheese, poblano, and chorizo. I will try to get up some of the recipes so everyone can give it a try. Here are a few photos of the process.
My old stuffer, I can only imagine how many sausages have been stuffed on this old hand crank stuffer.
Filling the hog casings with some keilbasa.
Fresh Jalapeno and Cheese Venison Sausage
- 4 lbs Venison
- 1 lb Fatback
- 5 lbs pork butt
- 1/2 lb pork fat
- 16 oz cubed sharp cheddar
- 6 Large jalapenos, small dice
- 6 Tbl Kosher salt
- 2 Tbl black pepper
- 1 6 oz can Tomato Paste
- 1/4 c Garlic powder
Mix salt, pepper, garlic and tomato paste with 1 cup cold water until dissolved.
Combine meat, fat, cheese, jalepenos and spice mixture together until well mixed.
Stuff into pig casings.
If you smoke it, add 2 tsp of Prague Powder #1 when you add the spices. Cold smoke for about 4 hours.
My smoker was about 120 degrees. Under 100 would be better but with my BBQ Pit i can not get it that cool.
Texas Style Cuisine 