I have several rolls of the worst summer sausage ever made, I wont mention any names here. However I live on the southeastside of Indy, and the processor is in the greenwood area. You can choke it down with a good piece of cheese and a cracker. Very dissapointed in it. Embarrased to give it to friends. Has anyone tried slicing it up and marinating it , and then drying it ,on the order of making jerkey. I would like to salvage it, but if I cant I will probably donate it to a food pantry. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Maybe cut it up into smaller pieces and add it into a potluck dinner, like a stew with other meats and vegetables.Basically masking it with other things to salvage.....

Mix it in with eggs for breakfast omlet or something to that effect. Why would you donate food YOU won't eat to a food pantry? I recall a guy donating a deer to a food pantry last season that he deemed unfit for his family to eat... but hey give it to some poor family....kinda sad IMO
Solohunter

We just made duck gumbo today. I would use the deer sausage in a gumbo with Anduoille (sp?) and a few shrimp along with a some beans and rice. I used the recipe from my Ducks Unlimited Magazine this month and it turned out very good. I don't particularily like duck, but all these seasons in the gumbo, the deer sausage will simply be a nice filler.

If you got it the same place I got it, yes it was terrible this year. Mine was almost mushy in the middle and just didnt taste right. Quite embarrasing if you ask me. I wont go back.

I've always had good luck with Archer's meats up in Fishers at 116th west of I-69... their rates are not the cheapest, but they do a great job processing and packing, and I've never had bad sausage out of there...

Deadeye - almost sounds like your's either didn't get cooked long enough or something... never heard of mushy summer sausage...

thats what it almost tasted like texture wise. I almost felt like I was eating raw deer burger, but hey its a lesson learned now. I will now go to Claus's in Indy. It's probobly the best I have had.

Same thing happened to me about 10 years ago. Infact, I had to throw out the whole deer. Couldn't stand the taste of any of it. the following year he was shut down......

Learn to make it yourself. It's not hard! You can do a lot with a smoker too.

Throw the junk out, or feed it to the dogs.

That processor in Greenwood is very expensive and has done poor work for me in the past.

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. I had a bad exp there and some friends had bad exps there and we wont be back there. I have cut up and processed all of my own deer the past several years.

Once the sausage has gone bad there is not much you can do with it other than feed it to the dogs or use it for predator trapping bait....

I reccomend that you take your meat here for summer sausage:

http://www.clausgermansausageandmeats.com/

they are the BEST around indy!

hey 76, have you ever had their breakfast sausage, made out of venison. Just curious how it is?

I've had some, Recon. It's awesome. Just like the rest of their products.

I totally agree. The breakfast sausage is very good.

Clauses make EXCELLENT products.

The problem with getting any type of sausage made it, that, it is not the deer that you brought in. most meat markets only make sausage once or twice a week. So, what they do is to mixed many deer together in making that order of deer for that day. You get a bad deer that wasnt field dressed properly, or wasnt cooled quick enough and turned bad then that is the meat that could be mixed into you sausage. They just cant set up the grinders for each specific order, it would be a night mare because of the different type of sausage ordered by each individual. So on one day they will make one specific type. I didnt realize this till I asked my butcher at the processing plant.