Venison sausage and egg muffin recipe

I must admit that breakfast is probably one of my favourite meals of the day. And this venison sausage and egg muffin recipe tops the charts for a quick and easy fix. I mainly keep something like this for the weekend, but after a hard stalk this would go down extremely well, especially with a nice piping hot cup of coffee.

The sausage and egg muffin is a very well-known breakfast. Its distant cousin, the venison, sausage and egg muffin, is less famous but even more delicious.

I always make sure I have a decent amount of venison mince stored away in my freezer in 1kg or 2kg vacuum packs 
as they are ever so handy and versatile. You can make burgers, meatballs, bolognaise, lasagne, chilli — the list goes on.

The venison I used for this recipe was fallow, the only reason being that fallow is the dominant species here in East Sussex and it’s what I often stalk.

We do have a few roe, but sadly the numbers are low and we are trying to increase the population, so we leave them be.

If you harvest your own deer, it’s important to consider some basic tips on cleanliness and hygiene. When stalking your deer you must make sure that the utmost care is taken to protect the carcass from external and internal bacteria. When the meat is used to make mince, it is quite easy to mince through some of the spoilt or contaminated meat. Not only would that spoil the taste of the meal, but it could also make you incredibly ill.

The gralloching needs to be clean and the chest cavity free of any stomach contents or foreign objects.

Before hanging, make sure everything is as kept as clean as it can be and you must trim out all of the bruised, damaged or spoilt meat. When mincing the deer, I like to mince the shoulders, neck and belly/rib meat. I like to keep the haunches, saddles and inner fillets for steaks or roasts.

If I were looking for meat to dice, I would also look to the shoulder and neck. These are 
the toughest parts, with a lot of sinew and collagen. Slowly cooking these melts the collagen and provides lovely juicy and tender pieces of meat. I always find the leaner parts of the haunches can be a little dry.

Back to this delicious recipe. The good thing about this one is that it is quick and easy — you can have it ready in about 10 minutes. It would also work well for a shoot elevenses.

There isn’t much to it, but make plenty as it is often wolfed down rather too quickly.

Venison sausage and egg muffin recipe

Ingredients

• 300g of minced venison
• 200g of minced belly pork
• ½tsp of salt
• ½tsp of white pepper
• pinch of nutmeg
• 2tsp of maple syrup
• half an onion, very finely diced
• 1tsp of finely chopped fresh or dry sage
• ¼tsp of mustard powder
• 4 eggs
• 50g butter
• 4 fresh muffins

Method

1. Mix all of the mince together with the other ingredients for the patty. Once mixed well and evenly, separate into four balls.
2. In a hot frying pan with a drizzle of oil, flatten the patties and cook well on both sides. Once done, set aside to rest. I prefer to rest mine in the oven, set on low.
3. Mix the eggs with salt and pepper. Mix in 50g of melted butter and cook in a pan on medium heat until the scrambled eggs are to the desired consistency. I normally like mine quite moist on my toast, but I cook them a little longer for this muffin as it stays in the bun more easily.
4. Cut the muffin in half and toast the underside in the frying pan to crisp it up and give it a good colour. A good tip would be to keep the juices and scrapings from the pan that was used to cook the patties to add extra flavour on the bun.
5. To finish, assemble the muffin. I like to add some ketchup along the top and bottom. However, you can choose any condiment you wish, or simply have none at all… the world’s your oyster.

Serve with a nice cup of tea or coffee and this should set you right for the rest of the day.