Inspired by the postings on here and elsewhere about venison bacon I decided to have a go myself after being gifted some elk scraps, and a small elk roasting joint.
My wife dislikes the taste of venison so I was looking to modify it to make it acceptable to her. This really does the trick.
I had about 1kg of Elk meat, some beef trimmings from a beef bacon project, and some beef fat, about 1.5 kgs in total. I cubed them all, and frosted them in the freezer, ground them through the coarse plate of my little Kenwood and added the requisite amount of Franco's Smoked bacon cure, some supraphos and some chilled water. I worked the meat by hand until it became sticky, and then placed it into a ceramic roasting dish lined with clingfilm and left in the fridge overnight. Next morning I turned it out of the roasting dish and onto a fine wire mesh plate:
Placed into a low oven at 75 deg C, and left it there for nearly 8 hours until the internal temperature reached 68 deg C. Removed from the oven and placed once again into the fridge to cool, next morning it was ready for slicing:
Just had some this morning, lightly fried, with a fried egg, really tasty, even madam had some and enjoyed it!
I wouldn't add so much fat next time, I don't really think it needs it, and I would add a little extra smoke powder to the curing mix, unless of course I managed to win a smoker sometime soon!!
This was just so easy to do I think I will be experimenting with supermarket minced meat mixtures which are always available cheaply here, I would say it should work with any minced meat with which it is possible to achieve a sausage style primary bind.
Richard