What fat for sausage?

[Fingershooter23]

You really only cook venison and elk sausage until 120 degrees internal temp? This seems way too low. I go until 152 IT when I smoke any meat and as long as you bring up the temp slowly you should he good to go.

1. Check your thermometer
2. Consider adding dry milk powder
3. Rais temp slowly... bring it up to room temp before you add the smoke/ heat. Then bring it up 10 degrees at a time and try to never have your oven/ smoker more than 10 degrees higher than the IT. This is slow but I get best results this way and I make a lot of sausage.

Lastly... what all have said about what pork to use? Will work. I use whatever is cheapest. Also have used bacon ends. Also done only 10% pork and it does not end up crumbly.

Good luck

 

[svivian]

I am curious as to why "any ground meat needs to be fully cooked" statement. I understand when dealing with commercial processing, beef, pork, etc. that it all needs to be fully cooked due to the grinding of tons of animals simultaneously but I can't put together why when dealing home processed single animal grind that someone would need to cook to lets say 165*?

If that's the case, why can I eat an elk steak that's 125*? If I grind that steak, add whole fat, and pat out a burger, what risk have I introduced that now requires a higher cooking temp?

To preface, this was told to me by a professional chef and never checked the validity of his statement. I was told that ground meat needs to be cooked more due to surface area that bacteria can grow on. A steak for example has most of its surface area cooked on the outside to a temperature that kills bacteria while the inside of the steak is protected. While ground beef has tons of surface area for bacteria to grow. Made sense to me at the time.

With that said I process and raise my own meat/beef and cook my burgers bloody.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

To preface, this was told to me by a professional chef and never check that validity of his statement. I was told that ground meat needs to be cooked more due to surface area that bacteria can grow on. A steak for example has most of its surface area cooked on the outside to a temperature that kills bacteria while the inside of the steak is protected. While ground beef has tons of surface area for bacteria to grow. Made sense to me at the time.

With that said I process and raise my own meat/beef and cook my burgers bloody.

That's correct for grocery store ground beef, ground in large batches and bacteria has time to build. The smaller the butcher the less risk there is.