These Venison Hot Dogs were the epitome of labor of love.

When I think of hot dogs my mind normally goes two places. The positive way is eating some tasty all beef dogs, at a baseball game, enjoying America’s pastime. The negative way makes me think of the book the Jungle and the stereotypes of them being made out of pig feet, lips, and other less tantalizing parts. Either way you look at it, they sure are tasty 😂.

When starting out this adventure of making your own hot dogs, you don’t realize how much work goes into it. You have to grind your meat twice, emulsify it in a food processor, stuff it into casings, and then bring it up to temperature. All this makes you wonder how companies can make hot dogs so cheap. Then you see the giant factories with expensive machines, that do the whole process for you, and you understand.

Some important notes I found that helped throughout this process is COLD. Keep everything cold. Because you’re putting the meat through a couple different processes, it opens up the chances of fat smearing, and the consistency being off. Freeze your meat after every step and you should be fine. Another note is having help. You can do this all by yourself, but once you get to the sausage stuffer an extra set of hands is INCREDEBLY useful.

If you have a family, or group of friends, you could totally make a day out of it and turn pounds and pounds of venison into tasty hot dogs! They are very good and the transformation from pink gloop into delicious red wienies is an incredible sight to see. I was honestly blown away with how they came out and the consistency was incredible! If you do end up giving this labor of love a try let me know in the comments and ENJOY!!