I'm making venison sausage this year and need a seasoning recipe and measurements. Any recipes or advice would be much appreciated .

Venison Sausage Link Seasoning Recipe

60 lbs of trimmed venison
40 lbs of fatty pork shoulder or trimmings. You want a 20% fat mix when you are done
1-3/4 cups Kosher Salt
1-3/4 cups black pepper
1-3/4 cups onion powder
1-3/4 cups Accent
3/4 cup garlic powder
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup cayenne pepper
3/4 cup ground allspice
10 teaspoon paprika
10 teaspoon sage
10 teaspoon crushed mustard seed
20 teaspoons cure (Prague powder #1 or Instacure #1 for curing see rule #1 below)
1 gal ice water

Rule #1
If you plan to smoke your sausage you must use a Cure. Some folks may try to tell you different, but take my advice and ignore them. First time you experience botulism because you didn't use a cure in your sausage you'll thank me.

Cut all the meat into 1-2 inch cubes, then grind it through the medium plate of your meat grinder.

Take all the spices and cure and mix them well into the 1 gal of ice water.

Pour the water and spice mix into the ground meat and work it all in by hand for at least a couple of minutes to ensure a homogenous mix.

Stuff the sausage into 32-35mm natural casings and prepare the links for the smoker. I tie mine in two foot links, making them easier to handle

Drying in the Sausage Smoker

This is a method I often use. It takes a little less time than air drying, and once the links are dried to the touch, I just need to increase the smoker temperature and add the flavor wood.

Prepare the sausage links the same as for air drying, whether on racks or smoking sticks.

Put the links into the smoker, and adjust the temperature to No More Than 100 Degrees F.

Open your smoker dampers all the way and/or leave the door of your smoker open slightly. The moisture needs somewhere to escape.

Leave the sausage in the smoker with vents and door ajar until it is dry to the touch. Check it often, and be sure to check more than one link for dryness.

Insight:

If you try to dry at too high a temperature, the links will sweat (and never get dry) and the casing may become tough. Keep it between 90 and 100 degrees F. at most.
If you aren't able to regulate your smoker at the necessary low temperatures, elect to air dry instead.

If you desire a really dark, mahogany brown product, you can try adding paprika to the sausage recipe at the rate of about 1-2 tablespoons per 5 lbs of meat. This will not take the place of drying the sausage links. It will just enhance the color even more.

OK, now that you have your sausage links nice and dry to the touch, it's time to actually apply the smoke. Your sausage is dry, so now it's time to start the meat smoking process.

What's nice is once you have dried your sausage in the smoker, all you need to do next is increase the temperature and add the smoking wood.However if you air dried your links, now is when to hang the full meat smoking sticks (or in my case place the full racks) in the meat smoker.


Temperature is VERY ImportantI can't over-emphasize the importance of temperature control in the smoking phase of sausage making. If you get this part right, everything else falls into place easily.

Keep the temperature inside the sausage smoker between 160 and 165 degrees F.Max.

If you try to smoke at any higher temperatures, the fat content in your sausage will start to melt and ooze out of the casing.Fat is important. Not only does it add to the flavor of your sausage, it acts as a binding agent. Once it starts to melt, your sausage will become dry, crumbly, and much less tasty.

Take your sausage out of the smoker when it reaches an internal temperature of 152 degrees F.

This could take many hours, depending on how full your smoker is. Don't Guess. Use a meat thermometer to monitor this part of the meat smoking process.

As a rule of thumb, I like to generate smoke for 4 hours if I'm using fruitwood, pecan, oak or a blend.

Once you have attained the nice brown color and flavor that you want (3-4 hours), stop the smoke and continue to heat the sausage in the smoker until it reaches the 152 degree internal temperature. DON'T GUESS CHECK IT!

At this point, you should have a smoker full of beautiful, brown, appetizing sausage.As important as the actual smoking is though, the way you handle your sausage links from this point on will have a lot to do with determining the final quality of your product. Once the smoking process is completed, package the links and either keep them in the fridge or freeze. Use a vacuum seal machine to vacuum seal your sausage.

Jakeburks3 said:

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I'm making venison sausage this year and need a seasoning recipe and measurements. Any recipes or advice would be much appreciated .

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I'll make it real easy for you -

Zach's Seasonings out of Pasadena. Jalapeno sausage seasoning. I add a handful of additional japs and some cheese but that's it.

I spent several years working on my own blend, tweaking here and there....and in the end, their stuff was just as good and a lot easier.

Unless you are going to dedicate a lot of time and effort into making small batches with various recipies to figure out what you really like, which is a massive time consuming process that will drive you mad, you are far better off going with a proven seasoning. Set aside a small amount - 5, 10 lbs or so - and tweak theirs or try a new one.

Ill second rule #1.

Going to disagree with a few things:

1 - Cube your meat, mix the meats in whatever proportion you want.
2 - Season the cubed meat. Mix well.
3 - Grind. Let the grinder do the work on mixing the seasonings. It will do a better job than you ever could, and it doesn't alter the texture of the meat like mixing already ground meat does.

If you use enough fat you don't need water, only time I use water is when I make my German Coarse sausage, but it requires a bull binder in the recipe and I need water to mix it well. Outside of that water doesn't do anything. Soak your casings as long as you can before and between batches in the stuffer I spray a little water in to lube the sides up bu that's it.

We start out at about 120 in the smoker and every hour bump it up 10 degrees to a max of about 170-180. Then let the sausage get to internal temp of 160-162ish. Good smoke the first 3-4 hours, after that we just let the fire burn out and use the propane burner that actually controls the heat do its thing. Never had an issue with fat rendering out of the casing, sausage being too dry, etc, and we've smoked a metric crap ton of sausage over the years.

We try to hang it if temps allow in the smoker overnight before putting smoke and heat to it, it does make a difference IMO. But temps don't always allow for that unfortunately.

That looks like a pretty solid recipe, but holy hell all that measuring would drive me insane. FYI, ten teaspoons equal 1/4 cup.

Here's our recipe. It hasn't been tweaked much in the past 40 years, except for the meat ratios because pork became the other white meat.

35 pounds venison
55 pounds boneless picnic pork shoulders
10 pounds pork fat
28 ounces kosher salt
4 ounces insta-cure #1
9 ounces black pepper (16# mesh if you can get it)
3 large garlic cloves
3/4 ounce red pepper

1. Slice all the meat to fit through your grinder.
2. Roughly chop the garlic, and add that to your food processor along with roughly a cup of the salt. Grind/chop the salt and garlic until the garlic is fully incorporated. Combine with the rest of the seasonings and mix well.
3. Season the meat and toss to combine.
4. Grind the meat through a course die, and mix by hand or a meat mixer afterwards. All you're really after is getting the fat and lean more evenly distributed.
5. Regrind the meat to a fine die, then add any cheese or jalapenos at this time. Mix to combine, and check the bind by making a small patty in your hand and turning your hand over. If the patty sticks and doesn't fall, you've got the correct bind.
6. Stuff into your desired casings. We use natural hog casings, 32-35mm.
7. Hang in your smokehouse, and cold smoke for 3-4 hours.
8. Evacuate the smoke, and let hang in a cold smokehouse overnight.
9. In the morning, package and vacuum seal.

Note: if you want to make jalapeno cheese sausage, add 1 pound of high-melt cheese per 10 pounds of meat, and 1 jalapeno per pound of meat. For the peppers, get a mix of big and small ones, don't get all large peppers. I usually start with seeding half of them, reserving the membranes and seeds. I taste a bit of the chopped peppers, and if they're mild, I add more of the membranes and seeds.

Mine are uninteresting to most as I prefer mild sausage and never use garlic because I'm allergic.

Primarily salt, black pepper, white pepper and usually a bit of fresh, finely diced jalapeno without seeds.

Very similar recipe for loose sausage vs. cased (above) but like to spin some as Italian which just adds fennel.

And bratwurst.

Ice water helps make it easier to stuff and keeps the meat cold. But I don't add any either because it's usually fairly cold when we make sausage.

Take deer to M5 sausage Company in Field Store Texas. It comes back wrapped in plastic even. I used to make my own sausage. I have retired from that.

Ill chime in on the smoke vs cure comments

there are different types of smoking.....are you just smoking to add smoke flavor or are you smoking to "cook" it?

our family has been making sausage without cure for about 100 years and we just hit it with a handful of oak bark for smoke flavor and you're done......as long as you thoroughly cook it your are fine. most people think "smoked" and instantly default to the fully cooked stuff they sell at the grocery store.

+1 for the seasoning the meat before grinding comment

The problem is you're leaving the meat at temperatures for a long time that are unsafe. If you're just making sausage and packaging and freezing, then cure isn't necessary. But if you're going to be smoking for any length of time, adding a cure is prudent. Get botulism once, and you'll start adding cure.

We use the Adkins seasoning. You can order directly from him on the phone for under $10 per bag. Each bag does 50lbs.

We add cure and smoke at 130 degrees for anywhere from 2-4 hours.

Meat ratio is 66/33 venison to pork.

HTownAg98 said:

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The problem is you're leaving the meat at temperatures for a long time that are unsafe. If you're just making sausage and packaging and freezing, then cure isn't necessary. But if you're going to be smoking for any length of time, adding a cure is prudent. Get botulism once, and you'll start adding cure.

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agreed, our smoke sessions are only about 15 minutes and its literally just smoke with almost zero heat......then its back in the fridge until we package.

HTownAg98 said:

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The problem is you're leaving the meat at temperatures for a long time that are unsafe. If you're just making sausage and packaging and freezing, then cure isn't necessary. But if you're going to be smoking for any length of time, adding a cure is prudent. Get botulism once, and you'll start adding cure.

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Yeah, pan sausage, chili grind, burger grind, etc. gets no cure. No need for it. All link sausage that is going in the smoker gets cure mixed with the seasoning blend no matter what.

The Zach's seasoning we use even tells you on the package how much cure to add for the 25lbs of meat. It's easy and simple and pretty hard to screw up.

You can order Granzin's seasoning online

IMO double grinding is the way to go. It mixes your seasonings better than hand mixing and makes for a better texture in the sausage.

My family has been making cold smoked link sausage for over 100 years without cure. We use saltpeter for dried sausage but it's usually in the teens to 30s outside when we make it so temperature isn't an issue.


Its stuffed then hung on dowels inside the smokehouse, smoked overnight, pulled off the dowels then vac sealed and frozen immediately. I haven't ever heard about a single person getting sick from our sausage in my lifetime.

Consider yourself lucky. If you're cold smoking, and not doing it too long, and getting the meat cooled quickly, you probably weren't growing enough bacteria to make anyone sick. That's not a chance most people aren't willing to take.

We used to do that too when I was a kid, and I don't recall anyone getting sick. But we started adding cure for safety reasons.

Download the Excel calculators from this site:

Mesquite Country Sausage Recipes - TexasBowhunter.com Community Discussion Forums

The basic link sausage is pretty good. And, this is measuring by weight, not volume, which is the way to go.

Bonfire97 said:

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Download the Excel calculators from this site:

Mesquite Country Sausage Recipes - TexasBowhunter.com Community Discussion Forums

The basic link sausage is pretty good. And, this is measuring by weight, not volume, which is the way to go.

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+1,000.

I have FOMO with making sausage. We have a recipe that we like and it works, but there's countless other options out there. I guess we could make a bunch of 3-5 lbs batches and see what happens, but if it's not good you wasted your time and meat.

I've made a lot, helped my cousin make a lot (an El Campo Brandl), and had a lot made. There is no "one link to rule them all" but this one comes close. I normally don't like it really fatty sausage, but it works better in the holy voodoo mix, go more fatty than you would normally.



For anyone using Zachs, go heavy on their seasoning. We buy some from them when I don't want a custom mix and find it a bit bland for us. For their hot Italian, I'll go 25% extra and its never too salty or hot.

HTownAg98 said:

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Bonfire97 said:

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Download the Excel calculators from this site:

Mesquite Country Sausage Recipes - TexasBowhunter.com Community Discussion Forums

The basic link sausage is pretty good. And, this is measuring by weight, not volume, which is the way to go.

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+1,000.

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This. 100%

The recipes are SOLID too. Made several varieties and they were all super good.

These sausage making threads are some of my favorite every year. Been making sausage for the past 50+ years and always pick up one or two good tips.

Been using those spreadsheets for years now. Have changed the recipes quite a bit, but as a start you can't beat those.

Decided to make a batch over the weekend.