Squirrel and Pork Sausage

Squirrel is the most underrated meat I hunt — dark, nutty, a little sweet, closer to a good rabbit than to anything gamey — and the old Appalachian and Brunswick-stew cooks knew it. The catch is that a squirrel is tiny and clings to a lot of thin bone, so a sausage batch means boning out a pile of them. Ground with pork and back fat and seasoned simply with sage and a little thyme, it makes a fine, country-style fresh sausage that tastes like the woods in the best way.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (1,360 g / 3 lb)

• 570 g (1.25 lb) boned squirrel meat, silverskin off — ~42%
• 450 g (1 lb) lean pork shoulder — ~33%
• 340 g (0.75 lb) pork back fat — ~25% (squirrel is lean and needs both the pork and the fat to carry it)

SEASONING (country style)

• 24 g salt (~1.8%)
• 5 g rubbed sage
• 4 g coarse black pepper
• 5 g fresh garlic, minced
• 2 g fresh thyme
• 1 g ground nutmeg
• 60 ml (¼ cup) ice water

NO cure — fresh sausage

• 28–32 mm hog casing, or bulk for patties

Directions

1. Bone them out — this is the work: squirrel meat clings to a lot of fine bone. Take your time, pull silverskin as you go, and save the bones for a stock. Parboiling the squirrels 20 minutes first loosens the meat if you find raw boning fiddly.
2. Keep the pork in: squirrel alone is too lean and delicate to hold together; the lean pork gives it backbone and the back fat gives it moisture.
3. Grind cold: through a 1/4” (6 mm) plate, everything near-frozen, together.
4. Mix gently with sage, thyme, garlic and ice water — just to a bind. This is a mild, country sausage; don’t overwork it.
5. Bulk or link, then cook like a breakfast sausage — brown patties in a pan, or grill links. Pull it right at cooked-through; lean small game dries fast.

Notes

Rabbit is the near-twin and takes this recipe identically — see my Rabbit and Pork Sausage, which is the same small-game logic with a slightly more French seasoning. Squirrel is a touch darker and nuttier; rabbit a touch sweeter and paler. Both are lean, both are fiddly, both are better than their reputation.

Old squirrels want a parboil. A young squirrel grinds raw fine; an old boar squirrel is tough enough that 20 minutes in simmering water before boning makes the whole job easier and the sausage more tender.

This is Brunswick stew’s cousin — the same squirrel-and-pork pairing that built that dish, just ground and stuffed instead of stewed.