Venison Breakfast Sausage Recipe

Making venison breakfast sausage is very similar to making venison Italian sausage, which I cover in detail here. In this video above and the article below, I demonstrate how to make 5 pounds of breakfast sausage, so most of the equipment and ingredients will be the same, though this time, there won’t be any casings—this will be sausage patties rather than links—and, of course, the seasoning will be a different flavor. I’m also using a vacuum chamber to vacuum seal the meat this time around.

Pork fat and beef fat are the two most popular for adding to meat. What I choose depends on what type of sausage I make. For this recipe, I use pork fat only because it is more traditional. Of course, you can use beef fat if that is what you have on hand or more easily get a hold of. A 20% ratio of fat is the minimum I would use for sausage, and going with a higher ratio (25%-30%) would be recommended if you want a juicier final product.

Pork shoulder or pork butt also work because they are high in fat, but they are more expensive options. For me, that defeats the purpose since I’m trying to save money by hunting meat in the first place. But if you’re really trying to tame down any flavors that hesitant wild game eaters may pick up on, mixing in pork or beef meat will do the trick.

This recipe uses whitetail deer, but elk, pronghorn antelope, mule deer, moose, and other similar species will work just as well. LEM offers “fresh” and “cured” sausage seasoning packets. These change the cooking style, texture, and color of the sausages. With cured sausages, it would be best to allow them to cure and “set up” before cooking them. As for the fresh ones, you could cook them right away. Again, consider buying both and see which style you and your family and friends like the best. We enjoy both options. If you are attempting to make this with waterfowl, I suggest going with the cured seasoning options and using less meat with more fat so that the seasoning really gets into the meat.

Once you get the hang of it, you can easily make your own seasoning mix, but I still choose to use the premade blends from LEM due to time and cost.

Prep Time: 15-20 minutes

Equipment

• Meat Grinder w/ coarse and fine grind plates and stuffing tube
• Dual grind adapter for the meat grinder (optional)
• Vac Sealer or Chamber Vac and vacuum bags (optional)
• Meat bags (optional)

Ingredients

• 4 lbs. venison
• 1 lb. pork fat
• LEM Backwoods Fresh Breakfast Sausage Seasoning

One noteworthy difference between making breakfast sausage and brats, Italian sausage, or Polish sausage is that for the latter three, you grind the entire mixture of fat and meat and then incorporate the seasoning packet and water into the final mix by hand. With breakfast sausage, you add the seasoning and water after the first grind and before the final grind.

Steps

First, check the fat and remove any unusable parts (such as any pieces that contain lymph nodes, as those can affect the flavor). Cut it into chunks, weigh it on the scale to ensure you have the right amount, and set it to the side.

Next, cut the meat into chunks. As you go, put the chunks into the grinder hopper, adding roughly one part fat for every four parts of meat. It’s best to keep the meat and fat semi-frozen to help them move through the grinder more easily.

Once the hopper is full, coarse-grind the meat and fat into a bowl or meat lug (use the coarse grind plate on the grinder). I use a dual grind adapter on my grinder, so I can run it through once, and it essentially gets ground “twice,” but otherwise, I would manually run the meat through the coarse plate twice.

Once the venison and pork fat are coarse-ground, take the breakfast sausage seasoning packet and mix it with the water. Pour the seasoning in with your meat. A little tip: I like to not put the full five ounces of water in the measuring cup when I mix it. That way, after I dump it, I can add the remaining water back in to capture the last of the seasoning still sticking to the sides of the cup. Mix the meat and seasoning around in the lug by hand. Make sure that everything is incorporated really well.

It’s time to switch to the fine grinding plate, so unplug your grinder (it should always be unplugged anytime you’re cleaning it or switching out plates). When replacing plates, make sure there is no meat stuck around where the new plate will seal up against the cutter – you don’t want a gap there. Otherwise, ground meat won’t come out of the shooter as easily.

Load the ground mix back up onto the hopper. At this point, you can simply grind it all out if you’re going to make sausage patties now or put pre-formed patties into a chamber vac to use later. You could also put the meat in meat bags. I like to use LEM’s meat packaging system for that. I demonstrate both options in the video above.

In either case, keep in mind this meat has been worked with, and it's not as frozen now, so the process will go a little slower than before. Just take your time, and don't force-feed the meat into your grinder. If you’re loading meat bags and lucky enough to have extra help in the kitchen, someone can push the meat into the chute while the other person manages the sausage coming out and going into the bags.

Once it’s in sausage patty or bulk form, cook it up in a pan the way you would cook any breakfast sausage you bring home—and enjoy!

--Wild Game Cook