At the end of the two week rifle season during my Ontario days the hunting gang would gather at Uncle Dave’s shop to butcher the deer we had killed. We could haul through a half dozen whitetails in a few hours, chops and steaks with the prime cuts, then chunk up what’s left for the grinder. With the grind cuts we would have a talented local butcher make sausage. I think it was the last year I was in Ontario we had 200 pounds of sausage made. For the life of me I can’t remember the few different types we would get, but as a group our favourite was honey garlic.
Blacktail venison sausage ready to cook.
Over the past few years my wife and I have been enjoying the variety of different meal options we can make with our wild game. I’d like to think I’ve been getting better every year at hunting, with that comes more meat in the freezer. Wanting to reduce our reliance on the grocery store we have been trying to increase our diversity and options besides the usual chops, roast and mince. A few weeks back we were down in Abbotsford which requires a stop at a major outdoor retailer. The first section we look at always seems to be the food production isles and I finally thought to grab the sausage making attachments and some casings for our grinder.
Having been hit with a huge late winter storm my mountain lion hunting was put on hold. The parking areas I use were too deep in snow to get the truck in there. It was the perfect time to thaw some venison and get grinding. Finding an easy honey garlic recipe which we had most of the ingredients for it was game on. Course grind, mix in the seasoning, try a test patty, then onto the fine grinding and stuffing. Watching the casings stretch out and fill is oddly satisfying, I wouldn’t consider myself a prepper, but filling the freezer with meat we have processed gives me comfort knowing I’m somewhat prepared for a natural disaster or another pandemic.
The end result had Rachael and I stoked, the flavour was better than we could’ve hoped for. Not to toot our own horn, but this was the best honey garlic sausage I’d ever had. We chalked the intense flavour to using real honey and fresh crushed garlic. The first round came out good though we stuffed the casings a little too tight and didn’t get the twist right. The second batch after a little investigation came out much nicer and we are already looking forward to making up a batch of black bear sausages with the meat I have left to grind from last spring’s bear.
See you on the water or the mountain.
- Matthew Mallory