Venison Brats and Hot Slaw

I made up a simple meal today for the current Throwdown "Snags and Slaw". Apparently those crazy Aussies call sausages Snags :crazy: So, I tried to come up with some creative ways to cook some sausages and slaw but nothing ever really popped. There have already been some fantastic entries and I tried to keep it original but the TD topic is a little limiting.

I finally decided to cook up some brats that myself and some buddies made while processing venison several weeks ago. These came out great and we have a ton of them.



So I started today with some ingredients for cole slaw based loosely on the recipe that deguerre has shared here on the forum. I wanted to kick it up a notch so I decided to add some roasted Hatch chilis, peppers, and some onion.



Chopped up the peppers and onions and mixed up the sauce. My intention was to kick it up and mission accomplished! The peppers and onions added great flavor and a good heat. It was almost a little to much so I might cut back the volume next time or roast/sautee them first next time.





I tired to come up with a creative presentation for the meal and the idea of a "cocktail" stuck in my mind. It worked so far with the slaw in this fancy glass that I have no idea why I have.



Once the slaw was done the sausages went on the SJG cooking indirect for exactly some amount of time. I added a few small cherry chips for a little smoke flavor.




While the sausages were cooking I tried to do a little vacuuming but I was met with this passive protest to being productive.



After said amount if exact time, the sausages were done and pulled off the grill.



Now, here is where things just got silly. I was still trying to follow the "cocktail" idea. At first I wanted to rim the glass with sausage slices but that just wasn't working well. Then I had the brilliant idea to skewer the slices much like olives in a martini. Sure, great in theory. Probably would have worked fantastic if i was doing little smokies. Unfortunately, for a brat, the image just didn't come out right :shocked: I can only imagine what my neighbors thought when they see me outside taking pictures of this :tsk:



A little modification and that looks a little better. However, I had to fight another attempt to sabotage my efforts. Maybe I should have taken it as a sign :tsk:



There, that is better.



After I took these pics I was shaking my own head. Just too fancy for a simple meal. Plus, I quickly realized that it was just about impossible to eat the slaw out of those farking glass thingees. Thus, I digressed back to my best Chinet and made up a meal that I could eat with dignity. It was delicious. The brats were made with a pre-mix from Cabelas with a 80/20 ration of venison to pork. They came out great. So good that I ate all four myself. The slaw was good too. The heat level was great and adding the peppers really added a different realm to the flavor.

kcmike said:

Ok, you gotta' send me the recipe for your venison sausages. Those look farking fabulous!! Great idea on the slaw too. :thumb:

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Since my buddy works part time at Cabela's we have used that to our benefit. We now have all the tools necessary to process large quantities of meat. For the mix, we usually just grind up some pork butts and mix with the ground venison to add some fat content. Then we usually just use the premade mixes from Cabela's like these. It's nothing too fancy but every thing we have tried comes out really well. The best part about our setup is we can make 30lbs of sausage relatively easily. We have done some tweaking of the summer sausage we make but this was the first time trying brats and they came out great with just the store bought mix.

Oh, I should add that we have had trouble with the casings that come in the kits. The seem to tear easily and be tough to work with at times. So, we usually just pick up the "fresh" ones they have in the cryo pacs.