Brad & His Dad Make Venison Andouille Sausage

So, Hey guys, today on the It's Alive,

we're going to make some Pork Andouille sausage.

Do that again. That sucked, man.

[beep]

Hi guys. Today on It's Alive,

we're going to make some pork and

Venison Andouille sausage.

[bicycle bell ringing]

From my new book,

field notes for Food Adventure, right?

It was my dad's recipe. I made it my whole life.

And we're going to, we're going to prep it today together.

Yeah, you look good, bud.

It's the hat.

Look the Google leanings,

It's the hat.

[upbeat intro music]

[mimicking rooster crowing ]

Today we're gonna be making it's,

it's you know, it's a sausage, but for me,

it's like, and it's more of an ingredient.

We're going to make it a pork and Venison

mixed Andouille sausage.

So here's the recipe, you wrote this one.

I should have.

It's your first published recipe.

Beautiful thing. Look at this.

I get a kick out of this.

It's got the tear marks for like a nice clean edge.

Nah, just rip it right through the binder.

I love it. I grew up there eating and consuming

a deer meat, venison meat with my dad.

You know, whether hunting or through friends,

but you know, we were fortunate to be,

have access to really awesome protein like that.

It's a very lean meat.

So being able to mix it with pork,

it makes that, in my opinion,

just a really well-rounded sausage.

Fire the meat. A'ight, so we got two different types

of meat, Like I said, we got a little pork shoulder,

pork butt or any kind of fatty,

relatively inexpensive piece of pork you know,

like perfect for sausage making.

If it's looking kind of lean, a lot of butchers

and a lot of different places you go,

you can just buy fat back,

nice, clean, beautiful fat.

And you can cube that up and

grind it into your mixture to

just increase the fat percentage.

And then here we've got some Venison

and I'm going to have my dad clean up that silver skin.

You want to remove that, that's not going to grind up well.

it's like a sinew, it's tough, it's not going to cook out.

You know, it's always want to remove that.

Right.

Right. You're just going to filet that off..

Filet that one up.

It's almost like part of the interconnecting tissue.

It's just real tough. It doesn't grind well,

and it's like, you're biting into a sausage

and you have that little nasty.

Yeah, you gotta pull it out.

It sticks in your teeth, disgusting.

I don't like that.

A good friend of mine told me,

you know, a sausage isn't like,

it's not a garbage can,

you don't just go throwing stuff in there.

Right.

It's a high end product. So I'll clean up this pork.

Why don't you clean up the, the Venison there? Dad.

You go strips. Huh?

You're feeding it down into the grinder.

So grab it.

So you don't have to auger it, or.

Yeah, no. Once you have put a strip in,

the auger is going to grab it.

And I always did so few.

And then you got to fricking push

the thing down all the time.

What do you gotta do?

Push the thing down all the time.

And get it semi frozen where it's really really cold

and still a little pliable.

Because if this was warm and grinder,

It'll just mush out

Yeah

and nothing will really cut.

Right.

So you want it, the colder, the better.

I get it almost frozen.

Fact or Fiction. Did you have a,

a nice guest appearance on TV,

maybe at Emerald GoSee show.

Bam.

You had these t-shirts on.

It said, you know, Pork Fat Rulz

and in the back was Bam.

And then they said,

Pork Fat Rulz

You guys are serious and they let us on the show.

And he called me up and gave me a bullet at etouffee and

Etouffee

at two shrimp at etouffee here.

make some friends, he said.

What's going on with the pit behind you?

It's a currently active volcano.

It came with the place. All right.

It's not a super volcano, but that's yeah.

I mean, it could go at any moment.

So this is great.

So we've got our meat cut up nice for the grinder here.

And like my dad said,

we're going to pop that in the freezer.

You want to spread it out?

So it, cause you're doing this.

You want to get this done as soon as possible.

Right.

So you spread it out. So it freezes up like 20 minutes,

Next steps to every freeze this,

grind, it.

Semi freeze it, grind it.

And then after the grind, we mix in our spices,

Right.

And our sausage making seeds.

This is kind of making me hungry in a weird way.

Aight, you grab one, and let's go.

All right.

[intense music playing]

So we got it's nice and semi frozen, right?

Not too much, but cold, ice cold.

And let's say we grind up this meat and then,

you know, and then we'll get some spices on it

and get it. We're going to let it go for 24 hours.

We're going to do this tomorrow.

Overnight. Yeah.

You got to go. I'm kicking you out.

But tomorrow I'll stuff the sausage.

Yeah, here you go.

Do the punch bops.

All right. I'll feed.

gives me the dirty job.

No, I got the dirty job.

All right.

Ready? Action.

Boom. I'm a supervisor.

[grinder blocking out conversation ]

But the venison just really adds like a nice richness.

in really nice way.

You're getting a real natural meat.

There's nothing in it, but nature.

has nothing in it, but nature folks.

we got five pounds of the meat,

like we got ground up nice.

And we're going to add all of our stuff here.

Like I said, we've got, and the last thing is optional.

You know, we got, you know, pink curing salt.

When you are smoking at a lower temperature,

just see if your worry, if your worry, Wendy use this all.

If not, you can throw it over your shoulder.

This is our mixture for five pounds.

So I'll give you half the garlic,

Right. Right right. Right.

Half of everything, half of everything.

Half of everything, we're going to share.

at the end of the day, it's going to get mixed together.

Your hands are your best.

Cause you don't want to mush it all up

and make it a nice, consistent texture.

No chunks no in or nothing.

Basically. It's like a light emulsification.

Mushed up real nice like a meatloaf.

you want it even, you know,

add a little wine, right?

Little red book wine, a little optional.

If you don't like the red wine color and the flavor.

flavor is nice.

leave it the way it is.

Sausage making. Put a little wine.

You have a little wine.

Yeah easy, easy

scoots scoots scoots

Come on. That even looks good.

It does.

Maybe a little more, huh?

Give me a little spice there, pops.

Whoa, whoa whoa whoa.

Sprinkle sprinkle

This is like a, a Turkish seed,

seedless pepper flake morass, but it's wonderful.

It's even gonna bleed a little color.

Look at that, huh.

This is how we like it.

And that's recipe, what's getting in the fridge.

Cause it's only getting warmer

and thanks for making the sausage with me.

It was fun.

Showing folks how the sausage is made with dad,

Grinding it with my dad yesterday.

And this is going to be our stuff, you know, our sausage.

This is the meat for the sausage, all seasoned, ready to go.

We had it in the fridge overnight so we can get nice

and marinated because flavors still ice cold.

And then here we have some hog casings.

They come in different sizes.

You can get synthetic ones if these freak you out,

but it is what it is. I mean, we're making sausage.

We're just going to show you how it's made.

You know. So these go on the sausage stuffer.

But before you get these,

you can get them in different styles and forms.

They're salted. You rinse them.

I've run water through them, around them.

I soak them overnight and just nice cold, fresh water.

Keep them in the fridge.

And you just want to rinse all that off it.

And it that's what we got hog casing.

It's delicious.

Now we got our sausage stuffer and these come in, you know,

Ooh, its thunder.

Biggest enemy is going to be air.

You don't want air getting into popping air pockets

into your casing. You don't want any air in there.

You want to get it out.

So I have a really cool technique for

loading the hopper here.

So before we load it into the stuffer,

I got just a bunch of just fresh water, ice water.

And this is going to add as it's going

to keep it nice and cool as well.

It's also going to be a little bit of like a lubricant,

you know, for five pounds,

I usually put about two cups of water, right?

And that's just going to keep things, slide and nice.

Not binding up in the sausage making process.

Temperature is everything.

So I take a big old wad of it and

I pack it onto one side down into there,

just pack it and kind of make like a little stagger,

like a little ramp.

And then you fill it out with the next ramp.

And then the next one,

and what that does is, it'll force all the air out

and give you a nice dense pack of meat.

And see, we did it on a little bit of an angle.

Because there was a good amount of fat in here.

You know, as fat gets warm and it doesn't take much heat,

it starts to get greasy and it can really,

it can really mess up and alter the outcome of your sausage,

the texture of the meat.

These are cool. If you can get away with it,

they come on this little slipper tube.

I think that's what this is for. You want to be careful.

You do not want to rip this and

you want to go on nice and even so that

when we start loading it with the sausage filling,

it slides right off.

You want to keep this wet?

We've got this whole little, little bar clamp here.

All right, great.

And then we got the old tried and true C clamp.

You don't own a C clamp.

Making a big mistake in life.

We'll go slow.

This is really ideally, you know, the old man bailed on me.

He had to go home. He's got a job and stuff.

I get it. But this is like a nice two, man.

This is a two person operation.

One person's cranking, one person's feeding the sausage.

It's going to be a little bit of a circus.

Let's see if I can pull it off

super successfully by myself.

This is going to be difficult.

Oh, easy, slower, slower, slower.

So, okay, nice and easy like that.

Let's start slow.

So do you want a little bit of back pressure on that?

You don't want to go too fast.

You can go a little bit faster,

but you want it to fill the casing nice and evenly.

All right. You don't want to lose spots.

You don't move it. Nice and smooth.

You see, I can put a little resistance

and it'll stuff it nicely.

Oh, this is working out great.

I like to put it on a wet count,

a wet table like this so that when it comes on

it doesn't grab it and kind of tear

just keeps everything nice and moving.

Blowout, pause.

We have a little bit too much pressure built up in the

sausage there, or there could have been a hairline.

It could even have been.

That one actually might've been my fault,

but either way you get a little blow out.

Okay, And the meat's not wasted.

You can put it back in, slows down production.

But what you do have to do as men,

you're you're casing here.

So you push it down and you can tie this into a knot.

sausage making is, it's a family affair, man.

You know, I am, no one does it by themselves.

That's probably not true at all.

Now we got a nice sausage thing, so all right.

Same pace. Oh,

Pause for a sec.

If you start seeing it a little air pocket or something,

just give it a small little prick. No big deal.

All right.

I'm going to get stolen.

So yeah, as we go

and try to portion these out into our little links,

you just find out what length you want there?

And then gently with your finger.

You just kind of pinch it until you get to the center there.

And it's careful not to rip it. Okay.

And then I like to give it a little twist and

I throw it just a quick little twine on there.

So I'm going to clean up the stuffer.

Make a little snack with the remaining meat in here.

I'm going to hang these out on the sheet tray,

pop them in the fridge,

let them air dry.

Do that for about 45 minutes to an Hour.

And then I'll get the smoker going

and we'll get these guys cooking.

All right. So we had our sausage.

You see, it's not soaking wet.

It's nice. Got a nice little tack to it.

Air dried and hung out in the fridge for about an hour.

And that's really going to help with our smoking process.

All right. So now we've got it set to 185.

This unit, the trigger has got

a little super smoke to the first hour.

I hit it with the super smoke, just to get a nice,

nice little nice little smoke kiss on it.

For what we're doing.

We're just going to lay them out on here.

You know, you get little indentations on your sausage,

but this is perfect. Nothing's touching smokes, flowing.

And then I will let this go for about four hours.

Smoked Andouille in the trigger today. Camera looking good.

We've been going for about five hours

and yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Torpedo charges, brace for impact.

Flashbacks my day on the sub,

I got my new assistant. All right.

Since, since grandpa had to leave and

go back to New Jersey, we flew in little Griffin.

My boy here, three generations of Leone's.

All right. And we're going to do a

little bit of grandpa's Smoked Andouille sausage.

you liked, you liked deer meat, right?

Yes.

Yeah buddy

What daddy likes to put in eggs.

And we put it into different stews

and grandpa's famous Jumbalaya.

Before the little guy showed up I tempted.

Oh yeah.

Even it's going to be better as it sits.

I want a piece.

Oh, please God bud.

Give it up. Give a shot.

Chew on that. Lemme me know how you feel.

It was kind of gross,

but it's probably the grossest way

to eat sausage in the world.

All right. Great.

Hey, thanks for playing.

Give daddy kiss. Get that guest.

See you later.

Even though it's half pork and a lot of people get a little

turned off by the idea that he eaten venison, you know,

where ah, could maybe be a little gamey

and the truth is venison shouldn't be gaming.

You know, it's, it's all about how you

handle the animal after it's harvested, right?

I mean, it should be clean and it should be a delicious,

very approachable protein. Give it another chance.

Smoke Venison Andouille from my book,

Field Notes with Food Adventures, right?

It's a chapter called dear dad. There's this recipe.

Famous Jumbalaya, a Kobasi, it's awesome.

Bon Appetit.

[mimicking rooster crowing]

Dangerous man