Cured Bambi Ham...

[AtlLaw]

Rumor has it that an estemed member here is in the process of doing a couple!   
 
I never even thought of "cured" Bambi until he mentioned it.      Now I can't get the concept outa my senile ol' brain!   
 
sure wish he'd tell us about it... I'm just sayin... 

[hillbill]

you aint the only one!

[Lloyd Smale]

well to defend myself on the bambi killing the little one i cured was road kill. We do shoot a few a year doing crop damage shooting. Its tough to tell the size of a doe at 400 yards once the spots have faded. Now to the finished product. We ate one of the hams for supper last night and my hunting partner ate the other. it was good but not good enough to write home about. the flavor was excellent but it was a bit to salty. Probably my own fault. the recipe i had called for injecting the brine and sitting it in a bowl in the fridge for 3 to 4 days. I had a bunch of the brine left after injecting so i threw the meat in freezer bags and dumped in the brine and sat them in the fridge like that. I think if i was to do it again id just inject them like was recomended and then id also rinse them off before smoking. It wasnt bad as is but had room for improvement. Id also consider smoking with a milder wood like apple vs hickory.

[Lloyd Smale]

by the way i got the brine mix here http://www.askthemeatman.com/weekly_special.htm but all it is is sugar canning salt and quick cure. Nothing special and you could make your own. But i got it for i think 12 bucks and got enough to do like 60 lbs of meat for that. What you do is inject it, let it sit for 3 to 4 days. Id recomend only 3. Place in your smoker and set temp at 120 for 2 hours with no smoke (very important) . then raise the temp to 140 and smoke for 2 hours. then kick it up to 160s and smoke until internal temp of the meat is 132. Keep in mind that your meat is not cooked properly at this point. remove from smoker and either freeze like that or move it right to your kitchen oven and cook until temp of meat is 165. It took about an hour at 400 to get it there.  believe it or not the ham was still very moist at this point.

[BUGEYE]

My brother in Illinois has inlaws who eat nothing but venison except for the one hog they kill to make bambi sausage.  I've ate their ham, it's great.

[AtlLaw]

After posting I did a quick internet study.  This is really interesting but I'm still working on sausage making!   
 
Maybe I'll give it a try if I have an extra hind leg this year...      Or maybe I'll try it with this year's fawn; assuming I kill one that is.  Methinks more study is in order!      
 
Down here the "Country Ham" has the real salty taste.