I like good deer sausage! Slovacek in Snook Texas makes the best I’ve eaten.
hanco, Lots of us South Central Texans (Germans-Czechs) make good sausage. I make my own and smoke it in small batches. I used to make 100 or more pounds at one time but now I make small batches from 10-50 pounds. It's much less work in one day and I can control the seasoning better.
Salt is the key ingredient. If you get the salt right it's gonna be edible. I use 30 ounces per 100 pounds of meat as a ratio. In other words if I make 10 pounds that's 3 oz. salt and that's counting curing salt. 4 oz of curing salt per 100 pounds of meat is the standard rule. I subtract whatever weight of curing salt I use from the 30 oz per 100 pounds meat ratio.
A lot of people making it at home don't use curing salt. I used to not but I got worried about the botulism you can get from the smoker. That's what curing salt is for, to kill the botulism that can thrive in the smoker. Being as your temperature inside the smoke house or smoker doesn't get that high you need curing salt which is Sodium Nitrite. Sodium Nitrite is used for fresh sausage. They use sodium nitrite-nitrate blend for drying sausage. I'm not an authority on dried sausage so I've never used that. But with Sodium Nitrite I know it replaces the salt about equally. In other words If I use 4 oz curing salt per 100 pounds meat then 4 oz. of the total salt will be curing salt, and 26 will be regular sodium chloride or table salt. That, by the way, is non iodized. Iodine will make it turn black. It works for me, sodium nitrite, Prague Number 1 for fresh sausage and Prague Number 2-Sodium Nitrate-Sodium Nitrite, Prague Number 2 for dried sausage. Anyway, the rest if my recipe is variable depending on what I feel like. Also, if you like hot pepper or chile as they call it, dry the chiles. If you use them fresh I've found it makes the sausage mushy. I use large jalapenos. They're generally not too hot and add a great flavor to the sausage. I also use a couple oz black pepper in 100 pounds. That's about the extent of my recipe and is pretty common in Texas style German-Czech sausage.
