Ground Venison Bacon on the docket for this weekend!

[NDKoze]

More to come on this one.

But, this weekend I am going to be smoking some ground venison bacon (yes, I said ground). It's basically ground venison and pork with bacon seasoning in it.

Maybe this is popular in some parts of the country, but I had not heard of it until recently and have never tried any. But my sister tried some that a friend gave them and her and her husband loved it. So, she and her hubby are going to be the guinea pigs on this batch as we will be using their meat from last year's deer hunt. After some Bing searches (I work for Microsoft so Gaggle, I mean Google is not used in my house), I found several posts on this including some really good ones on the SMF board along with some YouTube videos.

I ordered the seasoning from Walton's (I think it is OK to post this, but if not let me know and I'll pull the link):
http://www.waltonsinc.com/p-2383-imitation-bacon-unit-no-msg.aspx

The plan is to mix the 50/50 Venison/Pork ground meat with the seasoning/cure and place in disposable half sheet foil pans (about 2" deep) and let sit in the fridge overnight. I bought a mix for 25lbs of meat, but not sure if they are going to want to do the full 25lbs or try a half batch for the first time.

After a night of cooling, we'll put them in a cold smoker (after removing the foil pans) with I am thinking a combination of 3-4 ounces of Hickory and Cherry wood. My current plan is to use the following cooking schedule 140°/2hrs to get some good low temp smoke, 175° for four hours, and up to 200° if I am have any trouble getting the internal temp to 155°.

I haven't decided whether to use a water pan or not, but I have used one in pretty much all of my other smokes, so I probably will again.

Once smoked and cooled, we'll slice with my meat slicer, vacuum-pack, and then freeze.

So, this is a total experiment. If anyone else has already done this and has some suggestions let me know. I am open to all ideas.

 

[DivotMaker]

Looking forward to seeing this one play out, Gregg!

 

[NDKoze]

We got it all mixed up and pressed into the tin pans.

I ended up stacking them only 3 high because they were too heavy for the bottom ones.

They look pretty good so far.

After a night of cooling, we'll put them in a cold smoker (after removing the foil pans) with I am thinking a combination of 3-4 ounces of Hickory and Cherry wood. My current plan is to use the following cooking schedule 140°/2hrs to get some good low temp smoke, 175° for four hours, and up to 200° if I am have any trouble getting the internal temp to 147°.

 

[DivotMaker]

I think you've got it going on, Gregg!  Looks like a solid plan.  You may have adjustments after the first attempt, but hey, that's what this is all about!  Trial and error = success! ;D

 

[DivotMaker]

By the way, the Walton's link looks pretty cool!  Good stuff there, looks like.

 

[NDKoze]

The Venison Bacon turned out AWESOME!

I did have a few learnings as Tony predicted

1. Next time we are going to line the pans with plastic wrap to facilitate easier removal.

2. Because of all of the moisture in the meat, I am going to skip the water pan the next time.

3. Because the loaves were too wide for my slicer, we had to try a couple of different ways to split the loaves prior to slicing before we figured out the best way.

4. Next time, I am going to throw some black pepper and maybe some extra seasoning or maple syrup on some of the loaves to kick them up a notch.

5. It definitely took longer than I thought it would. I feel so stupid because I have used this smoker several times now, but just realized this weekend that I hadn't seen the small cardboard piece around the internal thermostat probe. This was apparently the reason that I was able to get my temps up so high and my swings were so large. For those having trouble getting up to temp, making some type of food safe metal cover for the thermostat to simulate my mistake of leaving the cardboard on may help.

So, I did notice that my smoker with a full 25lbs of ground venison loaves was having a hard time getting to temp. Although this could have been because of my probe placement. Since the smoker was pretty packed, I had to place the smoker probe pretty close to the meat. I will know more on my next pork butt smoke. Because of this, I ran at 150 (instead of my planned 140) for the first 4 hours.

Meat temp was at about 117 when I cranked the smoker up to 175.

Meat temp didn't change much in an hour so I bumped it up to 200 for the rest of the smoke which took another 3 hours.

So, it took about 8 hours instead of the 6 I was figuring. But in the end the results turned out really well.

I was planning on cooking to 155, but once it reached 155, they didn't have the darker outside color that I was looking for, so we took it up to 160.

We then cooled them overnight and sliced the next morning. They tasted good both cold and fried. They tasted different cold vs fried, but both really good.

Sorry, I forgot to take any pics of the fried pieces as they tended to get eaten as fast as they were cooked. But here are a few pics of the sliced bacon as well as a pic of all of the vacuum packs ready for the freezer. I also threw in a pic of the 25lbs of pepper stix that we smoked in my Dad's Masterbuilt XL. They were some of the best that we have made yet.

This batch was for my sister. But my brother and I are definitely planning on doing another batch for us sometime this Spring.

 

[Pork Belly]

Well a big thank you for posting item #5, no telling how long I would have been doing that if you had not prompted me to check.

 

[NDKoze]

LOL! Yeah, I had used the smoker probably 5-6 times before I noticed that pesky cardboard around my probe.  DUH!!!

 

[DivotMaker]

Wow, Gregg - guess I missed #5 when I read this!  That's a great tip for any new "temperature problem" posts!  At least you figured it out!

And, the pics look great!