How to Make Venison Bacon (Ground, Cured, Smoked)

Short answer:

A deer doesn't have a belly worth curing, so venison bacon is a formed product. You grind it, season and cure it, press it flat, and smoke it. What comes out slices into strips that crisp up in a pan and taste like bacon with a little more backbone. It's one of the best uses for a pile of trim I know, and it doesn't need a stuffer or a single casing.

What is venison bacon?

Ground venison blended with pork, mixed with salt, sugar, seasoning and Cure #1, packed into a flat slab, then smoked and sliced. The pork brings the fat that venison doesn't have, so the strips brown and crisp instead of drying into jerky in the pan.

It's a different animal from pork belly bacon. Belly bacon is a whole muscle cured in one piece. Venison bacon is closer to a sausage you slice, which is why the grind, the mix and the cure all work the way they do in a summer sausage.

What ratio of venison to pork is best for venison bacon?

50/50 venison to pork butt. That's what every venison bacon recipe in the DeepWoodz app uses. Pork butt is about 30% fat (a cut is not straight fat), so a 50/50 blend with lean deer comes out around 17% fat. That's enough to brown and crisp in the pan and bind the slab together, without it falling apart in the smoker. You can check any other blend in the venison fat calculator.

How much Cure #1 do you use for venison bacon?

0.25% of the total meat weight, which is 156 ppm of nitrite. This is not optional. Venison bacon spends hours in a low-temperature smoker, and that slow, warm stretch is exactly where botulism can grow without cure.

Meat weight (venison + pork)	Cure #1 at 0.25%
1 lb	1.1 g
5 lb	5.7 g
10 lb	11.3 g
1 kg	2.5 g

Weigh it on a gram scale if you have one. Use Cure #1, not Cure #2 (that's for dry-cured sausage that hangs for weeks), and don't swap in a cure-and-salt blend at the same weight. For any other batch size, use the free cure calculator or read how much Cure #1 per pound. If you're unsure which cure you have, see Cure #1 vs Cure #2 and cure-and-salt blends vs Cure #1.

How do you make venison bacon, step by step?

1. Trim and chill. Clean venison of silver skin and deer fat, cube it with the pork butt, and chill everything to right around 32°F. Keep the meat below 40°F the whole time you're grinding and mixing.
2. Grind once through a 1/4 inch plate. Venison and pork together. See grinding venison for sausage if the grinder is smearing.
3. Mix until tacky. Add the Cure #1, salt, sugar, seasoning and ice cold water, and mix until the meat turns sticky and clings to your glove. That protein bind is what lets the slab slice into strips instead of crumbles. Spread the cure evenly through the whole batch; a pocket of cure is a pocket of trouble.
4. Press it into a slab. The app's recipes pack it into a 9x13 aluminum pan lined with plastic wrap. A bacon press or a loaf pan works too. Pack it tight with no air pockets, and the plastic wrap lets you lift the slab out cleanly later.
5. Rest it 24 to 48 hours in the fridge. This gives the cure time to work all the way through.
6. Smoke at 160 to 180°F until it hits 152°F internal. Lift the slab out of the pan onto a rack or mat. Hickory, cherry, apple or maple all work.
7. Chill overnight, then slice. A cold slab slices clean; a warm one tears.

The exact salt, sugar and seasoning amounts for each style (classic, maple, cracked pepper, jalapeño cheddar) are in the DeepWoodz app. Enter the weight of meat you have and every ingredient, including the Cure #1, scales to that weight, with the cure locked at the safe rate. Start with Whitetail Slab or browse the venison bacon recipes.

What temperature do you smoke venison bacon at, and when is it done?

Smoker at 160 to 180°F. Pull at 152°F internal. That's the schedule every venison bacon recipe in the app runs.

The ceiling matters as much as the target. Never let the smoker go above 180°F. Run it hotter and the fat renders out of the slab, and you end up with a shrunken, greasy, crumbly block (the same thing that happens to sausage, covered in why sausage fats out).

Your smoker's set temperature isn't its actual temperature. Pellet grills especially can spike well past the setting during a feed cycle. Put a second probe at grate level next to the slab and trust that number over the dial. One probe in the meat, one in the air.

Time depends on how thick the slab is and how your smoker runs, so go by the thermometer, not the clock. Put the probe in the thickest part, through the side.

Is 152°F safe? Do you have to cook it again?

Treat venison bacon like any bacon: fry it before you eat it. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service lists 160°F as the safe minimum for ground meat and for venison. Venison bacon comes off the smoker at 152°F as a cured slab that gets cooked again in the pan, and frying thin slices takes them well past 160°F.

If you'd rather eat it cold off the slab, like a lunch meat or a summer sausage, then smoke it all the way to 160°F internal. You'll give up a little texture, but you won't be relying on the pan.

No smoker? An oven that holds 170 to 180°F will cook the slab, but it won't add smoke flavor. Some options are in how to smoke sausage without a smoker.

How do you slice venison bacon?

Cold, always. After an overnight chill the slab firms up and slices clean. Cut it thin, about like store bacon, with a long sharp knife or a meat slicer. Thin slices crisp up; thick ones go chewy.

Fry over medium heat. It has less fat than pork bacon, so a touch of oil in the pan helps the first batch. Don't crank the heat or the sugar in the cure burns before the slice crisps.

How long does homemade venison bacon last?

Venison bacon	Fridge (40°F or below)	Freezer (0°F)
Smoked slab or sliced	About 1 week	1 to 2 months for best quality, longer vacuum sealed

USDA gives bacon 7 days in the fridge, and that's the window I go by for a homemade slab. For anything longer, slice it, lay it out in meal-size packs, vacuum seal it and freeze it. USDA's freezer times for bacon and sausage (1 to 2 months) are about quality. Food kept frozen at 0°F stays safe, and a tight vacuum seal keeps the flavor a lot longer than a zipper bag does. Thaw it in the fridge. More detail in how long venison sausage lasts.

Bottom line

50/50 venison to pork butt, Cure #1 at 0.25% (156 ppm), one grind at 1/4 inch, mixed to tacky, pressed into a slab, rested 24 to 48 hours, smoked at 160 to 180°F to 152°F internal. Never let the smoker top 180°F. Chill overnight, slice thin, fry it, and freeze what you won't eat in a week.

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