How to Grind Venison for Sausage (Without Smearing It)

Short answer:

The grind is where most venison sausage is won or lost. Not the seasoning. If the meat warms up and smears, no recipe will save it: it'll fat out in the smoker and come out greasy and crumbly at the same time. Keep it cold, keep it sharp, and keep the sinew out, and the rest gets easy.

What grinder plate size should you use for venison sausage?

Match the plate to the sausage. These are the plates the DeepWoodz recipes call for:

Plate	Grind	What it's for
3/8 inch (about 10 mm)	Coarse	First pass before a fine grind, and chunky, rustic sausages
1/4 inch (about 6 mm)	Medium	Brats, breakfast and fresh sausage, ring bologna, ground venison bacon. One pass.
3/16 inch (about 4.5 mm)	Medium fine	Second pass for a tight, dense texture, like dry-cured and fermented sausages
1/8 inch (about 3 mm)	Fine	Snack sticks, summer sausage, and the second pass for hot dogs and bologna

Mississippi State University Extension takes the same approach: grind coarse first, then re-grind through a 3/16 inch plate after seasoning.

How cold should meat and fat be when you grind?

Food safety first: keep raw meat at 40°F or below. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service calls 40 to 140°F the danger zone, where bacteria can double in as little as 20 minutes. Mississippi State University Extension says to keep meat at 40°F or lower during grinding and mixing.

For texture, go colder than that. The same extension guide says meat should be chilled to about 32°F to keep fat from smearing. The DeepWoodz recipes call for 28 to 32°F, partially frozen, and keeping everything below 34°F through grinding and mixing. Here's how I do it:

1. Cut the venison and pork into 1 to 2 inch cubes.
2. Spread them in one layer on a sheet pan and put them in the freezer until the edges are stiff and crunchy but the middle still gives. That's usually 30 to 60 minutes. Rock solid is too far: it'll stall the grinder.
3. Put the grinder head, auger, knife and plate in the freezer too. Warm steel warms the meat.
4. Grind into a bowl set in a bigger bowl of ice.
5. Work in batches. If a probe thermometer in the ground meat reads over about 34°F, put it back in the freezer before you keep going.

What is smearing and why does it happen?

Smearing is when the fat stops getting cut and starts getting mashed into a paste that coats the lean. You'll see it: instead of clean, separate strands with white flecks of fat, you get a soft, blurry, greasy rope, and a white film builds up on the plate. In the smoker that smeared fat melts right out, which is the main reason sausage fats out and turns crumbly.

It happens for a few reasons, usually more than one at once:

• The meat or fat got warm. Pork fat softens fast. This is the big one.
• A dull knife or plate. A sharp knife slices. A dull one tears and mashes and builds heat right at the plate.
• The knife is on backward. The flat cutting side goes against the plate. Backward, it pushes meat instead of cutting it.
• The ring is loose. If the knife can ride away from the plate, it smears like a dull edge.
• Sinew wrapped around the knife. It blocks the holes, and the meat behind it churns instead of cutting.
• Going straight to a fine plate on a small grinder, or cramming the feed tube and forcing it with the stomper.

More on fixing the results in sausage texture problems.

Do you grind the pork fat in with the venison?

Yes. Grind them together, alternating venison and pork cubes as you feed the grinder, so the fat gets spread through the lean from the first pass. The DeepWoodz recipes run 50/50 venison to pork butt. A cut is not fat: pork butt is only about 30% fat, so 50/50 with lean venison lands at about 17% fat. Want a different number? The venison fat calculator does the math.

The pork is the part that needs to be coldest, because fat smears before lean does. If you're using pure pork fat or fatback, give it extra time in the freezer. And trim the deer fat off before you start. It's waxy tallow and it carries the gamey flavor. See venison trim for sausage.

Should you grind venison once or twice?

• Once for anything with a coarser bite: brats, breakfast sausage, fresh sausage, ring bologna. One pass through a 1/4 inch plate.
• Twice when you want a fine, even, sliceable texture and your grinder can't do it in one clean pass: hot dogs and bologna for sure (3/8 inch, then 1/8 inch), and snack sticks or summer sausage if you need it. The first coarse pass mixes the fat in and takes the load off, so the fine plate cuts cleanly instead of smearing.

Every extra pass adds heat, so chill the meat again between grinds. Mix in your seasoning, cure and water after grinding and mix until the meat turns tacky and sticky. That bind is what holds it together in the casing. Then it's on to stuffing.

How much sinew and silver skin do you need to remove?

As much as you reasonably can. Silver skin and heavy sinew wrap around the knife, clog the plate and cause smearing, and whatever gets through shows up as chewy bits in the sausage. Small specks are fine. Sheets of silver skin and shank tendons are not. A thin, flexible knife makes it go a lot faster: slide it just under the silver skin, blade angled up, and peel it off in strips.

Even with good trimming, sinew builds up on the knife over a big batch. Stopping to clean it every so often is normal.

What size meat grinder do you need for deer?

Grinders are sized by a number that tells you the plate diameter. Bigger number, bigger plate, more meat per minute. In plain terms:

Grinder size	Plate across	Good for
Mixer attachment or #5	about 2 1/8 inch	A few pounds at a time. Slow, and it heats the meat on a whole deer.
#8	about 2 1/2 inch	Small batches, one deer if you're patient
#12	about 2 3/4 inch	One or two deer a year. A solid home size.
#22	about 3 1/4 inch	Several deer a year, or grinding with buddies
#32	about 3 7/8 inch	Big volume, deer camp, the whole crew's harvest

Look for a metal head, a motor around 3/4 horsepower or more for whole-deer work, and a reverse switch, which is the easiest way to free a jam. A bigger grinder isn't just faster. It moves meat through quicker, so the meat spends less time warming up against the knife.

What do you do when the grinder clogs?

1. Stop and unplug it. Never reach into the throat with your fingers. Use the stomper.
2. If it has reverse, bump it for a second to back the meat off.
3. Take off the ring, plate and knife. Pull the sinew off the knife and push it out of the plate holes.
4. Check the knife: flat side against the plate.
5. Put it back together and snug the ring by hand.
6. Check the meat temperature. If it's warmed up, it all goes back in the freezer, grinder parts too.
7. Feed steadily without cramming the tube. If it keeps clogging, cut smaller cubes, trim harder, or do a coarse first pass before the fine plate.

When you're done, take the grinder fully apart and wash every piece in hot, soapy water, then dry it right away so it doesn't rust. A light coat of food-grade oil on the plates and knife before storing keeps them sharp and clean.

In DeepWoodz Smokehouse every sausage recipe tells you which plate to use and whether to grind once or twice, and when you enter how much clean venison you ended up with, the pork, seasoning and cure all scale to it. The cure is locked so it can't be edited to an unsafe number.

Bottom line

Keep the meat and fat partially frozen, around 28 to 32°F, and never above 40°F. Chill the grinder parts, keep the knife sharp and on the right way, trim the sinew, grind the pork in with the venison, and use a 1/4 inch plate for brats or a 1/8 inch plate (with a 3/8 inch first pass if needed) for sticks, summer sausage and hot dogs.

Common questions