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Homemade Smoked Venison Sausage

Everything you need to know to make your own smoked venison sausage
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Equipment

  • Meat Grinder
  • Smoker (if smoked sausage is desired)
  • Sausage stuffer
  • Mixing Bowls
  • Measuring cups
  • Measuring spoons
  • Ziplock Freezer Bags or Vacumn Seal Machine and Bags
  • Large sheet pans, bowls, and hotel half pans.

Ingredients
  

  • 10 pounds sausage meat, ready to season
  • 7 tsp salt
  • 5 tsp black pepper
  • 1 1/4 teaspoon red pepper
  • 5 tsp sugar
  • 1 1/4 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 1/4 tsp celery salt
  • 1 1/4 tsp onion powder
  • 1 cup chopped green onions (optional)

Smaller Recipe

  • 1 pound sausage meat ready to be seasoned
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/8 teaspoon red pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon celery salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon onion salt
  • 1-2 Tablespoons green onions (optional)

Instructions
 

  • Use the above recipe, based on the amount of meat you have. Mix all seasonings together in a bowl, then sprinkle over meat.
    Mix well into the meat.
    *NOTE: I recommend grinding at least one pound of meat without seasoning first before seasoning all of your meat. Season that pound and cook a patty of sausage to make sure that you like the taste before seasoning all of your meat. Everyone’s tastes are different and you may need to adjust the seasoning mix to your taste. 
    Continue cooking and tasting until you are satisfied with the seasoning.
  • Instructions for Making Venison Sausage
  • Step 1: Deboning the meat
    All of the meat you are using will need to be deboned. While deboning make sure to cut as much of the white sinew out of the meat as you possibly can. 
    The sinew will make the meat taste bad and can clog up your grinder. Cut the meat into chunks that will easily fit into your grinder. 
    After deboning, place your meat and grinder plates and blade in the freezer to get it all really cold. The temperature of the meat needs to be very cold before grinding.
    Deboned venison ready to be put into the meat grinder.
  • Step 2: Choosing the type of meat to add to your venison
    After deboning, weigh your meat to see how many pounds of venison you have.
    Next decide what type of meat and/or fat you want to add to your deer meat. Pork fat is a good choice to use with venison for sausage.
    If you are wanting to add pork meat also, boston butts make a good choice because they are a fattier cut of pork. Pork loin is another leaner cut of meat that you could use.
    In this post and video we are making our venison sausage with beef. We are using ground beef from our own cattle that we raised.
    Our ground meat is about an 85/15%, ratio which is pretty lean.
    We use a 50/50% mix of venison and beef and find this to be a good sausage mixture. (In our sausage video we are using a beef and venison mix.)
    In the past, we haven’t added extra fat when we made our beef and venison sausage. I think that the next time we use our beef we will add some extra fat to the mix for both flavor and a moister sausage. 
    Ground beef and Venison ready to be seasoned for sausage.
  • Step 3: Grinding the meat
    Meat can be seasoned before or after grinding. In this post we will be seasoning the meat after grinding.
    If you are mixing your venison with ground beef or ground pork, it is best to grind the venison first, add to the ground meat and season all together.
    If none of the meat you are using is already ground, you can mix the meats together and add them to the grinder together.  This meat can be seasoned before grinding, we have found that it works well to season the meat before grinding. (see my note below before seasoning your meat)
    *NOTE: I recommend grinding at least one pound of meat without seasoning first before seasoning all of your meat. Season that pound and cook a patty of sausage to make sure that you like the taste before seasoning all of your meat. Everyone’s tastes are different and you may need to adjust the seasoning mix to your taste. 
    If you are using already ground beef to mix with your venison, you will want to grind your venison and any extra fat you are adding first.
    After that first grind, look at your meat and determine if you want to put it back through the grinder for a second grind.
    Then add the ground venison to the already ground beef and mix well. You don’t want or need to run the ground beef through the grinder.
    Grind the venison and extra fat with the coarse grinding plate. For our Bosch meat grinder attachment it is a #7-8 plate. We use the meat grinder attachment for the Bosch Universal mixer.
    If this will be mixed with an already ground meat you might want to do a second grind before mixing with the ground meat. 
    Venison coming out of the grinder, ground up.
  • Step 4: Seasoning The Meat
    When we make sausage we are usually processing a whole deer so we usually end up with around 30 or more pounds of sausage meat. To make seasoning the meat easier we divide it up into 10 pound portions for seasoning.
    If you are not making this large of a batch, I am also including the recipe for 1 pound of sausage so you can adjust that to the amount of meat you have. 
    Using a kitchen scale weigh out 10 pounds of ground sausage meat and place in a large stainless bowl. Measure out the seasoning recipe for 10 pounds and sprinkle over the meat while using your hands to mix through the meat. 
     Continue this step until all of your meat has been seasoned. 
    Sprinkling the seasoning onto the sausage meat.
  •  Step 5: Stuffing the Sausage
    If using natural casings they will need to be rinsed with warm water and soaked for about 15-30 minutes to prepare them for use. Each brand is different so check yours for specific directions.
    When the casings are ready, load carefully onto the stuffing tube. We use an 11/16″ tube on our Lem sausage stuffer. The brand of casing we use is Oversea Casing Company, natural hog casings. 
    Add your ground and seasoned meat mixture to the sausage stuffer and proceed using the stuffer directions. 
    After each length of casing is filled, pinch off at about 8-10″ and twist. Alternate directions with each twist. This will give you sausage links.
    stuffing the sausage with a sausage stuffer
  • Step 6: Refrigerate the Sausage Overnight
    Place the sausage links in the refrigerator overnight to let the seasoning fully absorb. The sausage will be ready to smoke the next day. 
  • Step 7: Smoking The Sausage
    Build a small fire in the fire box, there are several types of wood that are good for smoking meat, we typically use pecan because that is what we have growing here. 
    When the fire has some good hot coals it is ready to add more wood 1/2 dry and 1/2 soaked in water. The wet wood is necessary to have a slow burning fire with plenty of smoke, to smoke the sausage.
    Next, place the sausage in the smoker keeping the heat in the smoker between 150-175 degrees F. 
    Smoke the sausage for about 3-5 hours. Until the internal temperature of your sausage is at least 160 degrees when it is smoked. *This sausage is smoked, not fully cooked. It will need to be cooked before eating.
    Sausage on the smoker to be smoked
  • Step 8 Remove the sausage from the smoker, let cool.
    Removing smoked sausage from the smoker.
  • Step 9 Refrigerate sausage overnight or until completely cooled. Package and freeze.
    Vacuum sealing the finished sausage for freezing.

Nutrition

Serving: 0.33pound
Keyword deer meat, sausage, smoked sausage, venison
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