Making your own sausage is super easy. You get the flavours you want with no unnecessary ingredients.
We love a quick, hearty breakfast of sausage and eggs. We eat like kings! It's so fun and easy to do when the ingredients are all in your backyard. I highly recommend grinding your own sausage! It's perfect for using up all the trimmings from butchering your deer.
I also make a different version with less fat. They both taste completely different so feel free to make Breakfast Venison Sausage as well. This maple fennel sausage is a classic taste that's great on its own but you can also roll it up in Sausage Rolls in homemade puff pastry dough.
Key Ingredients
Venison - Use cubed up bits and pieces from your last butchering session. You could also consider this stew meat, or you could use any cut you like.
Pork Fat - I think this adds a lot of flavour and can help your family transition to wild game since the pork taste is familiar to them.
Spices - I like using whole fennel, cloves, and chili pepper.
Liquid - To pull everything together, I like to use maple syrup and a splash of wine, and the onion honestly also holds things together.
How to Make Maple Venison Breakfast Sausage
***See recipe card below for precise measurements and instructions.***
Step 1: Add semi-frozen meat cubes to the food processor.
Step 2: Pulse until ground.
Step 3: Add semi-frozen pork fat to the processor.
Step 4: Pulse until fine chunks appear.
Step 5: Add garlic, onion, and remaining seasonings.
Step 6: Pulse to chop.
Step 7: Add all ingredients to a large mixing bowl.
Step 8: Use your hands to mix everything up well.
Step 9: Form into patties and cook in a skillet.
Step 10: Brown both sides!
FAQs
I recommend freezing raw. See the photo below - I place the formed patties on a lined baking sheet to flash freeze individually. You can then place in a bag for later storage. You can also mix these up the night before and pop in the fridge raw to fry up at breakfast, saving lots of time.
Yup! I don't like to make my sausage like meatloaf, where you might add eggs and/or a grain like breadcrumbs. I much prefer the flavour and texture of my sausage without the breadcrumbs. That makes these dairy-free and gluten-free, so perfect for many diets.
I love the depth this adds, it really tastes great. It's only a couple tablespoons spread across three pounds of sausage. But I totally get that not everyone likes to use that. Feel free to use grape juice, apple juice, or chicken broth. Really anything you have on hand will tie things together well.
Photos by Dante from Shire by the Sea
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Maple Fennel Game Sausage
Ingredients
- 2 pounds venison cut into cubes, semi-frozen
- ½ pound pork fat semi-frozen
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 medium onion peeled and halved
- 1 ½ tablespoons salt
- 1 ½ tablespoons fennel seeds
- 1 teaspoon chili flakes
- 2 tablespoons wine or mead we used homemade blackberry mead
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- Black pepper optional
Instructions
- Freeze venison and pig fat for better processing, but make sure it is not too frozen as you have to still feeds chunks into meat grinder or food processor. If it's solidly frozen let it thaw out enough that you can pull it apart.
- If you using a meat grinder, run the meat, then fat, then onions, garlic, and dry spices through the grinder.
- If you are using a food processor don't fill it up, but about ¼ full, and pulse until you have a nice crumbled grind.
- Empty ground venison into a large mixing bowl.
- Do the same with the fat, pulsing until you get a small grind and add to ground venison.
- Now repeat with the rest of the dry ingredients: onion, peeled garlic, salt, fennel seeds, chili, pulse until nicely chopped together.
- Add to the venison and fat and mix well together with your hands, adding some black pepper if you want a bit more bite.
- Next add in the wine and maple syrup and mix thoroughly.
- Form into small burger-sized patties and lay out on/wrap with butcher paper on trays if you intend to freeze or refrigerate for later.
- If cooking some immediately, heat skillet and fry on both sides over medium heat until a nice golden-brown colour.
Notes
- I like to make around 24 patties here, 2 per serving.
- My kids don't love the black pepper in it, so sometimes I leave it out and just season on my plate.
- You can cook up a small pinch of the sausage mix to taste the seasoning before forming all of the patties.
- Feel free to use any sort of juice or broth in place of the wine.
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