Hi Brad,
After watching your shows and Youtube videos, I am a first time summer sausage maker. I plan on using venison from the deer that my boyfriend and I shoot. I have 2 questions. First question: We take our deer to be processed and have it all ground up for burgers and sorts. The butcher adds some pork fat to the deer and then packages it for us in 1 lb tubes. Do I need to add additional pork fat to my summer sausage or should that be enough? Second question: I plan on packing my fibrous casings with a Kitchenaid sausage attachment and I was wondering if you have ever tried to use one of them and if you have any tips about that.
Thank you and we love your videos!!
Ashtyn,
Thank you for the challenging question! Ok, here's the battle...
You are working with meat that has already been ground twice, as most hamburger type products are. So the challenge here is how do you get the seasonings mixed into the meat properly without grinding the product again? The added pork will not hurt anything, that's fine, and the fact that you are making a large diameter product will help as well.
For future reference: I like to freeze bags of trim meat without grinding it. This is what I use to make my sausage type products from. I generally freeze the trim in bags 3-5lb in size. Then I can thaw it out and make small batches of products later in the year as I choose. This will also allow you to grind the seasonings right into the product and eliminate a lot of things that could go wrong.
However, we are working with already ground meat here so this is what you will need to do:
#1: Thaw the meat COMPLETELY. If you have any frozen particles, the Summer Sausage seasoning will not blend and absorb into the frozen meat, so you will have salty and bland spots in your product.
#2: When adding the seasoning, be sure to add 24oz of water to every 10lbs of meat. This will help dissolve the seasonings and get the meat to soak up the salts and sugars in your seasoning blend.
#3: Mix, Mix, Mix the meat until you are sure you have all the seasoning dissolved and completely coating the meat. No lumps of seasoning visible. Mixing meat is just like making homemade bread.
#4: Place the mixed product into the refrigerator and let it rest, covered for 24 hours. This will allow the seasoning additional time to blend into the meat. This normally would happen during the grinding process but we are using already ground product so we need to give it additional time.
#5: You will notice that a lot of the water has now absorbed into the meat or evaporated in your refrigerator so you will need to add a little more to help during the stuffing process. Maybe 8-12oz per 10lbs of meat depending on how dry the product is.
#6: You are now ready to stuff the product into your casings and smoke to an internal temperature of 156F. I have never used the Kitchenaid products so I really don't have a lot of information to share with you there. When it comes to grinding and stuffing, I use stand alone Weston products.
If you are using a grinding attachment, be sure to remove the knife and plate from the head so you don't grind the product a third time while stuffing. You should be able to stuff off the head of your grinder attachment and simply use the auger in the unit to push the meat into the casings (again, I don't know how Kitchenaid attachments work).
Summer sausage can be a little tricky because of the diameter of the product. If you need any additional tips, this video might help you:
And if you need further instructions, check out our Advanced Sausage Processing DVD which is 2 hours of grinding, mixing, stuffing, processing and smoking knowledge on all types of various sausage products.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out!
"The Meat Man"
Brad Lockwood
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