Meat – Essential Cooking Tips for Making Delicious Elk Sausage

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I recently purchased some elk sausages from a farmers' market but I have no idea what their ingredients are. I understand that game has a lot less fat than other meats, so presumably the cooking (grilling?) time would be a lot less.

Is there any thing else I should be aware of? They cost 4.45 CDN each so I don't want to mess them up.

Best Answer

With any game I automatically think about avoiding overcooking as it is quite lean, however any sausage may have fat added to it to prevent it drying out, so a simple look at your sausage should tell you how much fat it has. If it is really dark with very little white in it then there's little fat and you need to make sure you don't overcook them, if there's a good proportion of fat then cook them as you would normally.

The best reference I have for cooking game is out of an app called BB Meat Master which says:

The trouble with game is that you don't know where it's been. Modern animal husbandry has eliminated many common foodborne illnesses and makes raised meat very safe but wild meat may have some diseases. For this reason some recommend that game be cooked to a minimum of 160F(71C) which is where all foodborne illnesses are wiped out, however with most game this will make it dry and unpalatable. You as the cook must balance safety and flavor/tenderness. When eating be sure to be on the lookout for metal shot or bullets.

To me there's no point in buying game if you plan to cook it until it's dry, so I aim to cook it to medium at 145F/63C at the most. It's hard to gauge with sausages, so with low-fat game sausages I'd brown them off and get them out pretty quick. As long as they're firm you should be ok.

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