Best grinder for deer and hog processing

[Down South]

For those of us with slightly underpowered grinders, one of the best tricks I have learned over the last few years is to have your meat cubes still just slightly frozen when you run them through.

You are correct. the colder the meat, the better for any grinder. I cube my meat and put it in the freezer to almost freezing before running through my grinder.

[Lloyd Smale]

I did it too back in the day. this new grinder you could probably feed a whole deer leg bone and all in it and it would eat it as fast as you shoved it in.

[blikseme300]

So today we had this, which is very rare here:



So I made some of these for droewors, (dry sausage):



And 30# of Boerewors, (Boer sausage):

[Down South]

I won't be making Brats but I do have three deer on ice. I'll be making sausage next weekend.

[Smoke4320]

Well now have the grinder, stuffer, slicer, knives, meat lugs, vacuum sealer & material, food grade gloves, casings (natural, collagen and fiberous), spices
Sunday afternoon as a test i mixed up 4. 1lb test batches to try. 3 pork breakfast and one chicken sausage recipe.
Since these were for just testing the spice mix we rolled some as caseless links and some as pattys then wrapped and froze them
Monday we cooked a sample of each
Was very happy that one of the pork and the chicken turned out real good
Figured this way i would not make 20-25 lbs and then it turned out bad
Thoughts on this process

[blikseme300]

Well now have the grinder, stuffer, slicer, knives, meat lugs, vacuum sealer & material, food grade gloves, casings (natural, collagen and fiberous), spices
Sunday afternoon as a test i mixed up 4. 1lb test batches to try. 3 pork breakfast and one chicken sausage recipe.
Since these were for just testing the spice mix we rolled some as caseless links and some as pattys then wrapped and froze them
Monday we cooked a sample of each
Was very happy that one of the pork and the chicken turned out real good
Figured this way i would not make 20-25 lbs and then it turned out bad
Thoughts on this process

Sounds to me that you did your research well before diving in. Doing small test batches is the way to go, especially when the recipe is unproven to you.

One of the major advantages of making your own sausage is that you can adjust it to your preference. I do recommend to folks that are new to sausage making is to use ready to use spice mixes until they are comfortable with the process.

The reason I mention this is that there are sometimes quite large variations in potency of some individual spices depending on the source and variety. I buy most of my spices from a wholesaler in 1# bulk lots as this is much cheaper than the branded products at the supermarket. A coffee grinder is useful to grind and mix these bulk spices.

What I typically do with new recipes is to make a 1# batch and then fry a small patty to test for taste, especially for salt. Different recipes call for different types of salt and this can throw things off badly, just like with any cooking. The flavor of the sausage will be off (not as developed) until it has rested for a few hours so don't add more spice to the mix to adjust to taste. If you do, the final product will typically be over-flavored.

As with reloading, keep good notes. This is important.

Enjoy