We Process Our Own Venison

For the past few years we have been processing our own venison. My husband is a hunter and we are big DIYer’s. We like to do whatever we can on our own. We are not experts but we are getting better at every one we do.

After my husband skinned the deer, he cut up sections of meat into big chunks and soaked them in a very clean cooler with ice cold water and about six tablespoons of table salt. He did this over night then proceeded to dump the water and add fresh cold water and ice, no salt. He did this until the water was no longer bloody. It took a couple of days.

When trimming the meat it is important to get rid of all the silver skin, this helps get rid of the gamey taste.

These are the back straps. He likes to cut them up into steaks. These are perfect for the grill! We like to vacuum seal these.

We have a meat processing place near by and they sell beef fat. We bought a giant bag for $2! My husband likes to add 15% fat to the ground burger. Here he is chopping the fat into small pieces for the grinder.

We weigh the venison and the fat to figure out the ratio.

Here he is cutting up the venison to be ground into burger.

Here is the grinder we use. We bought it off Amazon.

We have the meat and the fat ready to go. it helps if you put the meat into the freezer for a half hour or so but this is not necessary.

These are the blades we use. We grind through the wagon wheel blade first then once it’s all ground we grind through the smaller blade. It gives the burger a really nice texture.

Here he is grinding a little venison then adding a little fat.

This grinder has a foot pedal so you can stop and go as needed, hands free.

We have several large bowls close by so we don’t have to stop.

Here is the beautiful, fresh ground venison burger. Ready for hamburgers, chili, tacos etc.

We use wild game bags and ziplock bags for the burger. We got 30lbs of burger and a bunch of steaks from this deer. The next deer we are going to experiment with making hunters sausage in our smoker.