Sunday evening Philip and I completed the annual burger grind, and the 2024 hunting season is complete. Every year, a couple months after the end of the actual hunting part of the hunting season, we grind up all the meat slated for burger, and I also add in all the meat from the prior year (2023) that did not get finished. Last year (click here) we ground up 176 pounds of burger and sausage. This year we ended up with 195 pounds of burger and sausage. These weights include the beef and pig fat, pork shoulder, and spices - as well as all the elk and deer meat. So almost 20 pounds more pounds of product. But what's interesting is that I also ground elk burger for an extra person this year. So when you subtract his portion the totals from this year's to last year's haul is almost identical. And last year all the burger and sausage got eaten. So while it is a Whole Lot of Meat - it is also sufficient.
As far as burger and sausage techniques go - we do grind all of our meat and fat 'soft' frozen. I pack the meat in coolers Wednesday morning and it is barely thawed by Sunday evening. It is still so frozen that it is hard to cut into grinder sized chunks. The knife barely cuts into the meat. I have found that the fat thaws more quickly and so I take that out of the freezer only a couple of days before the grind - and I am thinking I'll even leave until the last day next year.
It is important to have almost frozen meat because it goes through the grinder so much more easily. The grinder blades shave the meat like ice rather than mashing the meat and creating a meat goo. With meat that is not frozen hard enough the grinder heats and gums up, and we often have to stop to let the grinder cool and to clean the blades. This year all the meat went through the grinder without issue.
Another trick we have learned is to add the Italian sausage spices directly to the sausage, little by little, on the first grind (we always do two grinds for both the burger and the sausage). In the old days we used to work and mix in the spices by hand at the end. This was hard on the hands (they'd freeze tossing the meat), and we found the sausage turned grey from getting over-worked. Now for both the burger and the sausage we try and touch the meat as little as possible. This way you end up with bright colored burger that stays that way.
Anyway, I now have enough burger and sausage for the next year!
Patrick
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| All the elk burger |
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| All the deer sausage |
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| Whole lot of elk burger! |
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| All the wrapped elk burger |
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| sampling the deer Italian sausage |
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| wrapping the Italian sausage |
