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When you know how to make homemade bulk venison breakfast sausage you’ll never want to buy the store-bought stuff again! Made with fresh deer meat, pork trimmings, and delicious seasoning, it’s perfect for sandwiches, breakfast tacos, biscuits and gravy, and more!
This might be one of our most important venison recipes because it’s the backbone of so many other great dishes. Bulk venison breakfast sausage is a must-make if you find yourself with lots of deer meat on your hands after hunting season.
Ingredients for Venison Breakfast Sausage
- Venison Trimmings – Leftover from processing the deer from tough cuts of neck and shoulder
- Pork Trimmings – We get these from a butcher
- Sausage Seasoning – We buy ours from a Wisconsin-based company, PS Seasoning
- Water – To help bind and combine everything
Supplies You'll Need
Meat Grinder – The meat grinder attachment for a KitchenAid mixer works super well for this project!
Coarse and Fine Meat Grinding Plates – Grinding the sausage twice helps ensure that the texture of the sausage is perfect and that everything is well incorporated.
Large Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls – You’ll need (at least) one to hold the trimmings and (at least) one to hold the ground sausage mixture.
Wild Game Meat Bags and Ties - Or another storage bag solution, such as freezer-safe plastic bags or a vacuum sealer and bags.
Sausage Stuffer (Optional) – We like using a sausage stuffer to fill our meat bags quickly and easily.
Rubber Gloves (Optional) – Working with the addition of pork fat makes the sausage mixture quite sticky. Gloves help you move from grinding, to mixing, to packaging with ease.
Kitchen Scale (Optional) – If you don’t have the one-pound meat bags and are measuring the ground venison by hand, a scale will help you ensure you get the same weight in each bag.
How much pork to add to venison for sausage?
When we grind fresh venison at home, we don’t add any pork trimmings to it, but when you’re making a bulk venison sausage, fat is totally necessary.
We go to our local butcher and ask for pork shoulder trimmings. They cost us about $1 per pound.
We make our breakfast sausage in a 2:1 ratio. Two parts venison trimmings to one part pork.
For example, the seasoning packets that we use are for 25 pounds of bulk sausage. For easy math’s sake, we do 16 pounds of venison and 8 pounds of pork trimmings to get that 2:1 ratio.
It’s only 24 pounds of sausage, but it just means that the mixture is a little more flavorful.
Speaking of…
What kind of flavors for breakfast sausage?
We make two kinds of bulk venison sausage.
The first is just a classic breakfast sausage which is great for things like venison breakfast tacos. It’s got more of a traditional flavor of breakfast sausage – you get notes of things like sage and fennel.
The other flavor is a maple sausage seasoning that we LOVE. It’s got a little heat, a little sweet, and is perfect for things like venison breakfast sandwiches. There’s real maple flavor and sugar in this blend and it’s decidedly sweeter than the other.
Check out what local suppliers have around you or order a few different brands online and test small batches to see what you like the most.
How to Make Bulk Venison Sausage
This is just a quick overview, you can find a more in-depth explanation in the recipe card below!
- Cut your trim into small pieces. Depending on the size of your meat grinder, you’ll want to make sure it fits into the opening easily.
- Chill the meat. Cold meat is easier to grind!
- Grind the first time. Using the coarsest grinding disk you have.
- Season the sausage. After the first grind, we combine the venison, pork, seasoning, and water together by hand.
- Grind the sausage a second time. Using a finer disk. This not only helps to ensure the seasoning is evenly distributed but gives us such a great texture on the sausage.
- Pack and freeze the sausage. Either in meat bags, freezer-safe plastic bags, or vacuum sealer bags.
I go through a very in-depth walk-thru of the different ways we store our meat in my post all about grinding fresh venison at home that you can refer to for how to package your bulk sausage.
No matter how you store your venison sausage, make sure to label each bag with the contents and date it was processed.
And with that, you’re all set to grind, mix, and make your own bulk venison breakfast sausage!
Venison Breakfast Sausage
Equipment
- Meat grinder or meat grinding attachments for a KitchenAid
- Coarse Grinding Disk
- Fine Grinding Disk
- 2 – 4 large mixing bowls or food prep containers
- Storage Bags
- Sausage Stuffer (Optional)
- Kitchen Scale (Optional)
- Rubber Gloves (Optional)
Ingredients
- 16 pounds Venison Meat Trimmings, or whatever quantity you have
- 8 pounds Pork Shoulder Trimmings, (we buy from a local butcher shop)
- 1 pack breakfast sausage or maple sausage seasoning, such as PS Seasoning (enough for 24 pounds of meat)
- 4 - 6 cups water, or more, to feel
Instructions
- Cut venison and pork trimmings into pieces small enough that they will easily fit into the feed hole of your meat grinder.
- Once all the trimmings are cut into workable slices, place meat into the freezer for 30 – 60 minutes, so it can get a chill on it. This will make the meat much easier to grind.
- While the meat chills, prepare your grinder by fitting it with the coarsest meat grinding disk you have. Set a large mixing bowl or container below the grinder to catch all of the ground meat.
- When meat has chilled, begin feeding it through the grinder the first time, starting with the venison and then the pork. This will take some time, just work slowly, piece by piece, until all the trimmings have been ground the first time.
- Combine the coarsely ground venison and coarsely ground pork in a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle the sausage seasoning over the top. Pour 2 cups of water onto the meat and begin mixing the sausage using clean, gloved hands. Mix thoroughly, but gently, adding more water until the meat reaches a slightly tacky consistency.
- Remove the coarse grinding disk from the meat grinder and fit with the fine grinding disk. Place another empty, large mixing bowl or container below the grinder.
- Run the mixed meat through the grinder a second time, this will fully incorporate the seasoning into the sausage and give it such a beautiful texture.
- Once all the sausage has been ground a second time, freeze it in meat bags, freezer-safe plastic bags, or vacuum seal bags in 1- or 2-pound portions. A sausage stuffer and/or kitchen scale will help make the process go very quickly!
To pack bulk venison sausage using a sausage stuffer:
- Fill the sausage stuffer with the breakfast sausage, pushing it down to be sure there are no large air pockets.
- Set up the stuffer in the operating position and place a wild game meat bag on the extruder.
- Fill the bags in 1- or 2-pound portions, sealing with hog rings or tape.
Notes
- No matter which method of storage you choose, be sure to label each bag with the contents, weight, and date so you know what the bag contains in the future.
- Freeze venison sausage for up to 1 year.
- Thoroughly clean and sanitize all equipment before drying and storing until next hunting season.
· by Amanda Gajdosik