Venison & Elk Summer Sausage

[Kevin A]

I was fortunate to receive from a friend at church a large amount of venison & elk, some ground, mostly steaks & the like.
I thought I'd go ahead and make some summer sausage with the ground. Using Len Poli's 'venison SS' recipe.

First the dry ingredients:


Had four pounds of ground venison and four pounds of ground elk. Looked quite lean.


To this lean meat, I added 1.5 pounds of fresh-ground pork fat:


Next came the dry ingredients. I mixed the NFDM & Fermento with water and poured this into the meat mix:


After a good, thorough mixing, this was stuffed into four 2.5" mahogany casings.
The leftover from the stuffer I fired up (chef's sample!). It tasted really good! The apple-wood smoke will only improve what I thought was an excellent tasting sausage! This was my first taste of venison in over 15 or 20 years.  ;)

Into the smoker. These will get about 3-4 hours of applewood pellet smoke.


After the smoke, a quick poach and we're about finished...
Oops.....not quite!

Sometime during the 3-hour smoke, I must have had a huge temperature spike because when I opened the door to the smoker I saw this...

Four shriveled chubs hanging above pool of rendered fat! :-[ :o
I attribute the temp spike to my pellets catching fire and raising the internal temp of the smoker to well-past the 'fat out' stage.
I blame myself for not keeping a diligent eye on the smoke (trying to do 10 other things) and so the results were less than satisfying.
Shriveled, grease-filled chubs.....Our great dane got an unexpected treat.

Good news I've plenty more venison to use. So I'll give this another shot in the near future.

Kevin

[NePaSmoKer]

Looks good Kevin.

Sux when ya have a slight set back. Just lemme know if you need  me to take any of the game meat off yer hands  ;D

[mikecorn.1]

Man that socks!! I bet the dog was happy about the mishap. ;)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[slowpoke]

Sorry for your loss,but on a brighter note,we all learn by your mistakes lol Thanks for sharing.

[Kevin A]

Yes indeed, the new mantra is: "Watch Those Temps!"  ;)

I'm gonna try this recipe again soon as I really enjoyed the pre-smoke flavor (a good sign!).

Kevin

[pikeman_95]

Kevin
Sorry about your loss. I think this is where I think I will invest in one of the remote temperature alarms. I will will keep track of those temps just incase something catches fire. Even with my big smoker there is always the chance of a grease fire. I have never had one but there is a chance never the less. Is there a way to cover your pellets to make sure that they only smolder and can not catch fire. I have a separate smoke generator that provides my smoke and I use a charcoal starter to make the chips I use smoke. It has a cover that eliminates the oxygen so it can not catch fire even though the element on the starter is red hot inside the chips. I am going to work out some kind of control that cycles the element off and on to extend the chip burn time. I did find some timers that has 15 minute time intervals. If I use it with a time delay relay I can run the element as long as I want. This should let me extend my smoke producing time. With the relay it will run from seconds to hours. They are vary rangeble.
Kirby

[Kevin A]

Kevin
Sorry about your loss. I think this is where I think I will invest in one of the remote temperature alarms.

Kibry, normally I use my maverick probes to keep track of temps of BOTH the meat & the smoker, but this time I was in a pinch for time (prepping to leave town), so I opted not to use it—I mean, what could possibly go wrong?  :o

Kevin

[Sam3]

Kevin,

What was temp were you looking to stay out for the 3 hours?

Sam

[Kevin A]

Kevin,

What was temp were you looking to stay out for the 3 hours?

Sam

Sam

I usually will try to keep the temps in the 135-145° range during the smoke. Lower is ok, too.
I'll start at around 120° & gradually increase the temp over the 3 hours.
Obviously, spiking to around 180° for an extended period is not ideal and has dire consequences.  :o :-[

Kevin

[Sam3]

Kevin,

What was temp were you looking to stay out for the 3 hours?

Sam

Sam

I usually will try to keep the temps in the 135-145° range during the smoke. Lower is ok, too.
I'll start at around 120° & gradually increase the temp over the 3 hours.
Obviously, spiking to around 180° for an extended period is not ideal and has dire consequences.  :o :-[

Kevin

Thanks Kevin, I do the same. Start at 130 and rise gradually per hour. Just didn't know exactly what you did and/or how that happened.

It's funny, but I pulled out the same recipe last night and I'm defrosting my Venison in the refrig now. Then today I saw your post.  :D
I use the Auber with my Bradley and that helps with the temps greatly.

Happy smoking my friend!