The other day I was rotating my freezer stock and found a 13lb bag of elk meat set aside for canning from 2011 so yesterday I made some Italian sausage.
The day before, I picked up 2lbs of beef fat, bought an Italian Sausage kit from Cabela's (even though I have a large order from PS coming soon) and I also thawed out five 2lb packages of venison burger.
For small batches I have been using this old Waring grinder that was found at a garage sale. It works ok, but even chopped beef fat will slow it down quite a bit.
I ground up the "canning" meat in one tub and then ground the beef fat into a tub with the thawed burger. After mixing the burger and fat I then mixed in the canning meat and a pound of mexican blend shredded cheese. I prefer hi-temp cheese but did not have any on hand.
Pre-stuff taste test.
Done, but a little more fat content then I normally like.
Packaged and ready for the freezer. I tried some really small vac bags that I found at Cabelas for sharing with coworkers. They were ok and I like the ziplock feature, but they are really too small for sausage. I think they would be excellent for smoked fish, jerky or pep sticks.
