Rendering Deer Fat

The first deer I killed gave me 16 lbs. of scraps, but only about an oz of fat. There just was not enough to bind the meat. I went to my local IGA store, and bought some suet from the manager there, at about $.15 per lbs. I believe I bought 6 lbs., and ended up using only 5 lbs. I ran the suet through the grinder, after grinding the scraps, then blended them together, and ground the meat and suet together before making my sausage. That works out to being less than 30% fat, which is very lean. Then when you consider the slow cooking my recipe calls for, and the "grease" that works out of the sausages to be washed off when the sausages are still warm, I left a much smaller amount of fat in the meat, along with less salt.

Its not as lean as " Soy bean meal" but it is MEAT! You can run around the block after eating it if you are worried about fat, calories, or anything else about it. Good Grief, Charlie Brown! :grin: :wink: :surrender: :thumbsup:

You bet Paul I have to get others to eat the deer as well, I did not mind the "waxy" coating on deer meat and used to mix in fat when I would butcher, but Flavor is better with out the deer Fat even from our corn fed Illinois deer. I take care to trim the Fat and connective tissue and cast the connective tissue and cast fat to the bullets. I have butchered every deer I have harvested by hunting I had the locker plant do one about 10 years ago, I was building my house hand no time and found a freshly dead gut shot by bow buck on public ground, no one claimed him by 3 pm and it was warm I was not really happy with the lockers job. I suggest you do a test batch of burgers on your next deer no fat, deer fat and beef or pork fat. I have also mixed 1/3 25% fat burger in with deer and it bound well, it is just not as cheap as fat.

Button: I haven't tried these all in one batch, but I have used them all at one time or another. I like the beef suet flavor the best. I just have not killed a deer that had enough fat on it to be able to use it for binding ground venison. Maybe during one of these cold years- Where did that Global Warming that VP GORE told us all about go to????--- I will get a deer that has fat reserves to take him through the winter, and I can try it then. Its 2 degrees outside as I type this, and I kind of wish that the folks who tell us we are all stupid because green house gases are going to melt the polar ice caps, and raise sea levels, that will drown L.A. and New York City, and Boston, and San Francisco, and even Chicago and Detroit, and of course New Orleans and Houston, and Galveston, .....blah,blah,blah...... because we are all responsible for the greenhouse gases because we use so much carbon based fuels, would now explain why its so freezing COLD OUT HERE all of a sudden?

And, No, " OOPS?" won't stop me from wanting to ring their necks, either! :shocked2: :blah: :rotf: :rotf: :rotf: :surrender: :hmm: :thumbsup:

My personal observation and taste. I try and trim as much deer fat off as possible. What I've found it it leaves a thin film on the roof of your mouth with deer fat. Beef fat doesn't. Also when cooking chili you will see the deer fat rise to the top and you can feel the graininess of it that you feel on the roof of your mouth.

As far as rendering deer fat, blizzard and I wrote about this last year in detail with photos. I use it for lube.

Question about Deer Tallow.

gmww said:

As far as rendering deer fat, blizzard and I wrote about this last year in detail with photos. I use it for lube.

Question about Deer Tallow.

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OOPS, I meant Swamp rat. Sorry Swamp rat. :bow:

Maybe I wasn't clear on this, but I've eaten hundreds of pounds of ground venison--most of it 100% venison. Some with beef fat, but not much.

Running around the block is not for me. I'm a rider. Will start training again in a few days--looks like it might be indoors. Longest race last year was good for 7000 calories. Have a longer one on the schedule for this year. It's 12-hours.

The most sound and complete nutritional/media/politics read out there is The China Study. Everyone on my Christmas list is getting a copy. It's that good. PM/PT me for more on that. But I must say that I'm lighter and healthier now at 42 than I was at 32 or even younger.

If'n I'm going to make sausage, I'll use pork fat and a ton of spices... :blah:

oh, and Climate Change is a great fiction :bull: of the mind of the man who claims a state he does not really live in (mansions) and never carried his "home" state in a national election. :barf: I can direct you to real science, because unlike Gore, I have no stake in the matter.

A semi-favorite quote of mine:

"Al Gore didn't invent the internet, but he did however make up global warming..."

classic gore I showed a movie to my earth science class on the New Madrid Fault in southern Illinois area He was all about how we have to run like chicken little. You know we already pay taxes on the fuel used to render up the deer fat will they try to tax us the 11% for manufacturing sporting goods?

Ok, I made the tallow last night and it turned out really great. I did some internet research before I began and found two schools of thought: first is to boil the fat, and second is fry the fat in a pan. I tried the boil method first and let it boil for 2 hours and it didn't appear to be rendering, so I boiled the water out and then fried the fat and made some real good progress. I simmered it as low as possible and within a few hours I had it all rendered down. I then boiled it in water and poured into a bowl. I let it cool for a while at room temp and then put in the refrigerator til morning. I then took it out this morning and reboiled it in water and poured it back in a boil as I filtered it. Once this cools, I will repeat one more time to make sure I get all the impurities and salt out of it. This is really a blast to make. Now where can I get some more deer fat . . .

If you had put it through a grinder first, it would have rendered out in 3 to 4 hours. It really speeds things up.

I really didn't have that much to justify grinding it. So I took my butcher knife and chopped it pretty small.

buttonbuck said:

I have also mixed 1/3 25% fat burger in with deer and it bound well, it is just not as cheap as fat.

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Works for me too.
We'll also double grind some slab bacon with the venison.
That works great for burgers.