Wednesday, November 28, 2012

48 # of ground venison!

Last week, my husband bagged a nice deer for us.  This is the first one he's ever gotten.  It was very exciting and very welcome.  The whole idea is so we can have healthy meat to eat and can save money.  We didn't want to pay for processing, so we decided to turn it all into ground meat.

It hung, in the garage, for four days, and we were blessed with nice cool weather, between about 30 and 40 degrees, so it was perfect.  Today, he took the meat off of the bones, cut it into chunks for me and then I put it through a grinder that attaches to my Kitchenaide mixer.
Then I packed it into freezer bags, 1 # in each bag and put them in the deep freeze.  I froze 45 pounds of the meat. 
Two pounds of it was made into jerkey.  It is in the dehydrator right now.  The other pound we had for lunch.  Yummy!
When he took the meat off of the bones, he dropped the pieces into an old cooler that I had sterilized.  Here is how it looked.  Not very pretty, but so much food!
And here is about 12 pounds of it all ground up.
I am very grateful to have all of this food.  It was a big job, because we don't really know what we're doing, yet, but in the end, it worked out just fine.

Hamburgers
Chili
Soup
Meat balls
Stew
Meat loaf

Yes. :)

This post is linked to Simple Lives Thursday #123.

18 comments:

  1. Venison makes the most amazing chili. I am a little jealous!

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  2. It 's really exciting for us and yes it does make great Chili. That 's what we had for dinner tonight. I hope you can get some this year, Pam.

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  3. My husband hunts for the same reasons. We have found a dvd Deer and Big Game Processing Volume 1 extremely helpful. We would like to get the sausage volume that teaches you how to make sausage with the meat. I don't know how new you are to it but the gamey taste is in the fat so you want to make sure you get all of it off. Congrats! It is a great feeling going into the freezer and it being full with meat you processed.

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    1. Thank you so much. I will look for that DVD. I did not know the gamey taste is in the fat. Interesting. There was only a little fat in this. I have heard that some people grind up beef suet with their venison. I used some lard to fry our burgers and that worked fine. They were so good.

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  4. I forgot to mention the video is by Outdoor Edge.

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  5. I didn't know a kitchenaid attachment could do that! So neat!


    Thanks for your comment about cloth diapers at my blog. :)

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  6. When we first started processing our meat we added fat but it became to much of a hassle because it kept clogging the grinding blade so we just stopped doing it. We think it taste just as good with out it. I don't even add fat/oils when I cook it. Just make sure you don't cook it to death kind of like you would do with grass fed beef.

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    1. I'm glad to hear that adding the fat wasn't really making it better. I'd have to find some grass fed suet to do that, which would be a hassle and extra expense too.

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  7. Stumbled across your lovely blog. My husband saw the photos and his mouth was watering. He was not able to get out and deer hunt again (VA scheduled appts), so we will have to wait until next year.

    About the gamely taste. I learned from my husband and a local rancher who raises bison. The gamey taste is actually from folks overcooking the meat. Since venison (deer, elk, bison etc.) has very little fat, you do not cook it as long as you would beef. I learned that one the hard way.

    Buying meat at the butchers, ranchers, and grocery store has been a real shock in prices.

    Enjoy.
    blessings, jill

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    1. Thank you for your kind message. That is too bad your husband couldn't get a deer this year. Here in Indiana, we have a deer "problem" and so one hunter, under certain rules, can get several deer. If that is the case where you are, it might be possible that someone would let you have one and they would have the "fun" of hunting it? Yes. Meat, particularly grass-fed meat, is almost prohibitively expensive at times.

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  8. wow, what a blessing! I do wish my husband was a hunter. No one in my family is, but I love venison bologna so much.

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    1. I never heard of venison bologna. Interesting! YOU could learn to hunt, you know! A lot of women do it. I would if I needed to.

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  9. I love venison. I wish we could get one but right now J really can't... Enjoy your lovely venison!

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  10. Not nice! We shoudn´t have the moral right to kill anything ...

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  11. I understand an respect your outlook on this, issue, fran rivas rivas. Thank you for visiting my blog!

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