Venison sausage falling apart when I cook the patties!

[lamurscrappy]

How much did you make? A quart of water seems like quite a bit. Also when i do breakfast/dinner type sausages i will actually run the meat through a course grind twice. No fine grind on that. Keeps the fat courser so it stays in your sausage longer when you cook it.

[doc82]

lamurscrappy I made 25 pounds. After I ground the first half and cooked it I decided not to grind the second half so it wasn’t a total bust.

[doc82]

lamurscrappy sorry it was a pint not a quart.

[doc82]

lamurscrappy thanks for the help I sure appreciate it!

[twilliams]

doc82 i always use 2qts water for 25lb batch. Thats for summer and snack sticks. Havent tried patties with cured products yet. I do have some frozen ready to go but havent tried cooking yet

[lamurscrappy]

doc82 no problem. Do you got any pictures of any of this so we can analize it a bit more?
A quart of water is fine for summer sausage/snack sticks. Doing up fresh sausage you really dont need any water or just a small amount to help with mixing.

[Todd Phillips]

lamurscrappy thanks but no pictures of the internal product. Lesson learned. The dog will enjoy this batch, lol.

[Jonathon]

doc82 When making patties you shouldn’t really need much protein extraction or much water added as lamurscrappy said. Were they falling apart before they were fried or was it just during the cooking process? Fat content would be my first thought, both overly fatty and overly dry patties will crumble, too little and they usually before cooking and too much fat will crumble during. I don’t think 35% pork fat would be enough to cause this issue though. How old was the meat and how was it stored?

Would a binder help here? Yes, it should but it really shouldn’t be needed with a fresh patty.

[craigrice]

Todd Phillips if it all fall apart you can always use it for biscuits and gravy

[craigrice]

Todd Phillips also stuffed pasta shells , meatloaf , in spaghetti sauce and many other things as long as you like the flavor.

[farmer jim]

you have to corce grind your deer put aside corce grind your fat then mix togeather grind both corce then grind with small plate then put in mixer with your water spices cure binder and wait until it get real sticky.then tube it.take out your cutter blad and put your horn on and stuff.if your just starting out go 50/50 then when you get it down 60/40 works good with a binder.

[PapaSop]

doc82
Just did something similar. Meat/fat ratio looks good. But venison is very dry in itself. I now went 50/50 venison and pork butts. Stretch’s the venison out a bit(precious stuff). As said above don’t put in mixer and go less on the water. Did a 10# batch twice ground through 1/4 plate, stirred seasoning in 10.3oz water, hand mixed and then stuffed to links. Extra was bagged to make patties. Held together very well. No binders.

One more thing…Don’t give it to the dog!!! as craigrice said…use it!

[Deepwoodsbutcher]

If it held together in a patty and crumbled apart after cooking, could be as simple as it being overcooked. Venison cooks up rather quickly and is pretty dry but sounds like you added enough fat. Keep an eye on the internal temp with a thermometer for a patty or two and see if that makes a difference.

[Denny]

Throw a piece of cheddar on it problem solved