Homemade Venison Sausage

Venison Sausage is a wonderful way to utilize various parts of your deer harvest and add variety to your diet. It’s a healthy, natural protein that we love using in various dishes in our home.

I Have a Love/Hate Relationship with Deer Season

Our family relies on the meat Dustin harvests to sustain us all year long. Over the course of our entire almost ten year marriage, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve purchased meat from the grocery store. Our freezer is stocked with wild turkey, venison, fish, and chickens that we raise ourselves. 

It’s about as natural as you can get, hence the love part of this relationship.

The downside to this beautiful arrangement is that the man of the house can be pretty scarce this time of year. He goes hard during deer season. Then we have to start prepping for turkey season. When that wraps up, the fishing is starting to get good…you see where I’m going with this. There’s a reason I refer to our year as “the neverending season”.

We Have Been Hard at Work

This has been a pretty fruitful year thus far, and we’ve been hard at work processing and preserving all of the venison for winter. Let me tell ya, it takes a lot of work to process a deer yourself from beginning to end.

We try to utilize as much of the deer as possible. That means steaks, backstraps, stock, neck roast, jerky, and burgers.

I’ve always wanted to make my own sausage. It’s such a versatile meat. Fry it up with eggs for breakfast, add it to a casserole, use it for spaghetti. Since I still haven’t convinced Dustin that we need our own hogs (yet), venison sausage it is.

I researched a few recipes and spice mixes, but in the end we decided to wing it. I’m not very good at following recipes. I add an extra little dash of this, a sprinkle of that, and hope for the best.

Luckily, my haphazard concoction turned out delicious.

Homemade Venison Sausage

Ingredients

• 8 pounds ground venison
• 2 pounds of pork fat (because venison is so lean)
  I called my local butcher and he gave me a wonderful deal on bulk pork fat because I seemed to be the only one buying it.  Score!
• Spice blend

Spice Blend

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tbsp sea salt
• 1 tbsp fresh ground black pepper
• 3 tbsp dried sage
• 3 tbsp paprika
• 1 tbsp crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

Directions

In a huge bowl or plastic tub, combine all ingredients and mix well.  There’s no clean way to do this, just get your hands in there and squish out your frustrations!

My Favorite Tools for Processing Venison

We have honed our skills over the years. Learning from family, YouTube, friends, and good ol’ trial and error. One thing I know is that the right tools make all the difference in the world.

Some of our favorites are:

• Sharp knives
• Meat Grinder (We have an older model that is not longer available for purchase, but I wouldn’t recommend it even if it were. It constantly gets bogged down. I’m thinking it’s time for an upgrade.)
• Deli Slicer
• Dehydrator
• Vacuum Sealer (I couldn’t find my exact model because it’s super old, but I have my eye on this one and it has great reviews.)
• Vacuum Seal Bags
• I also really love this wild game cookbook

These are all items that we’ve personally used and love. They make the entire process so much easier, and have become invaluable in our kitchen.

Storing Your Venison Sausage

We like to vacuum seal some of our sausage in one pound bags. These are great for dishes like soup, breakfast bakes, and sauces. If you press the meat flat while the sealer is removing the air from the bag, it makes it much easier to store in your freezer.

The rest of the sausage we shape into patties.  I freeze them on a baking sheet, then add them to a freezer bag so they would be easy to pull out in the morning and fry up.

Try More of Our Favorite Venison Recipes

What is your favorite way to eat venison? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments!