Sausage & Curing

What to buy first

Most hunters arrive here with a grinder that shipped with stuffing tubes, and those tubes are enough for a first few batches of fresh links. The first real purchase in this stage is a piston stuffer. It stops being optional the day you want summer sausage, snack sticks or a 25 lb batch, because a grinder pushes finished mix back through the auger a second time, and the extension services tie smeared fat to warm meat in the grinder head. Our stuffer vs grinder tubes comparison walks through when the tubes you have are good enough.

After the stuffer, the next upgrade is a meat mixer, once your batches pass about 20 lb and hand-mixing cold venison and pork fat starts warming the meat and leaving the cure uneven. The cheap essentials come alongside both: an accurate thermometer, the right casings, and, for anything smoked, a properly labeled Cure #1 or a kit with the cure pre-portioned.

How the stuffers divide

Vertical or horizontal. Verticals take less bench space and include most of the steel-geared two-speed models; horizontals sit lower, which suits limited clearance or a high bench. The layout changes how the machine sits, not how much it can do. See vertical vs horizontal.

Manual or motorized. A hand-crank stuffer covers nearly every home season. A motorized stuffer earns its bench space when you stuff for hours: a foot switch leaves both hands on the casing. Mind the maker's run-time rating; LEM lists 45 minutes for its 20 lb model.

Cylinder size. Stuffers are sold at 5, 7, 10-11, 15 and 20 lb and up. That number decides how many times you stop to reload, which is where a long stuffing day actually goes.

Capacity against your batch and season

Size a stuffer to the batch you mix, then check the season. A common reference batch is 25 lb: North Dakota State University Extension's venison summer sausage is 15 lb of venison plus 10 lb of pork trim. A 5 lb cylinder takes five fills for that batch, an 11 lb takes three and a 15 lb takes two. Across a season, the Ohio Division of Wildlife's weigh-out of 115 deer averaged 52.19 lb of venison each, which gives the three tiers this site uses:

• Light, 1-2 deer (about 52-104 lb of venison): a 5-7 lb stuffer and hand mixing, or a 10 lb mixer.
• Moderate, 3-5 deer (about 157-261 lb): a 10-11 lb two-speed stuffer with steel gears and a 20 lb mixer.
• Heavy, 6+ deer (313 lb and up): a 15 lb manual or a motorized stuffer, and a 30 lb or larger mixer.

Not every pound becomes sausage, and your deer may run bigger or smaller than the Ohio average, so treat the tiers as a starting point. The full rankings are in best sausage stuffers and best meat mixers.

What decides the price

On a stuffer, the money goes into the gear train and the frame, not the cylinder. Reinforced nylon gears sit at the bottom; LEM sells a nylon-gear 5 lb it lists as not intended for snack sticks. Metal gears come next, then metal gears with two speeds: a low gear to stuff with control and a high gear to raise the piston for the next fill. Above that you pay for stainless frames, stainless tubes, longer warranties (LEM publishes one year on its nylon-gear model and five on its Dual Gear) and, at the top, a motor.

The mistake upgraders make

Buying cylinder size without reading the fine print. A bigger stuffer is not automatically a stronger one: LEM says its all-metal 15 lb MightyBite cannot make snack sticks because they put too much stress on its gears. If sticks are on your list, check the smallest tube in the box and any snack-stick note from the maker before capacity. The specifics are in stuffers for snack sticks. The second mistake is the reverse: buying a 15 lb stuffer and still hand-mixing 25 lb of cold mix. Upgrade the mixer with the stuffer.

Curing salt: the one rule that doesn't bend

Smoked sausage, snack sticks and summer sausage are cured with sodium nitrite, which guards against Clostridium botulinum. Cure #1 is 6.25% sodium nitrite in salt and is the one for anything you cook. Cure #2 adds nitrate for long, uncooked dry cures, which Washington State University Extension doesn't recommend making at home. Use cure only at the package dose, weigh it, and keep it labeled and away from table salt. Pink curing salt is not Himalayan pink salt. Everything else, including how the common 1 oz per 25 lb rate works out, is in our curing salt guide.

Casings in brief

• Natural hog casings, 32-35 mm: brats, Italian and fresh venison links. They need rinsing, a soak and refrigeration.
• Collagen: edible and ready to use with no soaking. 19-21 mm for snack sticks, which need a tube of about 1/2 inch or smaller; 32 mm for brats.
• Fibrous: non-edible plant cellulose for summer sausage. Soak before use and prick out air unless they're pre-stuck.

Whatever goes in the casing, cook it to 160°F internal, USDA's minimum for ground meat. The process from trim pile to links is in how to make venison sausage, and the cured, smoked version most hunters make next is venison summer sausage.

If this is your first stuffer

The mistake on a first stuffer is rarely buying too cheap; it is buying one that will not make the sausage you actually want. Gear material, an air release valve, tube sizes and whether clamps are in the box are the four checks — and the snack-stick trap catches almost everybody, because LEM says outright that its own beginner model is not intended for them. Sausage stuffers for beginners ranks the 5 to 7 lb machines on those four checks and says which sausage each one can and cannot fill.