This time of the year, we start paying special attention to our freezer situation. We don’t like to go into the hunting season with an empty freezer, but we do like to have plenty of space for new stuff. So usually, right before the season starts, we try to get through some of the prime stuff that we’ve been hoarding, or pulling bulk packages that we never got around to.

When we went through the freezer, we found an abundance of beaver front & hind quarters. We already have 6 beaver prosciuttos hanging in the dry cure chamber, as well as a stack of beaver backstraps, so we pulled them without any particular plan other than a big batch of sausage of some type.

The idea of brats came to mind after adding spicy brown mustard to the shopping list. Neither of us has had a grilled brat all summer. A byproduct of attending & hosting zero cookouts this year. We scaled out a recipe, and fired up the grill.

This recipe turned out stupid tasty. The high amount of pork fat and pork trim (40% total), coupled with the heavy cream and eggs, give these brats their distinct “brat-iness”. We were a little concerned that using beaver, which is super lean & dark red, instead of pork and veal, would change the fundamentals of the bratwurst too much. But as it turns out, the beaver fit really well into the flavor profile of a classic bratwurst. These are just as good as, if not better than, any butcher store brats we’ve had. They’re juicy and flavorful, and are just as good piled on a bun with some mustard as they are on a plate heaped with spaetzle and sauerkraut. The deep, woodsy flavor of the beaver is not lost, but the addition of pork and cream give it a distinct richness. 

You could substitute any lean red meat in for the beaver here. We’re going to have to make more of these with deer and maybe elk or bear soon. Bear brats!

Beaver Bratwurst Recipe

As always, we use metric measurements and go by percentage weight for our sausage recipes. We do this to make the recipes easy to scale and replicate exactly, batch after batch. If you’re thinking of getting into sausage making and don’t own a kitchen scale, please do yourself the favor of buying one. They’re inexpensive relative to the cash outlay of all the other equipment you’ll need to pick up, and will save you a lot of effort in terms of scaling recipes into imperial measurements (and potentially averting recipe failure).. To measure your ingredients, first weigh the meat you are using, and then calculate the weight of all the other ingredients based on the weight of the meat.

Prep time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

100% beaver & pork trim, cubed (7:3 ratio) 

25% pork fat, cubed

2.0% salt

0.3% white pepper, ground

0.25% ginger, ground

0.25% nutmeg, ground

12% heavy cream

1 egg per ~900 grams

Method:

Mix all ingredients, except the cream and egg, and grind through a fine plate. 

Mix well until tacky- use a wooden spoon or a stand mixer. Add cream and eggs. Mix vigorously to emulsify the eggs- if using a stand mixer, 1-2 minutes on low-medium speed. Stuff into hog casings, twist into 6-8” links. Prick with sausage pricker or sterile needle and either cool or cook immediately.

In our experience, the best way to cook brats on the grill is to poach them first (use salted water or beer) and then finish on the grill for some added smoke and to crisp up the casing.