Grinding deer meat
 

I'm new to hunting and I've been lucky enough to kill two small does this season, one with my crossbow and the other with my slug gun, my buddy gave me one of the ones he shot too so I've got quite a bit of meat. How should I go about grinding some of it up for burgers? I've heard of people mixing sausage or beef fat into it? Where can I get an inexpensive grinder? Thanks in advance for any advice!

a hand grinder would be the cheapest thing you can buy. do you live near a northern tool store they have them . so does bass pro,cabelas,gander mtn.

lowes sells the waren pro grinder for 100 bucks , i have had one for 4 years and ground up quite a few deer , it's not a big grinder and you have to feed it slowly , but it does it's job.

deer meat is very very lean , alot of people add pork fat to the deer to make it have a bit of fat, i seen anywhere from 20 to 50% fat added , i personally get it right around 25-30% sometimes i even add a bit of bacon to it.

pork butts are great to mix into the deer burger.. and if you know a butcher you may be able to get some of the fat trimmings they have left after they process the meats.it's another cheap alternative.

here's a cheap grinder...
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=99598
don't really know how well it would hold up though.

You should also find the hand crank grinders at about any farm store like Orscheln or Tractor Supply and possibly even a Wal-Mart, but you can't count on Wal-Mart for much. An electric grinder may cost a bit more but you can probably find those too. You can go to any locker and ask for pork, beef or whatever fat to add to your burger, or the meat counter in any large store that cuts their own meat and they can tell you how much is reccommended. You can also add sausage because its mostly fat, but your deer will taste like sausage, obviously. But basicly you decide how much lean meat you want and you can find that out from any hamburger you've purchased at a store, by reading the package. Most common is 80/20 If this is what you like then add 2lbs. of fat to 8lbs. of deer and grind and mix well. After the first batch fry up some deerburger and make sure it cooks and tastes right and adjust if necessary.

Another thing you can do is just grind it lean and add lard/crisco to your pan at cooking time like grandma used to do. It does excactly the same thing, it adds the desired amount of fat for flavor and easy cooking without burning. You could simply figure out how many teaspoons of your favorite flavor of cooking lard to add.

Many does have a nice 1/2 inch thick layer of fat covering their hind quarters and over their back straps and you can save it for grinding too.

I buy the cheapest hamburger I can find and mix it in with my ground up deer. It usually comes in 5lb tubes and is about 23% fat. I trim all the deer fat off as otherwise it will give the end result a gamey flavor.

I mix it about 2lbs of lean ground up deer meat with 1lb of the store bought hamburger.

The end result is about 93% lean burger. Most folks can't tell the difference.

I have a #12 electric grinder I bought at gander mountain. It shows online to be $179.99 but I bought it for $79.99 in the store on a special. I think I just saw them for that price again last week actually. I've ground up 1 elk, 3 deer, and a bunch of pigs with mine and it seems to do a pretty good job.

First off a hand grinders are ok but alot of work .Get a lem or a lem type product .. very good units.Picked one up at bps made by lem for bps for hundred bucks .. all lem products will fit it .I mix 50/50 pork but with my venison for sausage .I however do remove all fat from my venison as its more like tallow than fat and tends to make the meat taste sour or rancid.I grind my pork one time through and then my venison mix it well add spices and grind again all together.I tried 20 and 30% and wife said it was still to dry for her tastes.

I use a 80 year old Keystone hand grinder. It isn't very large, but it'll grind up a pile of meat quicker than you'd think.
I just made 25lbs of breakfast sausage, and 10lbs of ground venison the other day.
Did it all in about an hour. (once it was boned and cut into strips of course).
Its hard to tell someone else how to eat their food. You really just need to experiement.
I make alot of meat loafs, hamburger helper products, chilli, spaghetti, etc.
For this I just grind venison as it is.
If Im grilling deer burgers for...burgers, I add a little (10% or so) of some sort of fat, to help keep them from crumbling so much. Might be bacon, or trimings.

People often talk about a "gamy" taste to their meat. There IS such a thing. If you have the meat cut up with a saw, the marrow and bone fragments disrupt the taste of the venison. So I debone all my meat with a knife. I cut no bones with a saw at all. The only thing I cut that resembles bone is the sternum when I'm skinning and that too is done with a knife.

I also remove almost all the membrane/sinew that is on the meat. This is a large contributor of the gamy taste some talk about. I also remove all the tallow/fat. When any venison I grind goes into the grinder, it's clean, void of any of these things that disrupt the taste of the meat.

I like to cut it into strips so it feeds better into the hopper. My first grinder experiences have been done with a #10 grinder. See below:



It grinds ok, but I grind more meat now, all of my family, so I use a larger one yet. It's not really a lot of work. You have to keep your meat clean of the sinew stuff so your grinder doesn't plug or slow down. If you keep extra grinder plates on hand, about $5 each, you can switch them out as they get plugged up and keep on grinding, while someone else is cleaning out the one(s) that is/are plugged. Makes for fast grinding this way.

I mix 2lbs of ground venison per 1lb. of ground beef.(some to 3 to 1)

iSnipe

I also buy the fattiest ground beef in the store and mix it about 1-1 1/2 to 1 venison to beef, saute some onions and noone will ever know the difference.

We use an electirc grinder that my uncle purchased from Cabela's, but I'm not sure of what number it is. As for cleaning our meat, we do it very similarly to iSnipe, in that we clean all excess fat and blue skin from the meat. This is one of the reasons we started grinding our own, we were watching the processors do it and they left a lot of the "crap" we don't like to eat, on the meat.

We use 50/50 mix of Pork and Venison for all of our grindings. For every 5lbs of venison, we'll throw in 3lbs of smoked bacon, and 2lbs of pork butt. We find it's a wonderful mix, and this year I'm going to try and lean out the pork a little bit to try and play around with different combinations of beef hamburger and pork in different ratio's. Good luck with any grinding your going to do this year!

Thanks for all the advice! I picked up a LEM stainless steel hand grinder from Bass Pro this afternoon and my wife got me a big tray of beef fat the butcher at the grocery store gave her. I'm going to grind up about 20 lbs tonight. I'm a young, strong guy so it shouldn't be a problem, I need the exercise anyway. Thanks again.

Good luck tonight. Personally, I add very little beef fat to my venison burger. My family and I enjoy venison because it is a very lean meat and is supposed to be better for you, so I hate to ruin that. I do like most other people though and remove all fat and silver skin (at least that's what we call it). Then I mix in less than 5% beef fat.

We like the deer burger here, we don't cover up the taste with pork/beef fat! The only time we add pork is while making summer sausage. Thats just cause the recipe calls for it but we still don't use as much as it says.

For the grinder, up until this year I always used a hand crank style grinder also. It isn't that bad.

Have done 5 deer so far this year with my upgraded refurbished Cabellas 3/4 hp commercial grinder. 10% beef fat, will let me make a good patty without falling apart after cooked. Tried to get the 1hp with reverse but they were sold out. Did get the foot control switch, dont think I will ever need a reverse, now. It is a #12, pan might be a little small, but it will take as much as I put down the throat.....

To insinuate those who add pork/beef to the mix is covering up the taste is absurd. Sounds like you need to educate yourself as to why SO MANY people do it. Come on man. You think I want to cover up the taste of venison? If so, you have to quit doing the Clinton on whatever you been tokin'. I personally add to the venison to keep it from flaking, help it stay together when making patties, etc, and it adds NECESSARY moisture because deer meat is very lean.

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Kent,

Like I said, it's not hard and not about physical.

You will find as you grind, the holes in the plate may plug up on you. I double-grind my meat. First I use the large hole plate, then come back a 2nd time and grind with the smaller holed one. Once things start to slow down, you'll have to unscrew the cover and take out the plate to clean so it will let meat pass through faster.

iSnipe

What parts do y'all grind into burger/sausage/etc? I processed my own deer from last year (my first season) and my ground venison left plenty to be desired. Now, I understand that I didn't mix it with beef or pork or the fat from either AND I didn't cut away all of the deer fat, which would contribute, but my ground venison was really "grissiley" in some bites.

So, now I know to mix with beef fat (I'd rather not use pork unless I'm actually making sausage) and to get rid of all the deer fat, but how on earth can you cut away all of the other white stuff...the membrane, sinew...whatever it is...without it taking FOREVER.

Am I making a mistake to try to use front shoulder as ground venison (i.e. should they only be roasted, etc)? What about the flanks...do you use the stomach muscle and the outer back/shoulder muscles as ground venison? Okay, and even when I separate the muscle groups from the rear quarter, I notice layers of white tissue within the same muscle group (i.e. the rump roast). Does that need to be removed too?

Thanks. Sorry for so many questions. I'm planning to take many deer this season, but the problem is that the wife isn't crazy about venison. I want to make it as pleasant as possible on her...plus I just want to learn the tastiest way to process.

7.62NATO,

When you say "grissiley", it sounds to me you didn't take enough of the tendons and tougher sinew away. This stuff will make chewing rough and will also plug up your grinder faster.

As for your question: "...how on earth can you cut away all of the other white stuff...the membrane, sinew...whatever it is...without it taking FOREVER."

I have no great answer there except it takes practice. Last time I processed a deer, cutting up the meat and steaks, etc, it was commented that I do that real well. Well, years ago when I first started, it did take "FOREVER". After some practice, I got better. What made me even faster was watching Metz' #2 video on meat processing. It's very similar to filleting a fish or rather removing the skin from the meat part.

What helps too is to have a sharp knife. I have a big plastic cutting board that the meat goes onto. I pick a piece of meat, then go to work on it cutting away the thin membrane part. I usually start in the middle of the meat, then cut a thin slice away just under the membrane all the way out to one side, then turn around 180° and continue to the other side. You do lose some meat, but this is meat you wouldn't eat at the dinner plate anyway, so you're really not losing anything. Plus removing it now means you remove some of the stuff that gives the meat a "gamy" taste.

For the hind quarters, I take the meat and remove the muscle groups first. Some people keep it whole for roasts and this is ok, but sometimes I cut it into steaks or use that for grinding. A guy can go crazy trying to remove all the smaller tendons from the meat in the lower legs of both the front and back, but by the time a guy is done, there's hardly anything there. I've learned to not mess with that area as there's not much there anyway. I also use the roasts of the neck, the area under and around the shoulder blades as grinds. I especially like to take the backstraps and grind that up.

NO way! Just kidding there! No way I'm grinding backstraps!

Hope that helps.

iSnipe

Just like sausage domestic animal fat (pork or beef) is for the finished product. In some case it does add taste yes but most don't do it to cover up the vension flavor but rather to have it moist and stuck together. Personally I don't add any fat to my venison grind at time of process as there are receipes/uses where fat isn't required (such as chili, taco's, meat sauces, etc). When a dish does require some fatt content ( burgers, sheppards pie, etc) then I add fat at time of preperation. Venison if packaged properly (void of air) will last 2 years in a chest freezer, domestic pork will last 6 mos & beef 1 (max)...reason being fat content! Just a Cliff Claven Factoid for you!

In regards grinding I double grind all the time. I start with the larger plates and go down a size(I use a 9/16" and 7/16" equiv. diameter plate for burger). For sausage I use a 9/16" for the intial grind, then a 1/2" for the secondary grind after the spices and meat mixing stages. Also when making sausage I let the mixture sit for 3 hours refrigerated prior to re-grinding and stuffing. Just like merinating it allows the spicing to sink into the meat and disperse (reduces pockets of over/under flavouring).

The gristle can come from under grinding or under trimming. Cuts such as the shank and front shoulders need more attention. Try seperating by muscle group, if you find working with larger pieces of meat difficult simply hack them down to your comfortable or workable size. Always will be a grind pile and small piece grind up as well.

I use a 6" Rapela fish fillet knife for my boning and trimming. The blade is small and flexible and works perfectly for all the trimming.

I don't worry about getting all of the silverskin off before I grind. You should pay more attention to the fat.... the white "chalky" stuff. This stuff will make your venison tast bad. As I'm grinding, much of the silverskin clogs up my grinder plates. I see this as a good thing because if it clogs the grinder plates, it doesn't make it to my venision.

Some say you should remove it all before grinding. I don't do this for simple time management reasons. It can take an hour to remove all of the silverskin from the smaller muscle groups of a deer so I don't even try. And when you're done, you've cut away some meat as well. It literally takes me seconds to pull out the plate and unclog it.

As far as the parts I grind. I grind the entire neck, front shoulders, brisket. Then I grind the trimmings from the hind quarters and back straps. I only mix other meats in with the venison when I know that I'm making burgers (bacon), Sausage (pork), meatloaf/meatballs (beef). Otherwise, I mix nothing with it and either mix it later or use it for stew, chili, lasagna, etc.

Thanks for the info. Sounds like I was being a little too ridiculous. Need to be anal, just not too anal.