Venison bacon

So, I had a bunch of extra ground deer meat in the freezer this summer and I did not need any more bologna. So I used 10 pounds and made venison bacon. People were raving about it on Facebook venison groups and I had to try it. It is not really like bacon, but you can use it like it for things. I also made Honey BBQ snack sticks, but you won;t find that on here until I make it better. I got a recipe and tried it for 10#’s and it was plain. I am going to try again with more brown sugar and more molasses. I am amazed sometimes at the recipes I try. I am like “Damn, sorry your taste buds don’t work.” I am not the best cook, but some people make some plain tasting crap for food.

So anyways, I found this recipe people were raving about and said 4# of pork fat is costing me $2 and the spices are cheap. I had a week off between jobs. Lets give it a shot. I used the grey section to make 14#’s

So as you can see above, grind one on medium with the ground venison and pork fat. Then through again on a fine grind. I did not show in in pictures, but I threw this in my LEM 25# mixer and mixed it or 15 minutes.

Then everything was packed into loaf pans for the rest overnight in the fridge. Saran wrap is laid on the pan and meat pushed in. Pack it good and blend it together. I have not figured out the way to make this better yet, but if they clumps don’t stick you get issues in the slicing, showing why to come later.

The next morning they are flipped and dumped onto the smokehouse shelves for cooking.

The slow ramp up to get a lot of smoking before the cooking.

Here they are cooking and finishing up. They did go higher but never quite reached 145°, but cooking to 140° is fine and you just have to rest there longer. See my post on Internal cooking temperatures, if this confuses you.

They are done and get to rest in the fridge overnight.

Here slicing started and you can see why packing the meat properly matters. You can see the one piece with the two dips in it and that makes it so your bacon strips want to break and fall apart.

Finished and ready for bagging.

My assistant, knowing there is scraps in the Ziploc sandwich bags and waiting for the fry test.

Fry testing ends and scrap pieces.

Nice pieces for tying out.

Cutting and packaging. I only use low vacuum pressure for sealing.

Now, this is not like bacon, or cured pork belly from pigs. It is more like a soft Canadian bacon and you need to cook it on medium or medium low. It will burn easy and at 30% it really does not grease the pan like bacon does. The taste it is awesome though. I tried it on Tomato sandwiches and was disappointed. There was no crunch like you are used to on a BLT. The juice out of the tomato also seemed to hide the bacon taste to me. Now, A couple of these tossed onto a fried egg sandwich are to die for! I am looking for other uses for them, but still working on it. Comment on how you’d like to eat them.

Enjoy!