How to Make Canadian Bacon from Venison Backstrap

Travis from Hancock, MD wrote in:

Watched your marination video. How do you make the Canadian bacon you mentioned in the video?


Hello Travis,

The process of injecting venison backstraps to make Canadian bacon is very similar to the video segments that you watched for making cured and smoked venison hams. Mix your brine and inject every inch all over the product. The muscle tissue will only hold so much liquid and the rest will run out. The only change that I typically make is to increase the salt content of the brine. Typically the brine for bacon contains more salt than that of a ham, however you can use the ham recipe as a base formula and just add some additional salt to give it that bacon flavor. I would recommend increasing the salt content of a standard ham brine by 4% and that should give you that salty flavor you've come to know and love in a bacon type product. Follow the brine directions for hams, smoke the product in the same fashion you normally would and you'll have a great product.

Thanks for the question and good luck! Let me know how it turns out!

Brad Lockwood