Venison Boudin Balls

[SapperDawg]

My dad has been working in Baton Rouge, LA for the last several years. Every few weeks he will stop by one of the local cajun butcher shops and bring home a variety of boudin - cased sausage, balls, plain, with cheese, etc. These have been terrific additions to the freezer, and as I have been working to use more and more parts of the animals I harvest, I began seriously thinking about making my own version of boudin.

When I harvested the yearling buck over Thanksgiving, I saved the liver for precisely this purpose. Using about half of that liver, and two older venison roasts I had in the freezer, gave me plenty of meat to get going with the basic recipe: 1.5 lbs venison, 1/2 lb liver, 1/2 lb pork fat.

I used the recipe published by Hank Shaw as a guide (find it here): http://honest-food.net/2014/06/09/ca...ausage-recipe/. The only changes I made were using double the amount of black pepper (didn't have any white pepper handy), and half the amount of cayenne as the wife can't handle the heat.

To get started, I chopped all the ingredients, added the seasoning, and set them to chill for a bit in my garage fridge:



After about an hour I transferred this mixture to a large stock pot and simmered it all for about three hours. Once the meat cubes were beginning to probe tender I drained off the liquid (reserved it) and set the meat and veggies to cool:



Four cups of the reserved liquid was used for making the rice:



After the meat cooled it was time to grind all the meat and veggies through the coarse die:



Once the rice has finished cooking, combine with all the ground meat in the stand mixer and start mixing on low. I added about two cups of the reserved liquid to ensure the mixing created a nice, sticky bind. The result is two trays of boudin balls:



This are in the freezer firming up right now. Once they are almost completely frozen I will vacuum seal for long term storage.

[BeastMan]

Outstanding. You never disappoint with these threads