How to Make Venison Brats and Breakfast Sausage

Short answer:

Fresh sausage is the easiest way to turn a pile of deer trim into something the whole family eats. No smoker, no curing salt, no schedule. If you can grind, mix and run a grill or a skillet, you can make brats and breakfast sausage this weekend.

Do venison brats and breakfast sausage need cure?

No, as long as you cook them hot and soon. Cure #1 is there to protect sausage that spends hours in the warm range, roughly 40°F to 140°F, inside a low-temperature smoker. That slow, warm, low-oxygen stretch is where botulism can grow, and nitrite is what stops it.

A fresh brat on the grill or a patty in a pan blows through that range in minutes and finishes at 160°F. There's no long warm stretch to protect, so there's nothing for cure to do. Salt and seasoning are all it needs.

The line to watch: if you decide to put brats in the smoker at 150°F to 180°F for a few hours, they're no longer a fresh sausage. That's a smoked sausage, and it needs Cure #1 at 0.25% of the meat weight (156 ppm). The full breakdown is in Do You Need Cure for Sausage?

What ratio of venison to pork should I use?

50/50 venison to pork butt. That's what every brat and breakfast recipe in the DeepWoodz app runs, and it's what I make at home.

Here's why it works. Clean venison is around 96% lean. Pork butt is a cut, not straight fat, and it runs about 30% fat. Blend them half and half and you land around 17% fat. That's enough to keep a fresh sausage juicy on the grill without a puddle of grease in the pan. Go much leaner and you get the dry, crumbly brat everyone remembers from a bad batch (more on that in why venison sausage turns out dry).

If you'd rather blend with straight pork fat or a different cut, run your numbers through the venison fat calculator so you know where you actually landed.

How do I grind venison for brats and breakfast sausage?

One pass through a 1/4 inch plate, with everything ice cold.

1. Trim hard. Pull silver skin, tendon and any bloodshot meat. Deer fat goes too; it tastes waxy. The pork brings the fat. See what venison trim to use.
2. Cube and chill. Cut venison and pork butt into 1 to 2 inch chunks and put them in the freezer until they're firm on the edges, right around 32°F. Chill the grinder head and plate too.
3. Grind once at 1/4 inch. Venison and pork together, alternating chunks so they mix as they go. If the meat starts smearing instead of cutting clean, stop and re-chill.

Cold is the whole game with fresh sausage. Warm fat smears, and smeared fat gives you a mealy, greasy texture you can't fix after the fact. There's more detail in grinding venison for sausage.

How do I mix fresh sausage?

Add your seasoning and ice cold water to the ground meat and mix until it turns sticky. When you pull a handful apart and it stretches and clings to your glove, the proteins have bound up and the sausage will hold together on the grill instead of crumbling.

Don't overdo it. Mix to tacky and stop. Fry a small test patty before you stuff and taste it. That's your last chance to fix the salt.

What casing do you use for venison brats and breakfast links?

Sausage	Casing	Notes
Venison brats	Natural hog casings, 32 to 35 mm	Twist into roughly 6 inch links
Breakfast links	Sheep casings	Small, tender links that cook through fast
Breakfast patties	None	Form by hand or roll into a log and slice
Bulk breakfast sausage	None	Pack into 1 lb freezer bags (chubs)

Soak natural casings and flush them with water before stuffing. Stuff firm but not tight, so the links have room to twist without bursting. If you're new to the stuffer, how to stuff sausage walks through it, and sausage casing types covers the options. The casing calculator tells you how much casing to have on hand for your batch.

Honestly, for breakfast sausage I make most of it bulk. Patties and crumbles get used more in our house than links, and you skip the stuffer altogether.

What temperature do you cook venison brats and breakfast sausage to?

160°F internal. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service lists 160°F as the safe minimum for ground pork and other ground meat, and 160°F for venison. Ground meat doesn't get the rest-time allowance whole cuts do, so 160°F is the number, measured in the center of the thickest link or patty. If there's any ground poultry in the blend, take it to 165°F.

• Brats: grill over medium heat and turn them often. High heat splits the casing and dumps the juice on the coals before the middle is done.
• Beer brats: simmer them in beer and onions below a boil, then finish on the grill for color. Still check for 160°F.
• Patties: medium heat in a skillet, flip once or twice. Thin patties get there fast; check the thick ones.

Color lies. A pink brat can be done and a gray one can be short, so go by the thermometer.

How long does fresh venison sausage keep?

Fresh sausage	Fridge (40°F or below)	Freezer (0°F)
Raw brats, links, patties or bulk	1 to 2 days	1 to 2 months for best quality (USDA), longer vacuum sealed
Cooked leftovers	3 to 4 days	1 to 2 months for best quality

Those are USDA's times. Raw fresh sausage is raw ground meat, so the fridge clock is short. Make it, cook what you'll eat in the next day or two, and freeze the rest the same day.

The freezer times are about quality, not safety. USDA is clear that food kept frozen at 0°F stays safe. What wrecks frozen sausage is air, so vacuum seal it. A good seal holds the flavor well past the 1 to 2 month mark, and I aim to use mine within about 3 months. Thaw in the fridge, never on the counter. The whole storage picture is in how long venison sausage lasts.

Can I use elk or other game for brats and breakfast sausage?

Yes. Elk, moose and antelope are just as lean as deer and work the same at 50/50 with pork butt. Bear and wild hog are a different story. They can carry trichinella, so they have to be cooked all the way to a safe internal temperature every time. Read bear and wild hog sausage safety before you grind either one.

If you want more styles to try with your trim, types of German sausage covers what separates a brat from a bockwurst or a weisswurst.

The DeepWoodz app has venison brat and breakfast sausage recipes, including Camp Classic Brats and Country Breakfast Sausage. Enter the weight of meat you have and every ingredient scales to match, so a 7.3 lb pile of trim gets the right seasoning without any midnight math.

Bottom line

50/50 venison to pork butt, one grind at 1/4 inch, everything ice cold, mixed to tacky, and cooked to 160°F. Hog casings for brats, sheep casings or no casing for breakfast. No cure, because it's cooked hot right away. Cook or freeze raw sausage within 1 to 2 days.

Common questions