Recipe: How to Make Venison Sausage

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Hunting in our house has become a family ordeal. With five kids, homeschooling, working with farmers, landowners, food banks and running NoHungryPeople.org, food definitely takes up a lot of our time.

The fact that all we eat in our home is 100 percent wild, healthy, lean, hunter-harvested venison is a definite perk for all the hard work. When Dad comes home from a hunt with fresh meat in the back of the truck, all the kids jump into action. The first question is always the same: "Daddy, are we having sausage tonight?"

We use this exact recipe at our landowner meetings, farmers market cooking demonstrations, farm to fork dinners and all of our educational workshops at the North Carolina cooperative extension offices for Backyard Bow Pro.

There's no fat, no pork and no lack of great flavor in this super healthy venison sausage recipe. This is by far my favorite recipe; it has won me many cook-offs and landed me hundreds of acres of prime hunting land.

If you butcher your own deer, save every scrap piece of meat you cut off and place it in a Ziploc bag to use later. People might say I am crazy, but for an excellent sausage you need excellent meat. That's why I like to add at least one backstrap to the mix. Make sure to cut out as much fat and sinew as you can to make sure it will have a great flavor and texture.

Notice that this recipe has zero fat in it. Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time adding fat to one of the leanest and healthiest red meats you can put in your body.

With this recipe, I leave out the fat, which is the liquid/moisture content for the sausage. Instead, I replace the fat with the same liquid/moisture using vegetables instead. That way you keep the super healthy aspect of eating venison, and it tastes incredible.

DIY Venison Sausage Recipe

Yield: Approximately 4 pounds venison sausage
Total time: 1-2 hours

Ingredients:

• 3 pounds of trimmed venison cut in cubes, almost frozen
• 1 pound ground mixed vegetables (directions below)
• 1 cup non-fat dry milk powder, mixed with 2 ounces cold water and 3 tablespoons kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons fine ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon ground white pepper
• 2 tablespoons fennel seed, ground
• 1 teaspoon star anise, ground
• 3 tablespoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• 3 tablespoons marjoram
• 2 tablespoons ground bay leaves
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon mustard powder
• 6 tablespoons fresh minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 package hog sausage casings

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Special Equipment:

• Grinder

Directions: