FREEZING VENISON

Hunting season is upon us again. Venison is a staple in our house and there is not a time that we don’t have any in the freezer. I have chosen the option to process my own meat instead of taking it to a butcher. It does take a long time, but it is definitely worth it in the end.

When I know that a deer is on the way, I will run down to the local butcher and pick up about 5-10 lbs of beef fat. It is very inexpensive and if I don’t use it all, I just freeze it until the next deer comes along.

Personally I don’t do any fillets or steaks except for the back straps. Once I pull the back straps, I cut all of the remaining meat off of the animal and place it into large tubs that I then place in the refrigerator until I am ready to process.

Once the deer has been totally stripped, I will take the containers from the refrigerator and rinse each piece of meat. Inspect each piece carefully for any hair, gristle or foreign matter. Even one piece of hair will give your meat a “gamey” taste.

Once the meat is rinsed and inspected it goes into another clean container and back to the fridge until I am done inspecting all of the meat.

Now comes the fun part! You will need an electric grinder or a good mixer with the grinder attachment. Using the larger grinder attachment (about ¼ inch holes) grind up all of the meat from one container.

Using a guesstimate, grind up enough fat that would be about 10% of the weight of your meat. Mix the fat and the meat together well. Now, grind again. This will mix the meat and the fat thoroughly.

Place the ground meat back into the refrigerator until you are ready to package. Process all of the meat in this way before starting your packaging process.

It is very important to use the proper paper for packaging. Purchase a large roll of freezer paper from your local paper supply, butcher or warehouse store. Cut off about as many large squares as you think that you will need.

Weigh or measure out the amount of meat that you want in each package. Place the meat in the center of a square of freezer paper. Fold one corner down so that it covers the meat and fits snugly. Take the points to the left and right of your fold and fold them across at a 90º angle forming an envelope. Now roll the meat toward the final point and run a piece of tape well around the outside of the package securing well.

Write the month, year and type of meat in the bundle and place in the freezer. For the initial freezing, make sure that you space the bundles out and try not to layer them until they are mostly frozen. Once they are thoroughly frozen you can stack them all together in one area of the freezer.

Venison can be frozen for 9 or 10 months if the temperature is kept constant and no thawing occurs.