Making Homemade Venison Sausage

Making our own venison sausage has been a family tradition for many years. It requires a lot of work, but the time spent together during the process is well worth it. The process of making our own venison sausage is a tradition that has been passed down through the generations. This weekend a friend and myself made 200 pounds of venison sausage. It was fun to see his 5 year old getting his hands dirty and helping. We do all the preparation steps ourselves and then take the cased sausage to a local smoker. Others smoke their own sausage. We are actually in the process ourselves of building our own smoke house.

The recipe we use calls for 1/3 pork and 2/3 venison. Pork meat is added to the venison for moisture. Venison is very lean, so it becomes extremely dry after smoking. We purchase the seasonings required for the amount of meat being made from a local meat processor. Our family's farm has the meat grinder and casing stuffer that we use. We make our own summer sausage and boil up rings, however you can make your own hot dogs, brats, etc with the right seasoning combinations and tools.

Below are the basic steps in making your own venison sausage.

1. Grind venison and pork meat together.
2. Mix the two meats together so the pork is spread evenly throughout.
3. Mix ½ of your seasoning mix thoroughly into the meat. Then repeat with the second half of seasoning.
4. Run all meat through the meat grinder again.
5. Begin stuffing the casings.
6. Tie the ends very tight, as tight as you can possibly get them.
7. Take to your sausage to a local smoker or smoke the meat yourself.

Preparing your own sausage or completed the whole process yourself can save you a decent amount of money. The sausage we made this weekend came out to costing us $1.80/pound. The summer sausage works great for lunchmeat and boil up rings make great dinners. So for $1.80/pound we feel we did pretty good. Overall, like mentioned above, making your own venison sausage is not just a money saver, the tradition of making it together with friends and family is where the true treasure lies.