Wow! Bam! yes! last day of rifle i got a doe...yippie! now that the deer is process, vacuum packed and the tenderloins, hear and liver have been cooked and eaten its time to grind some meat! technically i would normally do my grinding right along with the rest of the processing. i will normally, de-bone, cut my roasts and steaks, all the while making a pile of what looks good for cubes (for Ricky's AMAZING stew), good for jerky (soon to come), and finally good for grinding. after the rest of the meat is taken care of...i revisit these piles and break them down and package them appropriately. what took me longer to get to the grinding this time though was that i had not procured my SECRET INGREDIENT before processing the meat. now as long as you promise to keep it hush-hush, ill let you in on my little secret. the best VERY BEST fat to use when grinding deer meat, is the fat of a lamb. beef and pork fats change the flavor of the meat...you loose the taste of the venison and i dont know about you...but i sit in the woods at -5 degrees for house on end for a very specific reason. TO EAT VENISON...not pork flavored venison. so we use lamb fat. Lamb has enough 'game' taste to it to not mar the taste of the meat. lamb is also young and tender enough to yield a fast melting and rich fat. quite honestly, next to venison, lamb is my favorite meat....probably because i find them very similar. this led me to the whole grinding solution revolution, i suppose. |
.in fact....i think when we get some land, we need to raise a nice flock of sheep...mostly for this purpose,, but also because they are delicious. honestly, its going to be really hard to kill a lamb, but ill just think about a crown rib roast when i do it and it will be OK. this fast i sourced from a local meat market i used to work for. thank you Schiff's Cash and Carry!) December is prime time to call up about lamb fat as this is prime time for to be ordering leg of lamb and the like. the trimmings of one leg is all you really need for the average deer. I pulled about 4 pounds of grind meat from this deer (after taking what i could use for jerky and cubes) i mixed this with 1/2 pound of lamb fat. so your ratio should be 1 pound venison to 1/8 pound lamb fat....don't go past this as it is a generous marbling in the final product. For a project this scale (or even grinding the scrap from a butcher pig,for that matter) i find my kitchen-aid grinder attachment perfectly suited. as mentioned before, ive worked in meat rooms and actually prefer the kitchen-aid to the commercial grinder we used in the chicken corner. |
the lamb fat i cut to 1/2 cubes to aid the passae throuh the grinder. most of my venison was cut fairly small, but i would clean or cut smaller any piece i saw in need as i went along. as you work add the meat and fat to obtain an even color in similar to the bowl of grind you see above. using a coarse rind plate for this project is HIGHLY recommended.... the final product has much more texture and passes through the machine with out clumping and 'gooping' up. if you do get a 'goop up' stop, clean out the grinder and restart....good burgers are NOT made out of meat pate'. for some of my favorite ground venison recipes follow this links below...i know that our house is having the burgers. cheers and enjoy! |