Venison Kielbasa

This is the one that ties the two halves of what I do together: my grandfather’s Polish sausage, made with the deer I bring home every fall. Grandpa boiled his; I smoke mine, on the staged 130-to-190°F ladder I spent years working out — and venison takes that smoke beautifully, coming out darker and a little more savory than the pork original. The spice is his: garlic, marjoram, coarse pepper, mustard and coriander. The only real change deer forces is more fat, because there’s almost none of its own.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (2,720 g / 6 lb)

1,810 g (4 lb) venison, trimmed hard of silverskin and sinew — ~67%
910 g (2 lb) pork back fat or fatty pork shoulder — ~33% (deer brings no fat of its own worth using)

SEASONING (my grandfather’s, scaled)

48 g salt (~1.8%)
6.8 g Cure #1 (156 ppm on the block — required; this is smoked)
12 g fresh garlic, minced
6 g rubbed marjoram
6 g coarse black pepper
4 g dry mustard
3 g ground coriander
240 ml (1 cup) ice water
Medium (32–35 mm) hog casing

Directions

Key ingredients: this is my Venison Bratwurst’s smoked, cured cousin — same deer, same fat rule, but built like my grandfather’s kielbasa instead of a fresh brat.
Trim ruthlessly and keep it cold: every scrap of deer silverskin off, meat and fat near-frozen (~30°F), mixed in the frozen Vevor so nothing warms.
Grind: coarse — a 1/4” (6 mm) plate, the way I grind Grandpa’s, so you can still see the meat.
Mix: garlic, spice, cure and ice water to a good tacky bind. Rest overnight, uncovered, in the fridge so the cure distributes and the surface dries.
Smoke, staged, over hickory: an hour at 130°F, dampers open, no water pan — dry the surface first — then 150°F, 170°F, 190°F, an hour each. Pull at 155–165°F internal.
Finish: into the 165°F water bath (my bin with the sous-vide heater) to 160°F, then ice water 20 minutes, then hang 2–3 hours to bloom to a deep mahogany. The bloom is not optional — it’s the difference between a homemade-looking link and a proper one.

Notes

Why venison for Grandpa’s recipe. His was pork, boiled, and it’s the sausage this whole part of my life came out of. Making it with my own deer, and smoking it the way I settled on, is the most personal thing on my shelf — his seasoning, my method, my meat. The full story of the reverse-engineering and the staged smoke is on my forty years page.

Fat is the rule, as always with game. A third pork back fat, hard fat, never the deer’s. Without it a venison kielbasa is dry and it crumbles.

This takes any lean red game — elk, moose, antelope — one-for-one. Bigger, tougher cuts are fine here; the grind and the cure fix the toughness.