Let’s face it, most of your venison will end up as sausage meat. So if you don’t want to get tired of eating the same old sausage, you need to get creative.
For example, don’t just eat venison dinner sausage or from the grill. This recipe will have you eating venison sausages in the morning.
I like a sweet breakfast, so this recipe was created to cater to those of you like me. It is, however, not entirely sweet; there is also a little savory in there.
For this recipe, I went a little higher with the fat ratio because the sausages are being oven baked, and the pork belly also had some meat content.
If you are using pure fat, then feel free to reduce the amount of fat. I think this recipe allows some leeway with the fat content, but I recommend sticking within the 20-30% range if using pure fat.
If using meaty pork belly as I did, then you can increase it to 50-60% pork fat.
Normally for a dinner sausage, I wouldn’t use this much fat, but I feel it works here for the breakfast sausage.
In my opinion, this is better than bacon and pancakes. That being said, you could swap the waffles for pancakes. But this is a similar dish to bacon and pancakes, hence the high fat content.
Tips For Making Venison Breakfast Sausage:
Grind Twice – I first like to grind the meat with a large whole and then mix the meat with my hands. After this, I will pass the ground meat through a small diameter plate before again mixing by hand. I found doing it this way gives me a better bind on the sausage.
Keep Cold – It’s really important to keep everything as cold as possible when making the sausage. I make sausages in steps, with breaks between each step to pop the meat and tools back into the freezer for a few minutes.
Hang – To get the most from the sausage, you need to hang them for 12-24 hours in a cool, dry place. If you do not have somewhere to do this, try to make room to hang them in your fridge.
When I worked as a butcher, we would always hang sausages in the walk-in fridge for 24 hours. Your fridge is no different so hanging them there will also work.
Venison Breakfast Sausage
Sweet and Savory venison breakfast sausage with waffles
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!
Rusty enjoys connecting food and nature and has done so since a child. He was fortunate enough to explore cuisine worldwide and work at great European restaurants. He now enjoys thinking up new recipes that he can find around him in nature in North America.