This post talks about how you can make your own delicious smoked venison summer sausage at home using your Traeger or pellet grill, all while saving some cash.
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My husband loves summer sausage. And to be honest, so does everyone else in our family. It’s a great snack, sandwich filler, and breakfast side fried up on Sunday mornings. Plus, it’s made from meat that has been harvested from our own land and completely cared for by Mother Nature, so that makes it pretty great too.
Not only does my husband love venison summer sausage, he is also what I might call a sausage snob. You know how there are wine snobs? Well my husband is the sausage version of that. He knows what he likes in a venison summer sausage and wants his sausage to be exactly as he imagines. We found a processor who could make the venison summer sausage just as he liked, but it was costing hundreds of dollars for the sausage to be made! Though it tasted good, it wasn’t a sustainable option. And so, we started working to learn more about ways that we could make our own venison summer sausage at home.
This venison summer sausage made on a Traeger grill (or another pellet grill) is a sustainable option that gives everyday people like us a chance to make sausage at home for a fraction of the price.
Table of Contents
- Recipe for Smoked Venison Summer Sausage
- Tools Needed to Make Smoked Venison Summer Sausage on a Traeger Grill
- Steps to Making Smoked Venison Summer Sausage
- Video Overview
- Printable Recipe
- Want to read more about growing, raising, and cooking your own food?
- Save this Post
Recipe for Smoked Venison Summer Sausage
My husband has been following The Bearded Butchers for a while, and after having success with making venison snack sticks from them, we decided to try out their DIY summer sausage kit to see how it would taste. We were really happy with the final product!
- 20 pounds venison: You’ll want to cut your venison into smaller sized chunks so that it can easily fit through the grinder.
- 5 pounds pork: Venison is a very lean meat, so adding pork fat helps to add flavor and hold the meat together. We deboned and used pork shoulder roasts from our pigs for this venison summer sausage recipe. If you don’t have pork shoulder roasts, you can use any type of fattier pork trim for this recipe. Again, make sure that this is cut into small sized pieces to fit through your grinder.
- Seasonings: We used the DIY summer sausage kit from the Bearded Butchers for our venison summer sausage. This kit includes a salt and pepper seasoning, summer sausage smoking casing, sodium nitrite pink curing salt, and encapsulated citric acid all for 25 pounds of meat. We also used the following add-ons in our venison summer sausage to pull everything together and add extra flavor:
- Hickory Smoke Powder: This hickory smoke powder gives your sausage a really nice smoky flavor and smell.
- High Temp Cheese: This is probably my favorite part of the sausage! I really like the texture and flavor the cheese adds to the venison summer sausage. We chose the high temperature pepper jack cheese.
- Minced Garlic: For flavor
- Dried Mustard Seed: For flavor and appearance
Tools Needed to Make Smoked Venison Summer Sausage on a Traeger Grill
- Meat Grinder: We used this meat grinder from Amazon for our small batch processing.
- Sausage Stuffer and Stuffing Horn: We wanted to invest in a sausage stuffer that was going to last us our lifetime, so we got the MEAT! 15 lb. vertical sausage stuffer for our needs.
- Traeger Grill (or Smoker): The Traeger will be used to cook your snack sticks slowly to a safe-to-eat temperature.
- Sharp Knife: These knives are really sharp, which is exactly what you want to perfectly slice your finished sausage. This is also a great knife for cutting the venison and pork for the grinder too!
- Large Container: You’ll need a food-grade container to hold the ground meat as it is grinding and for mixing in seasonings.
- Meat Thermometer: You’ll use a meat thermometer to continuously check the cooking progress of your sausages and to help you know when they’ve finished cooking.
Steps to Making Smoked Venison Summer Sausage
The steps to making this venison sausage are fairly straightforward and simple. With a little time, you’ll have this smoked venison summer sausage ready to eat and serve.
Step One: Mix Venison and Pork Pieces
In a large tub, combine your venison and pork together so that the meats are mixed equally and are combined nicely for the grinding process, which comes next.
Step Two: Grind Meat
Grind your venison and pork mixture into a large container. During this first grind of meat, you’ll want to use your coarse grinding plate so that the meat can go through the grinder easily.
Step Three: Add Seasonings
After your meat has been ground once, mix in the salt and pepper seasoning, minced garlic, hickory smoke flavor powder, and the pink curing salt . Make sure that the seasoning covers all of the meat equally. We used our hands to manually mix it in, but you can purchase a meat mixer to do this job if you’d rather.
Step Four: Grind Meat Again
After seasonings have been well mixed into the meat, grind the meat once again using the same coarse grinding plate. This is the final grinding stage and prepares the meat to go into the casings.
Step Five: Add Water and the Remaining Seasonings
So that the meat goes through the stuffer easily, add around 24 ounces of water to your meat. You want to help make sure the meat isn’t sticky.
After adding the water, add encapsulated citric acid, mustard seed, and the cheese. Mix it all together using your hands.
Step Six: Stuff the Casings
Fill your sausage stuffer, and then slowly push the meat into the casings. Fill your casings tightly, but leave about 2 inches of your casing unfilled to tie shut.
Step Seven: Smoke the Sausage
Place your venison summer sausages on both the upper and lower racks of your grill. Then, smoke them at the following temperatures for the directed hours:
- Hours One and Two: Set your Traeger Grill (or pellet grill) to 165 degrees and smoke for two hours.
- Hours Three and Four: Raise the temperature 185 degrees and smoke for two more hours.
- Hour Five: Raise the temperature of the grill again to 205 degrees and smoke until the internal temperature of the sausage reaches 156-160 degrees. This took our grill about 30 minutes.
Step Eight: Cool Snack Sticks
Once your sausage sticks have reached the 156-160 degree mark, you should remove them from the grill and place into an ice bath in your clean container (be sure you don’t place it back into a container that had raw meat in it as this can potentially cause bacteria to be spread). This stops the cooking process and begins to cool them down. Keep the sausages in the ice bath for 15 minutes and then refrigerate overnight or 12 hours.
Step Nine: Package and Store
The final step is to package and store your smoked venison sausage. We vacuum sealed our sausages and placed them in the freezer until we are ready to eat them. In total, we got about eight 2.5 pound sticks from this process.
Video Overview
For a quick video overview of the steps, watch this short video.
Printable Recipe
Smoked Venison Summer Sausage
Make your own smoked venison sausage easily using a Traeger or other pellet grill.
Ingredients
- 20 pounds venison, cut into small chunks
- 5 pounds pork, cut into small chunks
- DIY summer sausage kit from the Bearded Butchers
- Hickory Smoke Powder
- High Temp Pepperjack Cheese
- Minced Garlic
- Dried Mustard Seed
Instructions
- In a large tub, combine your venison and pork together so that the meats are mixed equally and are combined nicely for the grinding process, which comes next.
- Grind your venison and pork mixture into a large container. During this first grind of meat, you'll want to use your coarse grinding plate so that the meat can go through the grinder easily.
- After your meat has been ground once, mix in the salt and pepper seasoning, minced garlic, hickory smoke flavor powder, and the pink curing salt . Make sure that the seasoning covers all of the meat equally. We used our hands to manually mix it in, but you can purchase a meat mixer to do this job if you'd rather.
- After seasonings have been well mixed into the meat, grind the meat once again using the same coarse grinding plate. This is the final grinding stage and prepares the meat to go into the casings.
- So that the meat goes through the stuffer easily, add around 24 ounces of water to your meat. You want to help make sure the meat isn't sticky.
- After adding the water, add encapsulated citric acid, mustard seed, and the cheese. Mix it all together using your hands.
- Fill your sausage stuffer, and then slowly push the meat into the casings. Fill your casings tightly, but leave about 2 inches of your casing unfilled to tie shut.
- Place your venison summer sausages on both the upper and lower racks of your grill. Then, smoke them at the following temperatures for the directed hours:
Hours One and Two: Set your Traeger Grill (or pellet grill) to 165 degrees and smoke for two hours.
Hours Three and Four: Raise the temperature 185 degrees and smoke for two more hours.
Hour Five: Raise the temperature of the grill again to 205 degrees and smoke until the internal temperature of the sausage reaches 156-160 degrees. This took our grill about 30 minutes. - Once your sausage sticks have reached the 156-160 degree mark, you should remove them from the grill and place into an ice bath in your clean container (be sure you don't place it back into a container that had raw meat in it as this can potentially cause bacteria to be spread). This stops the cooking process and begins to cool them down. Keep the sausages in the ice bath for 15 minutes and then refrigerate overnight or 12 hours.
- The final step is to package and store your smoked venison sausage. We vacuum sealed our sausages and placed them in the freezer until we are ready to eat them. In total, we got about eight 2.5 pound sticks from this process.
Want to read more about growing, raising, and cooking your own food?
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After you put in ice can you vacuum seal it right away?
I think that would probably work just fine as long as it’s cooled down.
What are the measurements of the added spices?
The spices come in kits from The Bearded Butchers based on the amount of meat you have. We used the DIY summer sausage kit from the Bearded Butchers for our venison summer sausage. This kit includes a salt and pepper seasoning, summer sausage smoking casing, sodium nitrite pink curing salt, and encapsulated citric acid all for 25 pounds of meat.
I can’t wait to try this summer sausage. Looks wonderful!
Let me know what you think!
I have never thought to make our own summer sausage but this sounds delicious! Great post! We’re going to have to get one of those smokers!!
Let me know if you try it! Yes, the smoker is really pretty awesome…! I can’t deny that!
Easy to understand steps! Thank you for this recipe and laying it out so well.
I’m glad you liked it, Lori! Thanks for stopping by!