We just finished up a weekend of sausage making here.  We eat a lot of deer meat and had a surplus this year.  We have an abundant amount of deer right out back.  They eat a lot of alfalfa and grass as well as whatever they can get to in the garden.  In turn, they provide us with healthy, lean meat. 

We made 2 kinds of sausage this weekend.  The first one was just a bulk Italian sausage.  We made25 lbs of it.  It is half deer and half pork.  The pork is 80% lean, so you do not get much grease in the pan when you fry this stuff up.  It doesn't require any stuffing or smoking.

The second batch we made was 50 lbs of pepperoni.  It has 10 lbs of pork in it.  We stuffed 15 lbs. into 21 mm collagen casings for snack sticks and 25 lbs into 2 inch casings for regular pepperoni.  The last 10 lbs. we decided to freeze in 12 oz. packages for crumbling and frying.  It makes the best pizza.  I couldn't wait for it to smoke, so we crumbled some up and fried it.  I then made a homemade crust and we had pepperoni and mushroom pizza.  It tasted so good, we decided to package some up bulk for that purpose.

The heating and smoking process is quite lengthy.  It took all afternoon.  The wind was blowing and that doesn't help.  It's harder to regulate the smoke house temp that way.  We have a huge 500 gallon barrel that has been converted to a smoke house.  It's not pretty, by any means, but it works.  We've simplified and use a propane weed burner for our heat source.  I use apple wood for smoking.  I just prune the tree!

Needless to say, I was worn out last night!  Lots of work, but lots of reward in the end.

LaVonne

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