How to Cook Venison Sausages
If you harvest your own venison there is a very strong probability that you will either make venison sausages or get them from your processor.
Regardless of where or how you got the venison sausages, I’m going to tell you all of the best ways to cook them.
How to Make Venison Sausages
I’ll briefly touch on the process of making venison sausage, as this may have an impact on how to cook them.
I’ve made various types of venison sausages and most recipes are on this site.
A normal venison breakfast sausage can be cooked in numerous ways, whereas a venison Italian sausage is best used in other dishes.
Most venison sausages will consist of lean venison, some form of fat, usually pork or beef, and some seasonings, usually dry.
The fat percentage varies across recipes, I typically use 20-30% pork fat for venison sausages.
The process is relatively straightforward:
- Grind the meat and fat together
- Mix in your seasoning
- Pipe the sausage into the casing
- Hang to dry
This is an oversimplified overview, for a full recipe on making the sausage click on any sausage recipe on this site.
Venison Sausage Cooking Methods
Now that you have a brief overview of how to make venison sausage let’s turn our focus to how to cook venison sausage.
Pan Fried Venison Sausages
The first and perhaps the simplest way of cooking venison sausages is pan frying.
Most people are familiar with pan-frying sausages, well, frying venison sausages is not that different.
While you could use any type of pan for frying venison sausages, I highly recommend using a cast iron pan.
This type of pan makes a much better crisp on the sausage casing.
- Heat the pan over medium heat
- Add any oil of your choice
- Place the sausages on the pan, turning occasionally
- cook the sausages for approximately 15 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 165F
Oven Roasted Venison Sausages
Oven-roasting sausages is a great way of cooking dinner sausage and for cooking with other ingredients.
Depending on whether you are cooking with liquid or not will determine the crispiness of the skin.
Often even if I am cooking with some liquid I will finish the sausages under the broiler to get a crisp.
Even though there will be fat added to the sausage, it’s still leaner than any other type of sausage, so some care is required to not overcook the sausage.
Venison cooks quite fast and is quick to dry out, so I typically cook it for a shorter amount of time than pork or beef sausages.
- Preheat your oven to about 425-430F
- Place the sausages on a baking tray not touching each other
- Drizzle oil over the sausages trying to get even coverage
- Place the sausages in the oven
- Cook for approximately 20-25 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 165F
Grilled Venison Sausages
One of my favorite methods of cooking venison sausages is grilling them.
Grilling venison sausage gives a nice charred flavor, crispy skin, and juicy sausage.
Cooking over high heat and allowing the fat and moisture to drip onto hot coals works well for venison sausages.
- Heat your grill to 450F. Can be single-zone
- Place the sausages on the grill
- Turn the sausages frequently
- Cook for approximately 15 minutes
- I like to rest sausages that were cooked on the grill for about 5 minutes
Venison Breakfast Sausage
Ingredients
Venison Sausage
- 14 oz venison tissue removed
- 1.3 pounds of boneless skinless pork belly
- 1 tablespoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon dry mustard
- 1 teaspoon of finely ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon of herbs de Provence
- 3 garlic cloves - minced.
- 2 teaspoons of maple syrup
Waffles
- 1,5 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1¾ cups buttermilk or kefir
- ½ cup unsalted butter melted and cooled
- 2 eggs
To Serve
- Maple syrup
- Chives
- Cranberry sauce (optional
Instructions
- Prepare all meat for grinding. Remove tissue from venison meat and cut everything into sizable pieces for the grinder. Move the prepped meat into the freezer together with the grinder head and finest grinding disc. Keep everything in the freezer for around 40 minutes.
- Meanwhile weigh out all the spices, mince garlic, soak hog/pig casings in water, and wash their insides by filling them with water from the tap.
- Once the meat is nice and cold, grind it, pour over the spices, and knead the meat for quite some time until the fats in the meat are mixed thoroughly (If Your hands get too cold, put on a couple of rubber gloves). Then put the sausage casings onto the sausage filling rod covered in oil or water and carefully make the sausages. Make sure that the casing does not dry out and does not burst; if there are any air pockets, pop them out with a toothpick. Once You have one long sausage, divide it into smaller ones by twisting them in opposite directions. Let them dry out a bit in the fridge overnight (optional).
- Next day prepare the waffle batter: in a bowl, whisk all the dry ingredients. Then in a separate bigger bowl, whisk the eggs and buttermilk/kefir; after it is homogeneous, add all the dry ingredients and melted butter, whisk until combined, but no more than that; otherwise, you may end up with chewy and tough waffles.
- Roast the sausages in the oven at 220°C for 12-15 minutes or in the pan, flipping them halfway through the cooking, finish them with a drizzle of maple syrup. Meanwhile, cook the waffles. Serve waffles with sausages on top, a sprinkle of chives and maple syrup drizzle, or whatever way you like your maple sausage breakfast. Cranberry sauce instead of maple syrup is superb too. Bon appetite!
