Thread: Economics of your own meat grinder

We had to slaughter a beef steer last week unexpectedly cos he got a respiratory infection and I wouldn’t pay the daylight robbery to get him fixed and a vets cert for the transport to the works. The only problem was freezer space - there’s already a 425kg hook weight Hereford steer in there plus who knows how much venison. So out came all the venison for a check to see whats what. Realised that there was more than I thought...

When we weighed the venison we came up with 97kg off the bone and 24kg on the bone. Hmmm, what to do. Having a yarn wife the The Wife I asked how much mince costs at the supermarket, we looked it up and just about bloody fell off the stool - $15/kg for standard grade??? Bloody hell. No wonder we are always getting asked for homekills...

Last year our old electric mincer finally died, didn’t get round to replacing it. So I bought a Kenwood 2000W mincer from Harvery Norman on a VIP deal for a little over $300 delivered.



This morning we minced 32kg of fallow and red venison, and in a production line of me as Butcher-And-Grinder-In-Chief and three sous chefs (and two keen as mustard dustbin dogs for the scraps), we made up heaps of nice fat burger patties using the bite.co.nz recipe which is a real winner (just dropped the parmesan, we don’t need that). We packaged them up into layers in boxes separated by baking paper and back into the freezer they went... in supermarket money for standard grade beef mince thats $480 worth plus whatever the eggs, milk, spices, mustard and garlic costs. The onions, herbs and bread we grow / make ourselves.

http://www.bite.co.nz/recipe/11063/Venison-burgers/

Makes my eyes water how much beef is these days. Now we don’t notice the difference really between beef mince and venison mince, when we cook up bulk meat sauce we usually mix the two. The venison burgers are bloody good, the kids love ‘em and will eat them for brekkie and dinner quite happily all week, very easy to prepare, just cook them from frozen at 180°C for half an hour, job done.

So yeah, just reflecting I guess on how much more of the deer is processed into edible food with a good strong mincer, everything goes in right to the boney part of the ligaments, no hassle having to strip out silvering or tougher parts, in it all goes. Plus it comes with the sausage making tools too. One of the deer in the freezer was a battered old fallow stag who probably wouldn’t have been much chop but as seasoned mince you won’t notice the difference. The new mincer has already paid for itself, I doubt we’d have used a lot of the older venison it would likely have gone to the dogs. If you shoot a few deer and don’t think you’ll likely get through it all, a good mincer is a bloody good investment.

We have got a George Forman meat grinder. Sadly only used it once. Reading this it might get a dust off

Originally Posted by Flyblown

We had to slaughter a beef steer last week unexpectedly cos he got a respiratory infection and I wouldn’t pay the daylight robbery to get him fixed and a vets cert for the transport to the works. The only problem was freezer space - there’s already a 425kg hook weight Hereford steer in there plus who knows how much venison. So out came all the venison for a check to see whats what. Realised that there was more than I thought...

When we weighed the venison we came up with 97kg off the bone and 24kg on the bone. Hmmm, what to do. Having a yarn wife the The Wife I asked how much mince costs at the supermarket, we looked it up and just about bloody fell off the stool - $15/kg for standard grade??? Bloody hell. No wonder we are always getting asked for homekills...

Last year our old electric mincer finally died, didn’t get round to replacing it. So I bought a Kenwood 2000W mincer from Harvery Norman on a VIP deal for a little over $300 delivered.

Attachment 89941

This morning we minced 32kg of fallow and red venison, and in a production line of me as Butcher-And-Grinder-In-Chief and three sous chefs (and two keen as mustard dustbin dogs for the scraps), we made up heaps of nice fat burger patties using the bite.co.nz recipe which is a real winner (just dropped the parmesan, we don’t need that). We packaged them up into layers in boxes separated by baking paper and back into the freezer they went... in supermarket money for standard grade beef mince thats $480 worth plus whatever the eggs, milk, spices, mustard and garlic costs. The onions, herbs and bread we grow / make ourselves.

Venison burgers – Recipes – Bite

Makes my eyes water how much beef is these days. Now we don’t notice the difference really between beef mince and venison mince, when we cook up bulk meat sauce we usually mix the two. The venison burgers are bloody good, the kids love ‘em and will eat them for brekkie and dinner quite happily all week, very easy to prepare, just cook them from frozen at 180°C for half an hour, job done.

So yeah, just reflecting I guess on how much more of the deer is processed into edible food with a good strong mincer, everything goes in right to the boney part of the ligaments, no hassle having to strip out silvering or tougher parts, in it all goes. Plus it comes with the sausage making tools too. One of the deer in the freezer was a battered old fallow stag who probably wouldn’t have been much chop but as seasoned mince you won’t notice the difference. The new mincer has already paid for itself, I doubt we’d have used a lot of the older venison it would likely have gone to the dogs. If you shoot a few deer and don’t think you’ll likely get through it all, a good mincer is a bloody good investment.

Using the same mincer for 3 years now and it's still going strong.

I have made venison mince with a standard food processor, it worked okay but I expect a proper mincer would be faster and handle the workload better.

Do you add fat to your mince? I picked up a hand grinder a while back and have tried to make mince a couple of times with venison but always found it cooks really dry, I don't really like fat off venison, tried using fat off the backsteaks of a real good condition spiker way back when I was a young fella and it put me off leaving too much fat on venison anyhow.... yuck!
I was thinking of giving the mince a go again but adding some beef tallow?

Deer (or other game meat excluding pork) fat doesn’t taste good. A proper burger (in my opinion, and I’m something of an enthusiast) contains only meat and seasoning, the meat ideally with something like a 20% fat content. Venison isn’t ideal, need to add fat. I haven’t managed to find a good source for fat to add to venison mince but I haven’t tried too hard yet. So I just buy beef mince for burgers.

I do use venison mince for things like Ragu, add some fat for flavour with bacon generally

Originally Posted by gimp

Deer (or other game meat excluding pork) fat doesn’t taste good. A proper burger (in my opinion, and I’m something of an enthusiast) contains only meat and seasoning, the meat ideally with something like a 20% fat content. Venison isn’t ideal, need to add fat. I haven’t managed to find a good source for fat to add to venison mince but I haven’t tried too hard yet. So I just buy beef mince for burgers.

I have to disagree we use a recipe from an old Allison Holst book oaty meat balls no fat added and it's awesome never falls apart and so bloody nice.
Make them 25 to 30mm thick and never dry.

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Originally Posted by 25/08IMP

I have to disagree we use a recipe from an old Allison Holst book oaty meat balls no fat added and it's awesome never falls apart and so bloody nice.
Make them 25 to 30mm thick and never dry.

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I'll have to dig it out as we are moving house and all things are packed away but I'll try and fish it out.

Originally Posted by sako75

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My brother makes sausage rolls out of minced up back steaks. They are, by all accounts, very very nice. But I guess you could use any other venison at a push.....

Fallow and Thar fat is bloody nice I reckon. I like it anyway.
I always add pork fat to red venison for burgers or meatloaf.
If making spag boll or cottage pie I don't add any.


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We use venison mince in lasagne and to be honest couldn’t tell the difference from beef
I think meat patties are the way to go with minced venison

Bull tahr fat can be super rank, mixed some in with a batch of tahr mince once and it was overpoweringly bad. Summer bull.

vinison mince is primo in rice rissotto type meal...if you doing meat balls or patties think of it like steak...anything past medium is BURNT.
chock mutton in with venison gives it a bit of fat but nothing beats pork...the flaps off pig (pork belly) are ideal to add to mince...we bought and used a kenwood mixer with mincing attachment for a while but recently finally found a george foreman mincer,its louder but faster,making sausages is piece of cake. if you put a large lidded bucket in freezer and chuck all your bits n bobs into it untill its full then get stuck in and make a batch of mince and sausages you will have a good mix.