Recipe: Formed Venison Bacon

In our house, bacon is considered a food group. The sweet, salty and smoky flavors are addictive, and add wonderful depth to many recipes. Making bacon from ground meat is easy and allows ingredient choices to match your palate. If you like spicy, try adding cayenne pepper or jalapenos. If you like sweet, experiment with maple syrup or brown sugar. There are a few important ingredients to make good bacon from ground venison.

The first consideration is adding pork. Venison is lean, and the fat and moisture from ground pork are essential to help with flavor but, more importantly with consistency. A slab of finished bacon should be sliced thin and still hold together. If you do not add enough pork, the bacon will crumble or fall apart when slicing.

Cure must be used whenever you smoke meat or hold it at temperatures that could allow bacteria to grow. Cure ensures food safety and prevents dangerous bacteria that can cause food poisoning. More or less is not best—use one teaspoon of cure for every five pounds of meat.

Dry non-fat milk powder may seem strange, but it is a binder to hold the meat firmly together. The milk powder will also help reduce the shrinkage of the bacon slab when cooking.

Sweet notes are added with brown sugar, which helps create a candied finish on the bacon. It is fun to experiment, and brushing the bacon with maple syrup while smoking adds great flavor. Experiments with Hi Mountain Black Pepper and Brown Sugar Bacon Seasoning and Bearded Butcher Cinnamon Swirl or Hollywood Blend are outstanding.

The ground venison and pork can be ground together. Start with a meat grinder with a coarse (10 mm) grind and follow it with the fine grind plate (4.5 mm). Use pork butt or front shoulder, which has the perfect mix of meat and fat at 60/40. If you get a butcher to process your venison, you can have five-pound chubs of burger made with the pork ground right into it.

The smoky flavor is preferred at our house, so smoking the bacon at a low temperature and adding heat every hour makes outstanding bacon. You can make the bacon in the oven and use one tablespoon of liquid smoke when adding the spices.

Ingredients

• 2 ½ pounds of ground venison
• 2 ½ pounds of ground pork
• 1 teaspoon of curing salt (Instacure No. 1 aka. Prague powder 1)
• 2 tablespoons of salt
• 1 cup of non-fat powdered milk
• ⅓ cup of brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons of onion powder
• 2 teaspoons of garlic powder
• 2 teaspoons of smoked paprika
• 2 teaspoons of dried mustard
• 2 teaspoons of black pepper
• 1 cup of ice water

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, combine the salts, milk powder, cure, all the spices and mix with water.
2. Add the ground venison and pork to a large meat tub and pour the water mixture over the meat. Mix thoroughly to combine by hand or with a meat mixer.
3. Line two 9 x 13 baking pans with plastic wrap or aluminum foil. Divide the meat mixture into two and press each half evenly into each pan so it is 2 inches thick. Cover meat with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator overnight to allow the meat to cure and the mixture to bind.
4. Remove meat from the pan by turning it upside down on a wire rack. Allow the meat to rest while the smoker is warmed to 130°F.
5. Place formed bacon onto the smoker racks. Every hour, increase the smoker's temperature by 20 degrees. The bacon is done when it reaches an internal temperature of 160°F.
6. Remove bacon from the smoker and let cool completely before slicing. The formed bacon is fully cooked and can be eaten immediately or fried like traditional side bacon.