Foragers Diary; Venison Salami

This is a story of team work between regular contributor and deer manager Martin Guy and Simon Caserta, who took some diced venison and diced pork fat and turned it into fantastic Salami.

Ingredients: · 

• Pig/lamb intestine casing from local butcher always fresh and washed out. 
• 25 grams of table salt per 1kg of meat or a mixture of curing salt and table salt. 
• Venison and pork fat around 80/20% split of meat to fat – you can substitute the meat for various different varieties but the fat must be used (shoulder fat is always good)
• Spices like pepper/chilli/fennel which ever are preferred can be added. This first experimental batch was made with black pepper corns and fennel. 

Process: 

First shoot yourself a deer, here I have a large Chinese Water Deer Buck, for more on deer stalking read Geoff's article in the January 2015 issue of Bushcraft and Survival Skills Magazine or check out my earlier post on stalking.

Next butcher and joint your animal, for more details of the gralloching and butchering process see the guest blog post that Geoff and I did for Buzzard Bushcraft a couple of years ago. 

You need to fine mince the fat into the meat using any type of grinder I prefer a hand grinder

 Grind until you have a course slurry of meat and fat.

Stuff the meat into a sausage gun or electric gun and fill the casings until desired length then tie of ends with string, make sure the meat is tightly packed with no air pockets. · Stab sausages with toothpick or the like to get out last few air pockets. · Hang sausages in ventilated room with heat of about 10-12C and humidity of about 60-75%, these will now dry out and loose about 30% weight over a good few weeks 2-4.

Once firm and ready, store in container under oil to stop the drying process


EAT and ENJOY

 ·  ·  J