Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Venison Question.

It's almost time, and I'm hoping to fill the freezer again this season. One thing I've had a problem with in the past is with ground venison. I've used venison in place of ground beef in just about everything. The first meal after being prepared is excellent. The problem is when I heat up the leftovers, there seems to be a film that leaves an aftertaste and a coating in my mouth. There isn't a visible grease or fat film on top of the leftovers when they're cold or while I'm heating them up, but the taste is definately there. Does anyone else have this issue? Is there anything I can do in preparation or storage that my help eliminate this? Thanks.

are you leaving the grissle on when grinding? that might cause it....

exactly my thoughts ... I don't know if you clean your own deer, or if someone else does ... but if you don't do it yourself, you should start. When you clean and de-bone, you should take extra care to remove as much (if not all) of the silver-skin and fatty tissue from the meat. Trust me ... I'd rather lose a tiny bit of the total poundage of meat to make sure that I didn't have any 'crap' in there with it.

and when making your ground venison, try to get some good 'clean' beef fat to mix in with it to help give it a hint of flavor and to keep it from being so dry ...

I would recommend trimming the meat out better to eliminate all but red meat. Also, consider how much fat you're adding to your ground. It might be too high. I don't add any for spaghetti, chilli type recipes. I do add it for sausage and hamburgers.

Correcto guys!!! Every bit of sinew, and fat must be trimmed!
Doesn't hurt to add a tablespoon of bacon grease to pan, of any pan fried/browning of venison......

I mix mine 50/50 with boston butt. Run it through the grinder twice and freeze in zip locks. Never had a problem like yours. And I'm not all that particular about what goes in the grinder.

If you go to super market and get steak trimmings instead of beef fat/suet, it makes for better ground meat. I personnally don't add anything to mine and I am very careful as to what goes into the grinder

When you cook the ground meat for use in some other dish, don't fry it. Put the meat in a pot of boiling water. It will brown and you can pour off the fat/film which will be floating on top of the water. I usually do it 3 or 4 times during the cooking process. That will make the leftovers taste much better. The chili will not have that greasy taste/feel.

I trim off all fat and silver skin from my venison. When I grind it for hamburger I mix it 50/50 with beef brisket. It's very good that way.

I trim everything that isn't meat....I grind and mix mine 80/20 with fatty pork my butcher gives me. It gives it just enough fat so as to not dry out when cooked.

Here's one batch. You can see the lower ratio of pork to venison in the far left tub that was packaged for meals that didn't need the venison to stick, now I am hungry....grin

I was never really a venison fan until I changed butchers, (and states).

These guys de-bone, de-skin and de-fat everything. We do not mix any thing with our ground venison and now find it very tasty.

I still don't eat a whole lot due to past habits, like hating liver.

Livers and hearts don't last a day in this house...

That's good. One of the reasons my brother and his boys enjoy hunting with us. Ask and ye shall receive.

The better half won't touch liver either....actually, she doesn't even like the smell when it is frying..

Hearts, on the other hand, she will fight you for...go figure.

The last deer I did not grind any; rather, I just cut and trimmed the odd bits into chunks for chili and stew type dishes. I like this much better than any venison burger that I have ever had. I just cringe at mixing beef or pork with my venison, and deer fat just does not taste that good.

Fireplug

like the other folks said, trim EVERYTHING that isn't meat off. when i grind for burger, i add NO (ZERO, nada) fat to the mix. for nearly all cooking you do not need to add fat, especially when you just spent all that time taking it out. the only time you might need to add fat is when making an actual hamburger patty, in which case you can add a little fat as you make the patties.

my priorities when cutting up deer are to get as many steaks as possible (which can always be cut into strips or cubes if necessary); everything else gets to be chunks/cubes as mentioned above. anything too small for those will get ground up. the only time i have had gamey meat is when i took it to a processor because i had just moved to a new town and had no place to hang the deer. the guy did the ebst he could considering the large volume of customers (he did get an acceptable amount of meat off the carcass and it was all boneless and trimmed), but it just wasn't the same.

I do not go crazy trimming fat for my grind. I take much of it off, but a little doesnt bother me. The one time I experienced what you mention, is when I used the meat between the ribs. THat was nasty. I no longer use rib meat-it goes with the carcass. I also put quite a bit of "the good stuff" in my grind, usually I grind almost an entire hind quarter, along with all of the other traditional grind cute(front quarters, neck, etc. I love ground venison, and ZI do not feel the need to add anything to it.

No figgin way am I gona ruin good venison by mixing in some fat off of some POS domestic animal. I trim the fat, silver skin, and so forth, have not had any problems.

All of my ground venison gets made into jerky so the extra fat content is not welcomed. I tried to be sneeky and made spagetti out of ground deer on night when she got home from work. She was on her second helping (must not have been to bad) before she figured it out. It wasn't that she was mad that I snuck it in on her, she was mad that I wasted good jerky meat. I make steaks out of the backstraps and innerloins, the rest goes into burger. Between the three deer the kids got during youth season, my two with rifle and one with bow. We still have some jerky left.

CK

Rule #1 : No butchers allowed. I've heard to many horror stories of meat getting mixed together etc. Not to mention the costs incurred. I keep the back straps and inside loins, and the one tender muscle on each back ham, the rest gets the grinder. And the half dozen sticks of cheese/jalapeno summer sausage every year. Haven't bought hamburger in forever. My kids'll eat ground beef at someone else's house and think it tastes strange. Now that's funny right there, I don't care who you are! Raisin' 'em right!