Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Freezing ground deer???

What have you found to be the best method for freezing ground deer? We recently bought a 1000 role of freezer paper from Sam's but I am not impressed. It looks like there will be some added fiber in my burgers.

The ground meat freezer storage bags that Bass Pro, Cabelas, Academy Sports and all the butcher supply places sell work just fine, the additional tape machine makes quick work of bagging ground meat. Looks like a tube of Jimmy Dean Sausage when you are done. The bags come in 1,2 and 5 pound sizes. We use to vac seal everything but for ground the tube style bags are cheaper, faster and I've never had any freezer burn with them.

Link to kit with tape gun
http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/s...758?hvarTarget=search&cmCat=10017700

The only time I use a butcher/processor is for ground meat (I need to buy a grinder). The plastic bags duxndogs metioned are excellent and I've had ground meat packaged that way with no issues.

Last year I took my scraps in to be ground and paid an extra $1.00 per pound to have it plastic wrapped. For a buck a pound I thought they'd use the tube style bags. They didn't. What they did was put the meat in open top plastic bags and then wrap it in freezer paper. I was disappointed - at first - but it's held up just as well as with the tube style bags.

I like the bags. Nice and easy, and you know how much is in there. I usually have the 1lbs bags.

I buy gallon freezer bags that use twist ties. They come about a hundred in a box for about a penny to a penny and a half apiece. I put the meat in these bags and roll them up with out tying them. The roll will look kinda like a bought roll of sausage. I put three or four of these rolls in a vacuum seal bag and seal them. You can take one out and reseal and if you do this without thawing them the vacuum seal bag remain clean for reuse. miles

We went to the tube style bags with the tape dispenser a couple years ago, works awesome.

I've found that the best way to make venison burger is to freeze the meat in 1" pieces, freeze in 1-2lb packages then grind as you go. Also adding some mushrooms or onions to it as you grind will make it moist so there's no need to add fat.

I use to grind and freeze my game meat but was never really happy with it, especially after a few months of it sitting in the freezer. Now I grab a pack of the frozen meat, let it thaw, then grind it with mushrooms, makes some of the best burgers i've ever had.

I will be the odd guy out and say I don't love the tube bags... first, they are hard for me to stuff as they don't fit my grinder head... ultimately they are messy and the bags are thin and have had issues with the bags getting small tears in the freezer and having some freezer burn.

I buy vac seal bags from a place online... something like vacshack.com ... lots of sizes, reasonable price... always offers a 10% discount if you ask or get on their email distro and ships quickly and their bags have been great so far. I now vac seal in either 1 or 2 lb increments.

I also sometimes add some olive oil when I grind...

lovemy99--

We put a large stuffing horn on the grinder and a 'kidney' stuffing plate to get the meat into the bags. No mess at all.

I'm the opposite on the 'durability', I haven't found any issues with the tube bags, but what I have vacuum packed always seemed to end up developing a leak later on. I don't know if its my vacuum machine (FoodSaver brand) or the bags I'm buying (have used Foodsaver and others available locally). For chunks of meat and such, I gave up on the vacuum and went back to butcher paper and freezer wrap.

the problem with that is... then I have to grind it, then restuff it into my crappy grinder/stuffer... which is a total PITA... If I had a legit stuffer, it would be a different story but I find stuffing already ground meat into my grinder/stuffer to be one of the least pleasurable things about butchering a deer... it probably would not be so bad if I could ever get some help but the shoot is not large enough and when you use the plunger is comes back up the sides... its makes a huge damn mess...

I really thought the combo grinder/stuffer was going to be the greatest but its a royal pain and next on my list is a larger stuffer. and one day a meat slicer!! Or dreaming big would be a ban saw...

Let me help out with the rocket science.... You add the stuffing horn to your grinder before you grind. Place the tube on the horn and grind away. One person job if you have a foot pedal and no need to restuff.

Also...were the cheap bags that tore from Cabelas? Stop buying that crap and get your bags from a real place like midwestern research. Cabelas started using cheap azz bags.

If you have a press and want to make and freeze burgers, I do them with the food saver. Make your nice patties and put them on an oiled baking sheet. Stick them in the freezer until firm and pretty much frozen. Now you can bag and vacuum them without deforming them or sucking juice up into your heat seal. I make the bags so I can do 4 to a bag which is good.

It would seem that the freezer paper is not waxed.

I prefer to wrap the ground meat in plastic wrap to seal out air and use waxed freezer paper as an added vapor layer and protection for the plastic wrap.

I freeze mine in 1qt ziplock freezer bags,about a 1-1/4-1-1/2lb in each bag.I zip the bag nearly shut,flatten it out and try to smash the meat,corner to corner and squeeze all the air out I can and zip shut.Packed this way I can keep the meat a little more than a year with zero problems with freezer burn.I like it packed this way too because the packages are less than a inch thick and you can thaw it out fairly quick for eating.If I have a lot of meat for the freezer,I'll leave some in larger muscle chunks and vacuum pack these.If I run out of sausage or ground meat,I can thaw these pieces and grind to use now or package and freeze as above.This will allow me to stretch a little more time out of the meat.

The butcher paper that I have looked at at Sams is really not freezer paper.It does not have the plastic backing that papers like Reynolds Freezer paper does.

I grind all my burger deer or elk when I butcher and put in 1 lb packages in freezer paper, I have burger in my freezer that is 3+ years old and it is just the same as the stuff I put in last week. Of course I do not have a frost free freezer and I am particular about how I do the wrapping.

Nice smarta$$ remark ... my grinder does not allow me connect, the blade, plate and horn all at one time... but thanks for the rocket science advice.... it was really helpful...

Uh.... Send your sarcasm meter in for repair. Yours is broke.

We wrap the meat in seran wrap first, then the freezer/butcher paper. No fibers in the meat and it keeps very well for over a year.

I don't think he was being that sarcastic ,I use the sausage stuffer tube that goes over the grind plate before the plate nut on my Cabelas 1 hp comm grinder and it works great. I too used to do the 1qt Zip Lock freezer bags until a couple years ago when a couple of friends gave me a LEM tube system and that is all I've used since. I used to have the simple little grinder that went on the end of a Kitchen aid system and ground a lot with it until the base gear went bad. Gave the grinder to a friend who had a Kitchen Aid set up... I waited and watched for a serious Cabela sale and got my 1 hp for about $200. With a save coupon and some bonus bucks coupons I had, sure it was a deal and a half . Looking back on it, for so many years of grinding with a rinky dink setup, that Cabelas 1 hp is sure a time saver and joy to use. Magnum Man

i've been using press n seal for about 2 years for sausage and burger patties. just lay out a sheet of it and throw 4 balls of meat on it ,then cover with the other half of the sheet. press it down around all 4 balls then flatten them into burgers. i then fold the whole thing in half and stack as many as i can in gallon freezer bag. then when you want a patty just take your kitchen shears and cut out what you want.rezip the bag removing all the air you can each time. i can get the job done in half the time that it used to take.