So I went to the local grocery store to get the stuff I needed to make summer sausage, and to get some beef fat to add to the ground venison. One site suggests a 10% ratio of fat to meat, so for 20 lbs of ground meat I needed 2 lbs of beef fat. The butcher was more than happy to give me as much beef fat as I wanted, for FREE! Which makes the overall cost of our venison uber cheap!!! As in pennies a pound. We used the same grinder to grind up the beef fat. And while DH was slicing up the fat chunks, and grinding away I started mixing up the sausage.For this recipe I used three pounds of venison, and two pounds of ground beef.
One of the ingredients is fresh ground pepper, and I wasn't about to take the time using my hand grinder, so I dumped the peppercorns in my spare coffee grinder and went to town.
The spices and water get mixed together in a bowl and then added to the meat. I did increase the garlic to 2 tsp instead of the 1 tsp they called for. I LOVE garlic.
The next step is to mix for two minutes, so I removed my rings, and washed up real good....then dug in with both hands
Once two minutes is up, time to cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit in the fridge at least overnight, but no more than three days, mixing once a day.
Set the oven to 350,
and start forming the logs, about 2" in diameter.
You will also need either a broiler pan, or a pan with a rack over it. If you don't have access to either of those things, you can put a drip pan under the middle rack and place the sausages directly on the oven rack. Just remember you will have to clean the rack afterwords.
After the sausage has baked for an hour and a half, remove from the oven and take them out of the foil and put them on paper towels to absorb the rest of the fat.
Then once cooled (or while hot if you just can't wait) slice and serve!
Happy Snacking!
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