Venison Bacon- Defintion

[folsomwest]

When I say definition, think high definition TV. I’ve been making Venison Bacon at a ratio of 12# Venison 13# Ground Pork Butt (not lean) and it tastes great but I’ve consistently been disappointed with the way the venison and pork fat seem to blend together. I guess I’d like to see some more ‘chunks’ of pork fat in the finished product. It seems like the smoke/cook kind of blends it all together. I’d like to hear how others do their grind–I’m doing venison once through 1/8 then grind my pork and ground venison through 1/8th again (one handful of each together through the grinder–until all ground). My next try is going to be venison grind twice 1/8 and once on pork through 3/8 hoping that will help unless I learn something new here.

Also, I tend to think finishing to 160 is too high and I read somewhere I believe that if I got to 140 and held for so many minutes it would have the same safety factor. Anyone have insight into this?

Thanks

[Jonathon]

folsomwest So first, the 140° thing is based on appendix A (https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/fsis-content/fsis-questionable-content/oppde/rdad/frpubs/95-033f/95-033f_appendix-a/default/ct_95-033f_appendix+a) from the USDA and it is for beef or pork, I do not think it covers wild game in any way. You could apply the same principles but our official recommendation with wild game is 160°.

As for the particle definition we once tried to layer ground venison then pork fat and then venison to get a more traditional bacon appearance and it failed miserable. All the fat rendered and escaped out the sides of the pan. I don’t think there is a way to do that. However, you could do what we did with some venison ring bologna a long time ago (I would have put my hand on a bible and sworn we had done a video on this) where we ground fat and lean separate and the fat just once then stuffed it into casings and smoked it. The fat rendered for sure but where the meat was encapsualting the fat it stayed in that pocket (mostly) so we had these really nice pockets of fat within the meat. Now, when you went to pan fry that it would render and escape again so I don’t know what the work around for that would be.