I live with a real caveman. I have always known this but since I have been eating primal, it has never been more clearly outlined. My hubby, affectionately called “Stag” has been tracking and hunting animals and fish long before “Grok” was popular.
When I first met him, I was a vegetarian and proud of it. (Of course, I weighed the most I had ever weighed in my life, but it wasn’t because of vegetarian, right?) He had me at “Hello” and I couldn’t believe that I was actually in love with a man that was a hunter. Not only was he a hunter but a very successful one. How could I reconcile this with my consciousness?
The day I got the diagnoses from my eye doctor that said I was anemic; I started looking at the possibility of eating red meat again. Stag happily complied and drug an elk home. I was appalled and intrigued. Stag cooked it with great love, sautéed with onions, apples and rosemary. Oh yes, it was amazing.
After much research I realized that wild game is actually the very best meat one can eat. Period. Low in fat and cholesterol, high in protein and grass fed naturally, it is a superior meat. Elk have not been altered through breeding to be bulky and fat marbled. They are as nature made them, for thousands of years. (This is true for all venison.)
Here I am, 14 years later, eating like a “hunter gather” and lean, clean grass fed meats are a commodity. Who would of thunk it? What a gift it is to have a crazed hubby that loves to hunt and fish! I always knew he was a catch, but now I positively am following him around drooling!
Two weeks ago, Stag drug another elk home. It was a big celebration! He hadn’t got an elk for 2 years due to his changing from rifle hunting to bow hunting. He felt more like mouse than a caveman out there hunting them with just a stick and a string. But patience preserved and Stag harvested one. (I told you he is a caveman.)
I know many of you have not been part of harvesting an elk, but it is a lot of work. Stag does all his own butchering of the animal. It takes him the better part of a week, and that is with help from some other cavemen! My favorite part of the whole process is when he makes elk sausage.
Stag grinds the less desirable meat and sinew to make burger, then he mixes the meat up with his special spice mix and voila! Caveman sausage. He does not add pork like some hunters do, just pure elk sausage. It is so good! I could eat it every single day.
I have managed to arm wrestle his recipe out of him to share with you. (Well, more like flutter my eyelashes and ask nicely.) His sister “Arctic” help him develop this recipe. We grind our meat in a “Kitchen Aide” meat grinder attachment that works quite well. If you do not hunt, you could make this sausage with ground buffalo or grass fed beef. There are so many recipes you can use this in that the sky is the limit!
Now there is some spicy meatballs!
- 5 cups ground wild or grass feed meat
- 2 teaspoons of fennel
- 2 teaspoons of parsley
- 2 teaspoons of sage
- 1 teaspoon of cracked red pepper
- 1 teaspoon of cracked black pepper
- ½ teaspoon of coriander
- 1 teaspoon of garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon of sea salt
- Place your ground meat in your mixer bowl with the paddle spoon. Set the mixer going while you sprinkle in the spices till it is all mixed together well. Or, if you don’t have a big strong mixer, go caveman and mix it like Stag does, by hand. He sprinkles in the spices and hand squishes them into the meat till well mixed.
- Package in what ever size packages that you would like and freeze what you don’t eat soon. Cook with a little coconut oil because there is hardly in fat in this sausage. Yum, good. Grunt.
This is so cool, my husband just shot his first deer ever tonight! We were talking about making sausage earlier today too. So glad I found this recipe, will try this very soon!
Excellent spiced up venison home made meat balls!
I must make them soon,..yummie food!
Can’t wait to try this! Is the fennel whole seed or ground?
We use whole fennel seeds. Sometimes I toast them then slightly grind them with a mortar and pestle. Tell me what you think!
I had our game meat ground into 5 pound bags. Do you know approximately how much 5 cups weighs?
I believe that 2 cups equals one pound, so try doubling the spice mix for 5 pounds. Mix one batch and cook up a bit of sausage and see how it tastes. Adjust the spices accordingly. Let me know how it turns out! Good luck!
Finally made the sausage….scrumdeliumptious!!! I tripled the seasonings for a 5 pound batch and liked the zing and bursting flavor. Thank you for sharing the recipe.
Wonderful! I like it spicy too!
I make my own tallow from grass fed beef here in Colorado. Usually the butcher asks me if I am making sausage with it which got my brain a-churning… Could ground grass fed beef fat be added to this recipe to make the elk meat juicier? I just found your wonderful blog today 🙂 Thank you for sharing!
You could try it. Why not? We added ground pork to our sausage one year thinking it would be yummy and we thought it took away from the taste. But I’m a big believer in experimentation or I wouldn’t be paleo or a cook for that matter. Give it a try and let me know what you think. Thanks for finding me! 🙂
I grew very hungry reading this. Thanks for sharing the story and recipe. Sign me… a man who’s also carnivorous for the real meat.
You are welcome! Caveman hubby just got an elk last month and we made a ton of sausage that was amazing, once again. In good meat we trust. 🙂
Hello! I’m new to the whole deer meat scene and am wondering if this sausage recipe will help me acclimate to the flavor easily or will I need to add more seasonings to sort of ease into this type of meat taste.
I have had venison sausage before and I liked it better than a regular burger, which was bursting with full wild game flavor.
Also, could I use a food processor to “grind” the meat? I don’t have a normal meat grinder. I have used my food processor to grind chicken but it was just pulverized instead of ground into the strings like the picture.
Thanks for helping out a newbie! Can’t wait to try this recipe and hear from you!
Hi Elizabeth
Welcome to the wild wild world of game meat! Food processors are not a good way to grind meat. They just kinda chop it to death and make it tougher. Do you have a stand mixer? If so, we bought an attachment for it that grinds meat and it works very well. Just use the spices I suggested at first, fry up a little bit and taste it and see if you like it. If it needs more seasonings, adjust from there. Also if you are just getting into game meat, I suggest you add 3:1 ration of venison to ground pork. That adds some fat and brings a nice tenderness to the sausage. We just did that last night to some sausage and it was so good! Make sure and use high quality pork that has been raised humanely or you are going to down grade the quality of your venison. Good luck and enjoy! We LOVE venison! ♥
OH MY GOSH!!!! This is THE BEST sausage recipe I have EVER had (and I’ve had a lot)!!!!! Thank you for sharing !!!
Thank you! It is a good one! We just made a batch cause the caveman hubby got an elk. So delish!
Finally a recipe for pure Elk sausage!! I get sick of seeing recipes that tell you to add pork. I hunt Elk because it’s the most delicious, healthy meat money can’t buy! Why would I ruin it with pork?! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
This is such a great recipe! How’d you like it?
Loved it! It was flavorful without overwhelming the clean, rich taste of the Elk. Just a tip on cooking Elk sausage – If you’re making patties, make them thin and fry them on med/high heat so they brown quicker and stay slightly pink inside. The first batch I made the way I would pork sausage – slower so they cook thoroughly before browning – and it got tough.
I am going to try this with some ground Oryx a friend gave me sounds delicious!
Good basic game sausage recipe. I made some today and it was delicious. I followed the recipe, exactly and it’s great as is. If you are heat sensitive reduce the coriander, red pepper flakes, and/ or the black pepper. I ground my own coriander but left the fennel seeds whole. I fried it in coconut oil and had no difficulty. The house smells great!!! This is my first try at sausage making so I’m feeling pretty good about it. I will try more recipes in the future but for now, I’ll be using this one. Thanks, Cave Woman!
I just ate some this morning! Thanks for trying it! 🙂
Last year I thought I would make my own venison sausage since it’s so expensive to have it made. This recipe was awesome! My whole family enjoyed it. My uncle who hunts asked me for the recipe. I’m going to try it with the moose I got! Thanks
Oh Moose! Lucky you! Glad you love it! 🙂
Grunt…thanks from an Italian girl who lives in montana n loves elk meat?
Have you ever stuffed the sausage in pork casings? I like to make different sausages, and I always
stuff them. It gives me more options in how to eat them. BBQ or sauteed or in casseroles. what do you think?