Venison sausage adds dash of variety

A hunter neighbor of ours kindly dropped off some cut, wrapped and frozen venison from the fall season. I am always so grateful for the meat – it puts a bit of variety in our menu. This year’s batch had a chuck roast, rather large, a bit much for just the two of us. So I thought, I’m going to make sausage from it.

Sausage is pretty handy. I have a couple of bean soups and a lentil soup that are improved with the addition of sausage, and I like it in spaghetti sauce. I use it sometimes instead of ground beef in a goulash-type dish or use a bit for stuffing a baked squash. I cook sausage then fry cabbage in with it.

Ruth Robbins in Waldo sent along a few pages from a book she owns, “The Venison Sausage Cookbook” by Harold Webster Jr., which looks pretty comprehensive. Lincoln Gayton in Calais referred me to a Web site, www.bowhunting.net, where there is a link to recipes. Phyllis Whittier also sent along a recipe.

As I so often do, I looked them all over and saw that there was a kind of general proportion of meat to fat. The seasonings varied depending on what kind of sausage I wanted – Italian, breakfast and so on. I decided on a spicy Italian, a Spanish sausage called chorizo and a breakfast sausage. I also decided I would make my sausage a bit leaner, even though it is a bit more crumbly than some might prefer.

We did our butchering back in January and I had saved some of the plain fat back for making sausage, and I also had trimmings from the bacon to use. Our bacon trimmings were a bit saltier and smokier than commercial bacon and gave a very nice flavor to the ground venison. I used that for the breakfast sausage with onion, sage and black pepper for seasoning.

Both bacon and salt pork are fine for making sausage if you have no other source of fat. Just try a bit of the sausage fried in a pan to see how salty it is before adding salt.

Because I was grinding up about 8 pounds of venison and about 3 or so of fat, I decided I would use the grinder attachment on my electric mixer. If I were making a smaller batch, I would get out my mom’s old hand-cranked grinder, which not only does the trick nicely but also reminds me of getting to crank it when I was a kid.

I usually make bulk sausage because I use it crumbled in so many dishes. Links aren’t quite as versatile. Once the sausage is ground and mixed, I plop a half-pound onto a piece of wax paper and roll it up. I store it in zip-top bags and pull out only what I need when I am ready to cook.

Basic Venison Sausage Mix

Yields 4 pounds of sausage.

3 pounds venison cubed and chilled

1 pound pork fat, cubed and chilled

1 tablespoon pickling salt

Toss the meat and fat together in a large bowl, and sprinkle the salt over it. Add seasonings for either of the two sausage types below, tossing so spices are evenly mixed with meat and fat. Run the meat and fat through the medium disk of your grinder (or finer to your taste). Wrap and package to freeze, or use right away.

Country Sausage

1 large onion chopped coarsely

1 tablespoon finely crumbled dried sage leaf

1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper (or more to taste)

1 teaspoon dried thyme

Spicy Italian Sausage

1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

1 to 2 teaspoons dried red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon paprika

2 teaspoons fennel seeds

2 cloves pureed garlic