Summer sausage ideas

[vister]

Anyone ever experiment with cranberry, wild rice, cheddar venison summer sausage? Not looking for your recipe, just some advice, pointers, or dos and donts

[Alagnak]

My last batch was exacltly these added ingredients. I used a high temp ched cheese I purchased locally from a Von Hanson's. I have used non- high temp in past and you get flavor and moisture but not the 'look' high temp gives you on how it holds together. The wild rice I did not cook all the way through. I just poured pots of boiling water over the rice in a pot and dump back out, repeated until the shell was cracked- this way they don't mush up when you stuff it, and I just put the cranberries in a hand chopper to break up a little so they weren't whole. Other than that I just used my regular summer sausage seasoning mix for 25# batch. I made the mistake the first time and did not account for the total ad-ins as part of the meat poundage. This caused the seasonoing to be weak. I now count that extra weight of ingredients into the total weight specified for the seasoning mix I am using and it's the way it should be. I like fresh/frozen cranberries but have used craisens and blueberries with good results too. I like the 'tang' in the cranberries the best.

This pic is with the craisens so not as bright red as cranberries.

[vister]

Just what I was looking for. I've always done one lb of high temp per 10lbs of meat. Approximately how much cooked rice and cranberries u suggest for starting point? Lastly, you mentioned you liked the tang of cranberries, how was the overall flavor??!! My experimenting has been jalapeño cheddar sausage. Where i quickly learned fresh jalapenos vs canned are preferred. Yum yum. Just looking for a more exotic flavor

[Alagnak]

I'd have to look at my notes at home but I think I used 1/2 # or so of uncooked wild rice (maybe it was a pound but that is a ton of rice cooked), pound of cran, 2 pound cheese. Whatever you think- you can't really mess this one up because none of those add ins are overpowering anything at all. I wouldn't say iit's just about the flavor either- it does two other things for me- a great visual appearance/presentation and all of these 3 are great for moisture- especially important for wild game in my opinion. You know when you have a cracker and summer sausage you want cheese anyway- so why not right in there? ;-)

In this pic I still had to 'hand cut' some cheese chunks because I was short on high temp.