This Venison Italian Sausage will go great in every one of your Italian recipes!
I love Italian food and I have a plethora of venison in my freezer so this recipe kind of wrote itself! Italian sausage kind of just goes with Italian food. In a lasagna, meatballs pizza, calzone, and every other dish you can think of. Throw this bad boy in it and go to town. I made this sausage loose with my LEM Big Bite Grinder #8, but if you want to case it you definitely can. Also, I used an 80/20 venison to pork fat ratio, but you can go 70/30 or even more fat if you just hate venison.
Making sausage can seem like a scary process, but it doesn’t have to be. Again, keeping it loose so you don’t have to worry about the fat leaking out of the casings or not having a smoker is a great beginning intro into the sausage making world. I have a few recipes coming out of this sausage so keep an eye out for what’s in store and enjoy!!
Venison Italian Sausage
Equipment
Ingredients
- 4 lbs venison
- 1 lb pork fat
- 1.5 T pepper
- 3 T salt
- 1.5 T fennel seeds ground up
- 1.5 T red pepper flakes
- 2.5 tsp oregano
- 1.5 tsp paprika
- 2.5 T garlic powder
- 1.5 tsp onion powder
- 1.5 tsp dried parsley
- 2 tsp brown sugar
Instructions
- Cut venison and pork fat into small cubes that will fit in your meat grinder and place into a freezer for ~10-30 minutes (depending how cold it already is).
- Mix seasonings together in a small bowl. Make sure your fennel is ground up. I used a coffee grinder, but you can use a spice grinder or mortar and pestle.
- Grind the venison and pork through a coarse plate in your LEM Big Bite Grinder.
- Mix the spices thoroughly into the meat with your hands, stand mixer, or meat mixer and then put back into the freezer for 10-30 minutes.
- Clean your grinder and freeze any part of it that comes in contact with the meat.
- Grind your meat again through a fine plate in your LEM Big Bite Grinder.
- Mix the meat again thoroughly. You can add some water if you want to try to help the binding process.
- This is a loose sausage so when it is sufficiently mixed you are done! You can vacuum seal the sausage or get straight to cooking! Enjoy!!
This recipe has completely changed how I make my Italian food. I don’t go buy Italian sausage from the store anymore I just use my venison!
That’s awesome! I love to hear people are enjoying my recipes!
Made the sausage last night with my husband’s antelope. Haven’t eaten it yet, but it smells amazing. Can’t wait to use this in our next Italian meal!
That’s awesome let me know how it goes! I have multiple recipes for how to use it on here, but I am partial to the rigatoni pie if you are feeling adventurous https://wifeofahunter.com/venison-rigatoni-pie/
I made your recipe I used smoked paprika and stuffed it into sausages wow it was great honestly it’s one of my favorites now
I’m so glad you liked it and thanks for leaving me a comment and letting me know!
I’m going to try this with pheasant. Have you made sausage with Gamebirds? Any advice?
I have never made sausage with gamebirds, but you definitely could. It would just take a lot of birds. I have other pheasant recipes (https://wifeofahunter.com/category/hunting/upland-game/pheasant/) that I would do before sausage if you have not seen them! I tend to stick to deer or pigs, for sausage, just because you have way more meat to work with.
I do a bunch of game bird sausage and you’ll want to use the 70/30 meat/fat ratio and it is really stringy so make sure it is good and frozen and use your largest grinding bit. Other than that, we love it! We made a Canadian goose jalapeño cheddar sausage and a duck one using Sophie’s Italian sausage recipe here and both turned out terrific as hot off the smoker or cold sliced into a charcruterie.
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Thank you for your help and this post. It’s been great.
Hi Sophie,
Do you have a low / no salt venison sausage recipe. Or a substiute for salt in the italian venison sausage recipe?
Thank you,
Larry Garrett
All I will say is wow the best sausage
I’m so glad you liked it!!
I’m getting ready to make a big batch as I have a bunch of venison to grind and get cleared from my freezer from last season. Is there a reason why you grind your fennel seed. Traditionally fennel seed is left whole in Italian Sausage. I make a bunch of really good Venison jerky every year also.
Honestly I’m a baby haha! I don’t like biting in to the whole fennel pieces and I think the powder spreads out nicely throughout the sausage, but it is totally an unnecessary step 🙂
I took a bit of a risk and made 40 lbs of this. Wow was it worth it! This is definitely a keeper. Mouth was watering the whole time we finished grinding it and stuffed some into casings…