Author’s Note: This is the last installment of the two-part series detailing some of the processing I did on the deer I killed while bowhunting recently. I’ve been seeing lots if deer exhibiting the early stages of the rut season in the past few days, and I’m set to spend some more time in a tree hoping to bring a nice buck into range.
THE BUMP AND GRIND
The grinding and stuffing we do is for the purpose of making sausage, bratwurst, and hamburger. We first determine how much hamburger we want. This time it was twenty pounds. That being the case, we bought ten pounds of beef hamburger and two pounds of pork suet. The mix is 50% venison, 50% beef, with an occasional pellet of suet tossed into the mix as it runs through the grinder.
For bratwurst, we mix equal parts of venison and pork roast, along with a pre-measured packet of dried seasonings. We soak some real pork casings (bought from a butcher) for an hour or so, then rinse them internally with clear, cold water. The seasoning is hand-mixed into the ground pork/venison mix then run through the grinder a second time with a tube attachment that holds the casing. As the casing fills it is twisted at six inch intervals to create a string of ‘brats.
FREEZE THE BRATS
Both the hamburger and brats are placed in ZipVac bags. A pound of ‘burger in a bag is about right. Duane likes to make three-quarter pound flat burger patties while I like one and one-quarter pound round portions. This meat is used for spaghetti sauce, hamburgers, chili-mac, or any dish normally requiring ground beef. The brats are packaged three to six in a bag.
The final chore is making sausage. This meat is ground in the same 50-50 pork/venison ratio, but Duane mixes dry seasonings and Liquid Smoke flavoring according to his own recipe.
Certain secrets will never be shared by a true “Yooper” (the name residents of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula use for themselves) and knowledge of the exact ingredients in Duane’s sausage mix is probably something he’ll take to the grave. I do know it contains things like mustard seed, garlic powder, curing salt, “soul” seasoning, onion flakes, small cubes of pepperjack cheese, and much more. Store-bought dry seasoning is also available pre-mixed, but I recommend getting creative with your own choices. If you are going to try something like this for the first time, try two radically different batches. Next time, fine tune the one you like best.
CASE CLOSED
The casings we use for sausage are dry and about two inches in diameter. They measure about three feet in length, and are stuffed using the grinder as for bratwurst, except that different blades are inserted into the machine and a larger outflow tube is used. They weigh about six pounds apiece when filled. These are cooked at a low temperature of 165 – 170 degrees for about six hours. Duane has cooked them in his home oven on past trips, but this time we dropped them off at a local butcher for cooking in his smokehouse.
Once again, we package the finished sausage into the vacuum-pack bags for longer term freezer storage after cutting them into six-inch lengths. I wrap each short piece in a “cling” type semi-clear film, press this film tightly across the cut ends, then bag and vacuum seal them.
So our 2008 hunt got off to a great start, and we had hands-on involvement with the entire process from “deer down” to stuffing the final sausage. This tradition is something we look forward to each year. New changes creep into the experience, like “tweaking” the seasonings and trying new gear. The biggest change this year was the addition of the ZipVac system and it was welcome discovery. It will be a standard item on future hunts. Check their website, www.zipvac.net for more details.
Copyright Ray Hansen, 2008
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