Venison and brisket sausage sous vide – how long?

[Degas]

Hi folks. One of the reasons I found and joined these forums is from my research on the internet pertaining to sous vide cooking since there's relatively little out there. I'm aware of Baldwin and Keller and the likes, but every so often there's an ingredient or product that I cannot find anything at all on, as in the case of my recent purchase of fresh Venison/Brisket sausage. My separate research on both venison and brisket call for 1-2 days, but being in a sausage form, I was a bit hesitant to go this long. I started it at 140 for about an hour, then rethought thinigs since it's beef and deer only and lowered the temp to 133 and cooked it overnight for about 8-9 hours. It looked like some of the liquid was exiting the sausage, so I pulled it out and placed it into an ice bath for over an hour and now it's in my freezer. I also had no idea what part of the deer was utilized. Loin calls for a far shorter time than other parts.

 

Should I have gone longer than 8-9 hours being brisket and venison? My intuition told me not to go anywhere near two days. I didn't want a lot of liquid leaving the sausage, nor did I want to change the texture of the meat. These babies will be finishing on the grill, so they will get more cooking time there.

 

Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks in advance.

[EnriqueB]

In sausage, tenderness of hard meat cuts is achieved by the grinding step, not by long cooking. So, whereas I would cook a pork shoulder sous-vide for at least 24 hours at 60ºC, I would never do that with a sausage made with pork shoulder: sausages cook like tender cuts. For hogs casings (about 2,5 cm diameter) I use 1:20 hours at 60ºC, which should both cook and pasteurize the sausages, then grill or fast chill and refrigerate/freeze until consumption.