I've come to learn this last few years that if taken care properly, beaver meat is every bit worth saving. All the beaver I get from trapping are in drown-sets so when you get them out of the cage, they are completely full of blood which for the most part needs to drained off somehow to make the meat better tasting. Also, ( and this is a very important step) you have to take the caster and scent glands off the carcass before you try cutting any meat off. If you pop either of those glands on the meat, you might as well throw the whole thing out for cat bait. It will not be edible at all (ask me how I know this!
). I usually just take the back straps and the hind quarters for my use. There's more good meat but it is super time consuming to try and whittle off little chunks here and there on the carcass.
Now to get the majority of the blood out you just simply soak the meat in salt water. You'll want to cut the meat into smaller sizes so it will soak the blood out easier too. Then I usually dump the bloody water out after about 4-5 hours and do it one more time after a few more hours or possibly overnight. After that I'll throw the meat into a strainer to dry it out some and start cutting it up into whatever size pieces I need.
I've been just sautéing small chunks of meat with veggies, spices and whatnot and that's turned out great but I've been wanting to make sausage and today I finally did. I used a recipe from "The Sausage Making Cookbook" and added a few other things that fit my taste and I've used that recipe a few times this year already on my relative's wild game and it turned out great IMO. Not over-powering or too salty, just a mild but delicious taste that works good.
One thing you need is a meat grinder. I have an ancient electric one that I've used for years but if all you have is one of those hand crank ones, this isn't too big of a batch so it should work well enough.
10 lbs of meat ( 7.5 lbs of beaver and 2.5 pounds of pork butt for this batch)
10 tsp of salt
5 tsp of ground sage
5 tsp of black pepper
5 tsp of garlic powder
5 tsp of onion powder
2 tsp of fennel seed
2 tsp of Italian seasoning
1 tsp of paprika
1 cup of water to add to it once all the spices are mixed in
Add everything together and mash it all up for like 5-10 minutes and then let it sit in the fridge over night before bagging it up and putting it in the freezer. It's good eats right after you make but the flavor of sausage seems to improve a lot after letting all the ingredients soak for a day. Enjoy!
