Should I Leave Processing of Wild Hogs to the Professionals?

Grant from Dallas, TX wrote in:

Hi Brad,

Saw two of your three seminars at the NRA Annual Meetings in Nashville. Great work and thanks for putting those on.

I live in Texas and try to shoot as many wild hogs as I can fit into my freezer.

When I get the meat back from the processor it has been frozen solid as a rock. Friends of mine say this "flash freezing" helps kill any parasites that might be in the meat. Is that true? If so, should I leave processing of wild hogs to the professionals or is it ok to age them in my refrigerator and store the pieces in vacuum bags in my freezer?

Hello Grant,

Flash freezing will kill some parasites but the better method is cooking the pork properly. Cook your pork well and you will be just fine.

You can age your pork just like beef and deer with no worries, Simply be sure to cook it well, bloody pork is no good, much different than beef. I prefer to process my own game under all conditions no matter what the animal is. 

The only one I trust with my food is me. That way I'm sure it wasn't cut on the same dirty cutting block with 10 other animals. That way I know the grinder was cleaned properly before my meat was put in. And that way I know it didn't sit out in the warm cutting room while everyone takes lunch breaks. Yep.... I prefer to do it myself! 

I love my garden, my canned deer meat, my own smoked hams, my own bacon. I need a green house in my back yard so I can have my own fresh tomatoes and lettuces year round! Maybe some chickens for fresh eggs. Now I'm getting overboard! However I do feel much better when my food comes from my own hands!

I hope you enjoyed the seminar and I hope to see you next year!

Brad

Making Sausage from Frozen Ground Meat, Then Freezing Again

Nicholas from East Dover wrote: 

I harvested a moose Oct 2013. I ground a lot of burger and vac packed it and froze it. Can I thaw it out make it into sausage and refreeze it?


Nicholas,

We had a couple questions very similar to this over the last couple weeks. I will cover some additional topics in this blog and then encourage you to look at the other questions regarding this subject. 

A large part of making quality products is processing them the way you typically expect them to be. In other words, if you are making hamburger, you expect it to be ground twice so it has the texture of hamburger. If you are making sausage, you expect it to be once ground so it has the course texture you expect for sausage. With that being said, if you have hamburger in the freezer, it's already twice-ground, so trying to make it into sausage, which is only once ground, is going to be very difficult. Don't get me wrong: You can do it, but the texture you have come to expect from sausage won't be correct. 

If you are asking about freezing and then refreezing you have no issues there, as I have stated in several other blog questions: Freezing and refreezing is not an issue. Your issue here is a texture issue. As the liquid inside of the moose's muscle fiber freezes, it expands, which creates a mushy texture. 

Seasoning can also be an issue. I prefer to grind my seasonings into the meat. Since your meat is already ground, you don't want to grind it a second or third time to get seasonings into it. Instead, you'll have to use a Meat Mixer or work very hard with your hands to get the seasonings mixed into the meat as well as they need to be. 

Another topic of discussion covered in my Advanced Sausage DVD is protein extraction. When you put salts and sugars into meat and then mix like crazy to get the seasoning blended, you extract proteins from the meat that act as binders. These binders will make your product tough and chewy with a rubber-like texture, which is very undesirable in a sausage product. 

You should also check out this other post I've written on the topic:

Making Sausage & Smoked Products from Frozen Meat

Here is some advice on specific products you can make from your pre-ground moose meat:

• Summer sausage is a large diameter product placed into a larger casing. For that reason, it takes additional binding to keep it from getting soft during smoking so mixing your seasonings in, grinding it a third time and then stuffing and smoking can make a good product. 
• Moose Hot Dogs are another great sausage-type product you can make. Here's a video on how to make them: How to Make Wild Game Hot Dogs
• Another great product you can make, which is one of my favorites, is ground jerky. 

I would also recommend that you watch my Advanced Sausage DVD, check out the other blog questions on this topic, and watch our videos, listed to the right.

Congrats on the Moose! My favorite!

Brad Lockwood

Making Sausage & Smoked Products from Frozen Meat

Tom from Pekin, IL asked:

Can you make sausage and smoked meat from frozen meat?


Tom,

For sausage, so long as the meat is not already ground, then yes, you sure can! You can simply watch any of our online Sausage How-To Videos and make a great product. You'll simply drop your frozen, cubed meat into the grinder just as you would unfrozen and go from there! 

If it has already been ground, then you're limited to the products that you can make. You'll have a texture issue with sausage, so no, I do not recommend making sausage from frozen ground meat. Most ground products where the texture matters - I would not use frozen ground meat.

One smoked product that I like to make from already ground and frozen hamburger is ground jerky. You can simply add your seasonings, grind it one or two more times to get it to a nice fine texture, and get your seasonings mixed well. Then, you push it out through the Weston Jerky Gun and load it into your smoker. That's one of my favorites - Here's the post and video about how to do it: Hamburger Jerky.

As for making smoked meat from frozen meat...

The issue with freezing any meat is that it damages cells. When you freeze meat, the moisture inside turns into ice crystals, which puncture the muscle cells. When the meat thaws, all of the fluid - holding those good salts and proteins - floods out of the holes that were made. The result is more loss of moisture when you cook the meat than you would have lost starting from raw meat. That said, this isn't really a problem in sausage making because you're going to grind the meat anyway. 

It comes into play more with roasts and steaks. If you're talking about smoking a chunk of frozen meat, then no, it's not the best way to do things. It's not unsafe, and it will get the job done. However: the point of thawing is even cooking. If the meat is frozen, it will take longer for the internal temperature to rise - so the outside of your meat will be overcooked by the time the inside of it gets to where it needs to be for safe eating. The moisture will also have left so quickly that you'll be left with a tougher product. Obviously, it's frozen, so it's going to take quite a while to cook. At that point, you'll probably have been better off just taking the time to thaw it.  But my advice is this: If you're going to smoke frozen meat, use a thermometer to check the internal temperature, and go low and slow. You can do it, it's just going to bring the quality down. 

Finally, if you're talking about the age-old myth that you can't freeze and thaw meat, then make anything from it - that's just an old wives' tale. Most of the meat products we receive in the commercial processing industry have already been frozen before we ever receive them. Like I said before, there's some damage caused by freezing, but if you're not cooking a filet mignon, it won't make enough difference to truly affect quality so long as you're thawing it first. The way you prepare and cook it will be much more important. 

Good luck and let us know how it turns out!

Brad Lockwood