Ground Venison

[Claire]

In previous places I've lived, when I received ground venison, it was ground with pork so that it would have some fat. So far (people keep giving me 2-pound packages of unadulterated ground venison,why doesn't someone give me a steak or roast?) I've mostly made chili with it, and it is pretty good. BUT when I tried to make a meatloaf with it, it was too dry. Obviously, one answer is to add some ground, rather fatty, pork to it. But I'm already dealing with 2 lbs of meat. I'm thinking more eggs and bread crumbs to make meat loaves and meat balls. Any other suggestions?

[Uncle Bob]

Venison is very, very low in natural fat!! --- When I grind Venison for Sausage I include some pork fat, and/or a few pieces of Boston Butt...For "Hamburger" I add beef fat...
For two pounds of pure Venison grind I would add about 3/4 pound beef fat --- This of course will give you around 2 3/4 pounds of usable product with something like a 73% -- 27% lean to fat grind which in my opinion is just about right for Venison IMO. Unlike beef... Venison had little to no intramuscular fat! HTH

Enjoy!

[bethzaring]

I add around 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil to the meat when mixing it for meatloaf or meatballs, as well as the usual additions to meatloaf

[Alix]

You could try making that bacon cheeseburger meatloaf. You mix your meatloaf as usual and then pat it out flat and sprinkle cooked bacon and lots of cheese on it and roll it up like a jelly roll. Put it in your loaf pan like that and cook as normal.

Bacon is my favorite food "band aid".

[MNTaxi]

I make my own Deer burger. The deer I killed this year I ground up about 30lbs of meat into burger. Than gound about 6 lb pork butt and mixed it all together. I think I added about a pound or 2 of beef fat as well. Seams to stay pretty moist.

[Claire]

Another thing that occurred to me was that I ran out of whole eggs and just skipped it. The fat from a couple of yolks would have helped. I also had no milk, and soaking the bread crumbs in whole milk or cream first might help. I'm ruminating because someone just told me he has another 2 lbs of it. MNTaxi, what you describe is how I've received the ground venison from hunter friends in the past. This is frozen pure stuff in 2 lbs tubes. It comes from our local food bank (do not ask me why people keep picking it up and bringing it to me. They qualify for food bank food and know I like venison, so they pick it up and give it to me. Huh? I like venison, but do not need charity food. Maybe I'll just complete the circle and bring it back to the food bank freezer. Or maybe the food bank has so much of it they pressure people to take it. Anyway, I'm accepting it, turning it into cooked food, then giving it away to my shut-in friends and folks less fortunate than I).