22 Jan 08
A buddy of mine, with lots of time on his hands one winter in South Dakota, spent his daylight hours experimenting with various sausage seasoning recipes. He tried upwards of 20 recipes or so; and determined that Morton's Sausage Seasoning was as good as any of the recipes he tried; and Morton's had the added benefits that it was available for a nominal price at the grocery store and was already mixed.
I grew up amongst German-Russian and Scandinavian first and second-generation Americans in North Dakota. Every one of those families had their own recipe for sausage making. Dad visited the farms in the area in relation to his business and also served folks in the small community in various ways. It was a custom amongst those wonderful folks to give Dad a sample of their sausage to take home or a bottle of their chokecherry wine -- sometimes both.
As a result, in my youth I tasted the sausage made with many of the old traditional family recipes. Then, in our early married years, Ila, our children, and I began making our own sausage. We agree with my buddy; Morton's Sausage Seasoning tastes as good as any of the old recipes with much less of the fuss (and left over ingredients). Being a German-Russian kid, however, I like to add some garlic to the Morton's.
JW likes to have plenty of red pepper in the mix. I would add red pepper as well, but "Momma" does not like the sausage to have too much "fire." Maverick and JW are quite expert at making hickory-smoked wild boar & venison sausage; and being easily cooked and readily eaten, their sausage is a welcome meal after a hard day of hunting at JW's Ranch.
Now that we have the seasoning out of the way, how do we make wild boar and venison sausage? We keep the fattest dry sow we kill during the season. We skin her carefully to save the fat she carries under her hide.
Next we grind the pork, fat and all, through a rather fine screen. We grind the venison through the same fine screen. I should mention, both sow and buck are field-dressed upon hitting the ground, cooled, skinned, and processed immediately.
The ground fatty pork and the venison are mixed 50/50 and the seasoning is added according to the suggestions on the package. I like to add some garlic, as I stated before.
The mix is left overnight in tubs in the refrigerator to steep. Then the mix is removed from the refrigerator in the next couple of days and stuffed into casings. We usually freeze the sausages at that time.
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We usually use a hickory or pecan fire to do double duty several times later in the season: We flash fire a couple of porterhouse beef steaks to blood rare for supper. Then we turn down the vents in our barbecue grill to slow-cook and smoke a number of rings of sausage. If the sausage turns out to be too fatty, I poke a number of holes in the casings of the sausage rings and let the fat drip out while they are being slow-cooked and smoked.
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The result is great-tasting sausage!
-- Little Eddie
P.S. This works very well with pronghorn antelope and elk venison as well. We always have ground the elk or antelope and mixed it 50/50 with the fatty pork. This is the only way I enjoy eating antelope; and if anything, the antelope/fatty pork/garlic sausage is every bit as good as the whitetail or elk mix. We have even mixed 25% antelope, 25% elk, and 50% fatty pork with a yummy result. The wild pork is every bit as good, or better, than domestic pork in the sausage -- as long as it is fat.
P.P.S. Before the advent of the microwave oven, a ring of frozen sausage often provided the core of a fast meal in my Mother's house: All it takes is a pan of boiling water, and the sausage is quickly done. I like boiled sausage best with a ton of catsup; or I boil it with a can of sauerkraut. With sauerkraut, I get some kraut on my fork before stabbing a bite-sized piece of sausage -- eating the sausage with the kraut as a condiment. Sausage and kraut also is good when eaten with catsup.
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