Saving Your FALL MEAT HARVEST ON THE HOMESTEAD! - The Old Fashioned Way....Naturally!
Fall is here and the great hunt is about to begin. Our hunts are not about trophy wins or a sports outing. The hunting my family does every year is about putting meat up in the pantry and and saving it for the year ahead. We happen to live in a wonderful area full of wild game and that includes the white tail deer.
The deer in our area right now are getting fat on the falling acorns and other fall foliage that is plentiful right now. Falling persimmons are another favorite of the deer in our area. But as the temperatures continue to fall and get colder, the attention will turn from the bountiful amount of food in the forest to the rut as the male bucks begin to chase the females all over forest.
This massive amount of activity brings you the best chance to score your harvest. They only have one thing on the mind and are oblivious to the predators that may be lurking near.
So now that you have your deer, how can you preserve them for the following year? An American Homestead uses 2 methods.
- Cold Smoked Hard Salami
- Raw Pack Pressure Canning
Today we will be talking about the cold smoking process of making hard salami. If you do this process right (it's pretty easy), you can safely preserve your harvest without any type of refrigeration or cooking. The method of preserving involves curing the meat.
The first thing we do after harvest is butcher the deer into the select cuts we want to keep. The ribs and backstraps are usually kept separate for BBQ.
The ribs are my personal favorite and they always are saved for a later appointment with my BBQ grill. The benefit of being your own butcher is that you get to keep the best select cuts of meat that would normally cost you an arm and a leg at a regular butcher shop.
Now with the butchering done and the meat on ice, my wife and I get the spices and ingredients together that will cure the venison into hard salami.
Now the whole family goes to work on processing the meat into usable chunks. Many hands make light work. We can usually do the whole process in a couple hours.
Once the meat has been chunked up, we feed it into a grinder to make it into burger. It's important to do this once, then add your ingredients to the burger, mix with your hands and then run the burger through the grinder again. This will mix the flavoring ingredients much better and ensure a good cure in the salami.
Once the meat has all the ingredients mixed in and has been ground twice, you are ready for putting the meat into the casings. You can use whatever casings you want but we use beef casings purchased from Butcher Packer ( http://www.butcher-packer.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=85_94_95 )
You will want a dedicated machine for this. Tie each end off with butchers twine.
Next we choose to net the hard salami. This helps to hold its form during the hanging time in the cold smokehouse. It also gives it a nice appearance. During the curing time, the meat will probably shrink and the netting my fall off. This step is totally optional.
We use a strong plastic cup with the bottom cut out. You can buy stainless steel cups for this purpose but a strong cup with the bottom cut out works just fine. Slip the netting over the bottom of the cup. Then begin to push the salami through.
Finish pulling the salami through the cup and TA-DAH!
Now its time to smoke your salami. You do have a cold smoker on your homestead, right? This is essential in the curing and preservation process. All homesteads in early America and in Europe as well had a smoke houses to cold smoke meats for fall and winter curing.
Its called a cold smoker because there is no direct heat or fire source in the smoke house. The fire is in a different location with the smoke exhaust flue piped into the smoker. So all your getting is the smoke and very little heat. We smoke the salami for 48 hours and then it's done.
After the meat is finished in the smoker, we hang the meat from the ceiling inside the house in our pantry area. It fills the house with the wonderful smell of smoked and curing meat! It will hang here for 3 months before its ready to eat and enjoy. It will never need refrigeration.
INGREDIENTS:
4 pounds of ground venison
1.75 ounces of salt or 2.5%
1 tablespoon of celery powder
1 tablespoon of black pepper
1 tablespoon of red pepper flakes
1 cup of red wine (prefer Cabernet Sav, Merlot, Pino)
Cold Smoke for 48 hours. Hang for 3 months! ENJOY!
If you have any questions on this process, post them below and I will try and get to them!
Visit Us Online: http://AnAmericanHomestead.com
I have yet to build my smokehouse. I am kicking myself that I didn't do it sooner. You guys make it look so easy to butcher the meat then make the salami. I don't have any experience in butchering. That was my husband's job and he was very good at it. (He passed away a little over two years ago.) Ever think of doing a video or regular post on how you cut up your deer? The ribs look so good. I would love to be able to do some on my BBQ. :)
So sorry for your loss. Wish you lived closer I could give you a class. But there are a number of videos out there that will show you how to butcher. Watch a ton of them and you will have a good idea and with each one you will get better and better. I can totally process a deer now like you see on the table picture in under an hour. It just takes practice.
Thanks!
What a great read. Our hunting season does not open until next weekend.
Have fun and be sure to post your updates on the season! Would love to see pictures!
Will do my friend
My boyfriend would absolutely die with all the meat around and then most likely consume it all! Great work!
Yeah, the hard salami tastes really good!
Wow...just found this post and loved it...how you processed this meat is wonderful... @mericanhomestead i learnt a lot here...not an easy venture though but very good one...worthy of my support and following for more...
Thanks for the follow. Check back often! And if you try any of the things you see us post, let us know!
sure will do an support as much as i can... do also find time to check my blog posts
regards
I have to say I like venison summer sausage and venison steak fried with onion.
I don't remember ever having the ribs though. Looks yummy.
Yeah the ribs are great. I'll do a video this year on the ribs.
That's pretty amazing. I notice that the whole clan turns out. I like that.
One thing I do NOT understand is the curing process. How come izit that anything nutritional can be made in-edible by bugs (bacteria) yet still be edible by peoples?
I think about things like that.
Steem on.
Its the salt and the natural nitrates. The bugs and bacteria don't like the salt. Plus historically this is done in winter so no bugs anyway. The celery powder in the recipe is a natural nitrate which will kill bacteria as well. People have been doing it that way for 5000 years....how they learned, I have no clue.
oh..
seems reasonable.
like I said...I always wondered why if it was bad for bacteria it was good for us.
now I know.
thanks.
I really would like to try this sometime.
I have a ram that I need to get rid of. But he is SO big! There is no way I and my family could finish him out in a night. And we're a big family of 10.
So this would be the best way for us to store the meat since we also do not have a freezer.
Thanks for the great content! I have learned so much from your homesteading lessons!
Awesome! Yeah we will often make our salami half venison and half lamb. So feel free to mix your meats. Venison is often very lean meat so adding meat that has more fat will make your end product better.
Shared for others to learn about!
Hi Sis!! Miss you hope all is well. Here is a small upvote :)
Thank You Brother! Be sure and check out my blog, I am posting also now since you all are blowing me out of the wind to do it!
Man thanks brother. Love this info. God Bless.
Someday soon! We can't wait to finally claim responsibility for our meat production and preservation. I love learning from you all--knowing that the whole family is coming together to put up food for later is something that is so special, and something I can't wait for my little guys to be old enough to understand.
We'd be using beef casing too, to start out (no pork here, something you understand well ;) ). Have you any experience preparing your own casing? When we do come to butcher our animals, we want to use every part as well as we can. I have so much to learn.