Sausage Making Moose /Pork BC Canada (picture heavy)

dboles

dboles

Joined
Mar 6, 2007
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Freind Jeff and I and my son Matt got together lately to make some homemade dinner sausage.We have been doing this together for years.It is a rewarding activity that usuaully yeilds great results,is a fun a endearvour that has a tasty ending!
What we do is mix pork and moose together around 2/3 moose to a 1/3 pork.We have a little electric sausage making machine ,but back in the day handcranked those links.
Grinding and mixing the meat
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After grinding we season using the recipe we have decided on
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Casings are readied.They are usually salted so we rinse and soak in lukewarm water
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After the spices have set for a bit we fry some sample to see how the batch tastes( Love that cast iron).Usually try to err on not enough spice.After tasting the meat usually needs a small tuning up with whatever spice is lacking
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Casing threaded on the machine
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Links!! a batch is usually around 30 lbs.
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Later we will smoke some for curing so they can travel with us out hunting trapping or fishing,hiking.The rest is froze for later fine eating.
Will answer questions and thanks for looking
Dan'l
 
looks good brother. I like mine on the spicy side but most prefer less heat lol. very solid. good to see folks doing their own vs just buying it.
 
I'd love to do that. Seems pork is used in a lot of gamey or lean wild meat. Never made sausage but did a lot of fish smoking. Nice pics, thanks for the post.
:thumbup:
 
Good post. More information please? Are you using the coarsest grinder plate or a finer one? What type of casings are you using? What spices? A commercial premix or your own blend? I do see a container of black pepper and a smaller bottle... sage? Oregano? "Sit for a bit" ... how long? An hour, a few hours, a day?

Deer season is just getting into full swing here and I have only processed three deer so far. I would like to make some breakfast and dinner sausage as well as the masses of jerky and butterfly steaks I have been making so far. I have a good grinder already and made a bit of breakfast sausage a couple of years ago. It is a great way to make use of the odd bits of meat that are too small or odly shaped for jerking or steaks.
 
Oh, man that has to be good. In my opinion there is no better meat than Moose. Add pork to it and it may just be too good.:D
 
baldtaco-II said:
Good stuff. Is that much pork added more for flavour or because moose meat is incredibly lean?
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I've added pork fat to venison because there is no fat in venison (no marbeling as with beef). Any fat found is in sheets under the skin, has a strong taste and goes rancid quickly. There is fat in the bone marrow and I don't freeze venison on the bone, only boneless for this reason. Pork fat also helps the meat stick together and keeps it from drying out when cooked.
 
Codger_64 said:
I've added pork fat to venison because there is no fat in venison (no marbeling as with beef). Any fat found is in sheets under the skin, has a strong taste and goes rancid quickly. There is fat in the bone marrow and I don't freeze venison on the bone, only boneless for this reason. Pork fat also helps the meat stick together and keeps it from drying out when cooked.
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Quite so amigo, hence why I wondered about the moose.
 
Yep the pork add flavour and the all important fat content.most wild meat by itself without any other fat added is like sawdust.
This recipe has black and red( not too much as the ladies in our life dont like too much) pepper, sea salt,garlic, fennel seed,and the all important water.Amazing to see how much is needed to get the proper "flow" through the machine.Pretty basic recipe but very tasty.With the advent of the internet we have tried many many different recipes but always seem to come back to our old standard.Kind of a mild italian.One thing I can comment on is it doesnt last long before we need to make more!!
Dan'l
Coarse grinder plate for the initial meat mixing
 
Sounds great to me. I'd probably enjoy that as it is but curiosity would definitely have me exploring down the “add paprika n ...” and “what about 5 spice powder n...” routes too............................................................................................................................................................................. The fat angle I was especially curious about pertains particularly to cold weather creatures. I've eaten a lot of horse and that doesn't seem to vary. Goat is goat and I can't imagine ever cooking that other than by a slow moist method outside of desperation. Rat, deer, crow, squirrel, whatever ['cos some stuff I didn't know other than it was meat] doesn't seem to vary. What got me wondering was critters that pile on the fat lbs for winter. I've read accounts of folk from the back when that were so sick of eating bear that beaver was a welcome treat. And this was from the pre-hunting season mentality so bear would have come from skinny and threadbare to bloated gessler. I'm not eager to kill one but part of me predicts a scrawny vegetarian bear is going to be a bunch different from a fish oil stuffed one, so surely some must have been better than others. I know little about moose or moose hunting season so that got me thinking on intra-species variation with the time of year and what they'd been able to feed on.
 
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For my venison jerky, I use both prepared spice/cure mixes and my own concoctions (some of which are becoming preferred over the variety of prepared mixes by my friends). Gander Mountain has been my best source for the prepared mixes and I see their shelves stocked with a good variety of sausage making supplies. I just haven't made the plunge yet. So much venison and so many recipes. Almost all come with directions, though I am pretty sure most refer to the more common elk and deer. I can't see that there would be a whole lot of difference though among the wild ungulates on the North American continent.
 
Codger_64 said:
I've added pork fat to venison because there is no fat in venison (no marbeling as with beef). Any fat found is in sheets under the skin, has a strong taste and goes rancid quickly. There is fat in the bone marrow and I don't freeze venison on the bone, only boneless for this reason. Pork fat also helps the meat stick together and keeps it from drying out when cooked.
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I'd been wondering that same question myself; always see game meat sausages "cut" with pork, and now I know why. Excellent answer, because it makes total sense when I think about it.

Brother's family makes homemade sausage, but they do it with a hand grinder and a lot of patience and alchohol (that's for drinking, not for adding into the meat). They use all natural casings, too. Fresh meat, but they let it rest for an hour or so, with a fair amount of salt and pepper. That's about it. Usually it's pork, beef, turkey, or chicken.

Decades ago, an elder mounted the hand-grinder to a wooden bench, and the receiving tray rests on it. It allows a person sitting in a chair to grind the meats, while someone straddling the bench positions the casings. Makes a lot of work go by quickly. The grinder detaches for cleaning. It's a lot of fun, and they do it a few times a year.

I like the idea of making small test batches to see how they taste first. That's an obvious and smart move.
 
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