Butter instead of fat in venison burgers?

[Heym SR20]

To be honest I think venison is better cooked on a Braii either as steaks or butterfly out a haunch. I am going to cook a haunch of red on Friday. I am going to make a good fire and rake out the coals cooking it slowly and turning regularly and it will be wonderful.

The meat that you would typically make a venison burger - flank, shoulder, ribcage I think much better used as slow cooked on the bone in stews, curries etc. I have just made the base for a large Biryani for Thursday evening. Shoulder of mutton and two forequarters of venison - ie neck shoulder, and ribcage back to 4th rib. All cooked on the bone with ginger / garlic / chilli paste, lots of onions, coriander, cinnamon, cardomon and turmaric. Slow cooked till all the meat has fallen off the bone. The lamb was a over a year old and with plenty of fat so everything is really juicy. All the sinews and connective tissue in the meat has dissolved to produce a really unctuous sauce.

To serve will reheat the curry, add ground garam masala, fresh chilli, coriander and mint leaves and ginger sticks and add part cooked rice with cranberries and a bit of rose water and seal in a pot. Stick it in the AgA for 45 minutes and let everyone else smell the wonderful fragrances. The rise will take all yhe juice and flavours.

I will take it to a quiet place and get fat. Everyone else can eat barbecued burgers.

To be honest I am really not convinced by venison burgers. Yes you can add pork fat etc but …..,

If you want a burger get fatty beef mince and do it properly. Most supermarket mince has no fat so makes crap burgers. Or you can make lamb burgers, but I am not a fan. Again better cooked whole.

 

[Woodsmoke]

Tescos cooking bacon does the job. 500g for 75p

Nope. Shite in, shite out. Sausage and burger deserves more respect than that. Why go to the bother of making your own if you're just going to use crap ingredients? You might as well just buy cheap and nasty crap and give the venison to someone who'll treat it properly

 

[slider]

Nope. Shite in, shite out. Sausage and burger deserves more respect than that. Why go to the bother of making your own if you're just going to use crap ingredients? You might as well just buy cheap and nasty crap and give the venison to someone who'll treat it properly

Well my local outlet can't get enough of them.....

 

[Woodsmoke]

Well my local outlet can't get enough of them.....

Can't argue with that then.

 

[Erik Hamburger]

Hi all,
I am finding pork fat inconvenient to source and butchers seem to want to charge a a fair bit for it, which is fair enough as I can see that it is a valuable product.

I would like to try making venison burgers with an alternative - grating frozen butter into the mince instead of pork fat has been mentioned before but I wonder how many of you have tried it? What were the results like? Same ratios? I use 4:1 meat to fat normally.

Any advice would be appreciated,
All the best, Mike

I don't think Venison Burgers ned any added fat, I just use salt (1%) and freshly ground black pepper.
However your suggestion of some butter will obviously be delicious, but I would look at 5-7% butter, not 25%! A 25% butter Venison Burger will just melt away when cooking, and on the BBQ the flames of the charcoal will flame up from the dripping butter fat.

 

[curlyrobs]

Butter would not work as it has a very low melting point and it will fall apart once cooked, yes to cook in butter but not through the mix.
Best is core fat, it tends to be a lot cheaper than pork fat and normally pay a few £££ for a kilo. Just wrap each patty in it a pan fry, also grate for making fagots.
If you want a less dry burger for the cheapest way is to add rucks to it as it absorbs liquid and keeps it in the burger but will alter the texture to a bit firmer and will contain gluten but it is penny’s not ££

 

[TTT]

To be honest I think venison is better cooked on a Braii either as steaks or butterfly out a haunch. I am going to cook a haunch of red on Friday. I am going to make a good fire and rake out the coals cooking it slowly and turning regularly and it will be wonderful.

The meat that you would typically make a venison burger - flank, shoulder, ribcage I think much better used as slow cooked on the bone in stews, curries etc. I have just made the base for a large Biryani for Thursday evening. Shoulder of mutton and two forequarters of venison - ie neck shoulder, and ribcage back to 4th rib. All cooked on the bone with ginger / garlic / chilli paste, lots of onions, coriander, cinnamon, cardomon and turmaric. Slow cooked till all the meat has fallen off the bone. The lamb was a over a year old and with plenty of fat so everything is really juicy. All the sinews and connective tissue in the meat has dissolved to produce a really unctuous sauce.

To serve will reheat the curry, add ground garam masala, fresh chilli, coriander and mint leaves and ginger sticks and add part cooked rice with cranberries and a bit of rose water and seal in a pot. Stick it in the AgA for 45 minutes and let everyone else smell the wonderful fragrances. The rise will take all yhe juice and flavours.

I will take it to a quiet place and get fat. Everyone else can eat barbecued burgers.

To be honest I am really not convinced by venison burgers. Yes you can add pork fat etc but …..,

If you want a burger get fatty beef mince and do it properly. Most supermarket mince has no fat so makes crap burgers. Or you can make lamb burgers, but I am not a fan. Again better cooked whole.

I agree with much of this. However, a venison burger can be delicious. Firstly, never use pork fat in a burger as it needs cooking through. Venison is wrecked if you cook it to the temperature that pork fat needs for hygiene reasons. Secondly, use better cuts as you are going to cook a burger fast and pink. I like haunch.
I typically add a bit of onion cooked in ghee/butter to the mincer on the last pass. This makes a more succulent burger and works nicely on the barbecue.

 

[mikeakc]

Feedback on this one - I made 4 burgers for the BBQ earlier this week. I put butter in two (about the amount you’d use on two pieces of toast) and did two without butter, just minced venison. The buttery ones were definitely better, more moist and better charred as the drips caused more flames and smoke under them. Given that soft butter is such a simple thing to add whilst you are moulding/seasoning the burgers from the frozen mince I would do this again in future. Next time round I am going to trial the butter method against some decent sausage meat mixed in with them as well. I will provide feedback on this too! I understand the pork temperature concerns back when I used to have this done by a butcher I will get him to add pork fat and always left them pink-ish but hot all the way through - never had any problems.

Cheers all.

 

[sauer]

Don’t ask me the difference / science because ive no idea …. But for my burgers I don’t add fat but for sausages definitely need to … don’t know why .

The burgers I add a gluten free rusk from weschenfelder as a binder but I usually replace some of required water with a sauce be it
Brown sauce
Red currant jelly
Sweet chilli
Or whatever list is endless …,I think the fluid once reacted with rusk keeps some moisture in …. Whatever it works .
And if eating yourself a range of flavours helps … and I sell plenty of them also with great feedback

 

[VSS]

Don’t ask me the difference / science because ive no idea …. But for my burgers I don’t add fat but for sausages definitely need to … don’t know why .

The burgers I add a gluten free rusk from weschenfelder as a binder but I usually replace some of required water with a sauce be it
Brown sauce
Red currant jelly
Sweet chilli
Or whatever list is endless …,I think the fluid once reacted with rusk keeps some moisture in …. Whatever it works .
And if eating yourself a range of flavours helps … and I sell plenty of them also with great feedback

Only trouble with adding something like brown sauce, if you're selling the burgers (as you do) is that you can't simply put "brown sauce" on your ingredients label. You have to list all the individual ingredients of the brown sauce (or whatever), complete with all allergens highlighted etc. So if you've added a couple of pre-made sauces etc to your burgers then you end up needing a pretty big label.

 

[A Guy Out West]

Beef trim is what I use.

 

[sauer]

Only trouble with adding something like brown sauce, if you're selling the burgers (as you do) is that you can't simply put "brown sauce" on your ingredients label. You have to list all the individual ingredients of the brown sauce (or whatever), complete with all allergens highlighted etc. So if you've added a couple of pre-made sauces etc to your burgers then you end up needing a pretty big label.

EHO approved here & food hygiene level3 & allergen training plus more …well aware of what needs to be on labels

Paul

 

[VSS]

EHO approved here & food hygiene level3 & allergen training plus more …well aware of what needs to be on labels

Paul

I wasn't for a moment suggesting that you didn't know, but I thought it an important point to mention for the benefit of anyone who's inspired by the posts on this thread to give it a go

 

[sauer]

I wasn't for a moment suggesting that you didn't know, but I thought it an important point to mention for the benefit of anyone who's inspired by the posts on this thread to give it a go

Got ya !
I was concentrating on the thread and fat contents not the details of EHO stuff… didn’t consider that .. but would hope anyone who going into it would be informed by their local EHO officer to guide em correctly

Paul

 

[mikeakc]

Don’t ask me the difference / science because ive no idea …. But for my burgers I don’t add fat but for sausages definitely need to … don’t know why .

The burgers I add a gluten free rusk from weschenfelder as a binder but I usually replace some of required water with a sauce be it
Brown sauce
Red currant jelly
Sweet chilli
Or whatever list is endless …,I think the fluid once reacted with rusk keeps some moisture in …. Whatever it works .
And if eating yourself a range of flavours helps … and I sell plenty of them also with great feedback

Cheers I’ll try that too, sounds like you’ve done a lot of this so advice much appreciated

 

[Andrewslater]

I dont use additional fat at all i just add into the mix some already sweated down onions and these seems to keep the burgers moist and stop them from drying out.

 

[alasdair]

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Nichola Fletcher's tip of using aubergine to add moisture and texture to burgers.
Roast the aubergines in the oven till they're charred and collapse. Scrape out the innards - looks like grey porridge! Add to your venison mince (as lean as you like), add whatever seasoning you choose. Works a treat. You can also use onion as suggested above or mushrooms. I prefer the aubergine as it gives moisture and fat like texture and seems to just taste of the venison without any intrusive taste of its own.

I've used a small amount of olive oil in venison sausages (with a generous helping of garlic and a drop of red wine) and that works fine. I tried it initially for friends who don't like pork and was surprised that it worked so well.

Alasdair

 

[mikesy]

I use cooking bacon from Lidl. 1kg for £1.45 and you can usually get smoked bacon which adds to the flavour.
These are just end cuts from bacon joints and you can choose from pretty lean packets to fatty. packets.

 

[simondorras]

Hi all,
I am finding pork fat inconvenient to source and butchers seem to want to charge a a fair bit for it, which is fair enough as I can see that it is a valuable product.

I would like to try making venison burgers with an alternative - grating frozen butter into the mince instead of pork fat has been mentioned before but I wonder how many of you have tried it? What were the results like? Same ratios? I use 4:1 meat to fat normally.

Any advice would be appreciated,
All the best, Mike

Belly pork an option maybe