I've dabbled with home processing off and on over the last 15 years or so. I've made quite a bit of burger and most of it has been edible, but this is the first time where it came out perfect and I got the wife's enthusiastic stamp of approval.
My wife wouldn't eat deer meat when I first met her and now she's always encouraging me to "kill another one, kill another one". [emoji16]
I know most of the people on here make deer burger, so you can skip this recipe if you're happy with yours.
After talking to several co-workers that I went hunting with this week, none of them really knew how to make deer burger.
So this is for the new guys.
I had approximately 20 lb of deboned meat in the freezer. I would say it was about 96% clean as far as fat, sinew, and silverskin.
I called HEB this morning and talk to a butcher and ask him if he could save me some beef fat. I got 15 lb but I really only needed five for this batch. he said it should really be great for sausage or Burger since it came off of prime ribs!
I used an 80% venison to 25% beef fat ratio.
So for my batch it was 20 lb of venison to 5 lb of fat. I know a lot of people use 80/20 but we mainly use ours for traditional burgers on the grill so this is perfect for us.
I put the fat in the freezer when I got home so that would be almost frozen solid. The deboned venison was already thawing out. I've always screwed up in the past and used thawed venison that was soft and mushy. Never again. I had to break this stuff apart with a lot of work and actually thought it was too frozen for my grinder... but the LEM Big Bite #12 handled it like a champ.
This stuff ground beautifully and looked just like store-bought.
The first thing I did was cut up the fat into grinder size pieces and run it through the grinder on the big plate (3/8 coarse grind).
I didn't want to mix all 25 lb at one time, so as I ran about 5 lb of meat through the grinder on the coarse plate, I would stop and hand mix everything for a couple minutes.
eventually I had a large tub with 20 lb of Venison and 5 lb of fat very thoroughly mixed with the coarse grind.
At that point we took out about 4 lb (chili grind) and vacuum sealed it.
Then I switched out tubs and ran everything through on the fine plate. (3/16" fine grind).
Everything looked great and was still very cold.
At that point my wife took over with the vacuum sealer and made one and a half pound bags of burger.
Everything was vacuum sealed and marked. I washed out a tub and put all of the meat back into the tub and stuck it in our new upright freezer to keep everything organized.
Why do I say it was the perfect deer burger? I took out a big handful and made a nice patty. Fried it up in a cast iron skillet with some of my favorite Mark's seasoning from HEB.
Put it on a toasted bun with some shredded cheddar cheese and shared it with the wife. After the first bite we were both smiling.
Finally, the perfect deer burger!
My wife wouldn't eat deer meat when I first met her and now she's always encouraging me to "kill another one, kill another one". [emoji16]
I know most of the people on here make deer burger, so you can skip this recipe if you're happy with yours.
After talking to several co-workers that I went hunting with this week, none of them really knew how to make deer burger.
So this is for the new guys.
I had approximately 20 lb of deboned meat in the freezer. I would say it was about 96% clean as far as fat, sinew, and silverskin.
I called HEB this morning and talk to a butcher and ask him if he could save me some beef fat. I got 15 lb but I really only needed five for this batch. he said it should really be great for sausage or Burger since it came off of prime ribs!
I used an 80% venison to 25% beef fat ratio.
So for my batch it was 20 lb of venison to 5 lb of fat. I know a lot of people use 80/20 but we mainly use ours for traditional burgers on the grill so this is perfect for us.
I put the fat in the freezer when I got home so that would be almost frozen solid. The deboned venison was already thawing out. I've always screwed up in the past and used thawed venison that was soft and mushy. Never again. I had to break this stuff apart with a lot of work and actually thought it was too frozen for my grinder... but the LEM Big Bite #12 handled it like a champ.
This stuff ground beautifully and looked just like store-bought.
The first thing I did was cut up the fat into grinder size pieces and run it through the grinder on the big plate (3/8 coarse grind).
I didn't want to mix all 25 lb at one time, so as I ran about 5 lb of meat through the grinder on the coarse plate, I would stop and hand mix everything for a couple minutes.
eventually I had a large tub with 20 lb of Venison and 5 lb of fat very thoroughly mixed with the coarse grind.
At that point we took out about 4 lb (chili grind) and vacuum sealed it.
Then I switched out tubs and ran everything through on the fine plate. (3/16" fine grind).
Everything looked great and was still very cold.
At that point my wife took over with the vacuum sealer and made one and a half pound bags of burger.
Everything was vacuum sealed and marked. I washed out a tub and put all of the meat back into the tub and stuck it in our new upright freezer to keep everything organized.
Why do I say it was the perfect deer burger? I took out a big handful and made a nice patty. Fried it up in a cast iron skillet with some of my favorite Mark's seasoning from HEB.
Put it on a toasted bun with some shredded cheddar cheese and shared it with the wife. After the first bite we were both smiling.
Finally, the perfect deer burger!
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