Venison Cheddar and Jalapeno Summer Sausage

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cold water
• 3 tbsp sugar based cure.  I use Morton Tender Quick
• 2 mustard seed
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp coarse ground black pepper
• 2 tsp liquid smoke
• 3 pounds ground venison
• 3/4 pounds pork fat.  I use bacon.  (this is optional)  Its not as dry with the fat.
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and minced.
• ***If you do not like jalapenos and cheese, you can leave them out.  Recipe works the same.***

Directions:

Stir the water, curing seasoning, garlic, pepper, liquid smoke together in a bowl until the curing season is dissolved.

In a separate bowl combine mustard seed, jalapenos, and cheese.

Pour water mixture over the meat mixture and mix until evenly blended and somewhat sticky.  About 3 minutes.  Stuff your casings.  If you do not have a stuffer, you can divide the mixture in half.  Roll each half into 2 inch thick logs.  Wrap each log tightly with aluminum foil and refrigerate for 24 hours.

Bake in oven at 150* for 4 hours.  Turn up heat to 200*.  Bake until internal temperature reaches 170*, usually an additional 2 hours depending on your oven.

Remove from oven and cool on a rack until they are room temperature.  Slice thinly to serve.

If you are like me and make several, you will want to either vacuum pack your sausage before you freeze it, or put in a freezer bag and wrap in freezer paper.  I froze several of the logs one year, without wrapping and I lost all of them.  The freezer dried them out.