MOSES LAKE - This is the second of a three-part series about

Christmas gifts for outdoors-minded people.

MOSES LAKE - This is the second of a three-part series about Christmas gifts for outdoors-minded people.

Meat processing

Outdoor-minded people are becoming more involved with the processing of the game animals, birds and fish they acquire.

Smoking fish and birds

It makes sense for anglers and hunters to process their own meat. The first wild meat coming to mind is fish. Sure we all fillet, clean, can or freeze what we catch, but I've seen and heard about more anglers smoking their fish than ever before.

Imagine a group of several campers gathering for appetizers before beginning to cook the evening meal. Sure there are chips and dips, but anyone can purchase those items.

Then Super Angler arrives on the scene with a plate of smoked fish, which he processed himself. There are plenty of secret brine recipes in the world, but there are some brine mixes offered on the market and available at local stores.

For example, Hi Mountain Seasonings has an Alaska Salmon Brine Mix, a Gourmet Fish Brine Mix and a Wild River Trout Brine Mix. But fish isn't the only meat to brine and smoke.

Hi Mountain also offers a Game Bird or Poultry Brine Mix. My goal is to practice on a few store-bought chickens before graduating to ducks, geese and wild turkey.

Use your own recipe if you want, but if you don't have one and, to make the process easy, turn to the tried and true Hi Mountain Company for assistance.

Making and smoking sausage

Turning a pile of meat scraps into delicious sausage is a procedure as old as the hills. Google the word sausage and over 2 million sites pop up.

Descendents of the German pioneers still gather locally to make an annual batch of the meat mixture. I was allowed one year to visit a shop where several families were preparing a total of over 1,500 pounds of sausage.

They worked together to develop each families' specific recipe and each family wanted just a little different amount of the basic ingredients added, such as less salt for one family and more garlic for another family.

Here again the Hi Mountain people assist the home sausage maker. I don't have an old family recipe, so will rely on the 12 sausage-seasoning kits. The Jalapeno Summer Sausage kit and the Country Maple Breakfast kit have caught my eye.

These kits are user friendly as they allow a person to make one pound of breakfast sausage or the kit total of 24 pounds. This means I could buy one pound of ground pork, add the required amount of seasoning, mix the two, let it sit in the refrigerator overnight and then cook and serve the patties the next morning. Check out: www.himtnjerky.com or visit your local sporting goods store.

Some sausage needs to go through a smoking procedure to be processed properly.

Small amounts of game meat will process well in the grinding attachment for a KitchenAid mixer. However when tackling a whole deer or elk, a stronger tools are needed. Weston Products have all the gear needed to process, prepare and preserve game meat at home. Check out: www.westonproducts.com or visit your local sporting goods store. 

Although it would be convenient to have a meat grinder in every home and the manufacture would love such a situation, this is not practical. Instead it is common for a group of hunters to go together and purchase a grinder, meat mixer, sausage stuffer, jerky equipment and other necessary equipment.

Local hunter Andy Martin has taken a different slant to this situation. He purchased all of the equipment.

He and his buddies work on the various deer and other wild game meat together, including the boning, grinding, mixing and stuffing the casings. Andy owns a 1 hp grinder and I asked him if he should have a 1 ? hp grinder.

He said the one he has does a fine job and he doesn't need a larger one. Remember this guy has the possibility of grinding five deer at one sitting.

Not long ago I was visiting him when his wife mentioned a sale on Tillamook Cheese.

"I saw it already and called all the guys," Andy answered.

It seems Andy also smokes cheese and as long as a person is going to smoke five bricks, they may as well smoke 25 bricks. 

Smoker

So far we have discussed smoking fish, sausage and cheese and this leads to the subject of smokers. There are plenty on the market. Andy and Jim Jerow, a friend who lives near Davenport, both own the six-rack digital Bradley smoker. Guess what I've ordered?

Plus I have the cold smoke adaptor on the way, which will allow for a true cold smoke process.

A Bradley smoker is another product friends and family could share, both the cost and the resulting product, or just let your friends share in the end result as Andy does.

Review

Christmas is but a few days away. Gift suggestions for this week include a box of assorted Hi Mountain products, which will be appreciated by the novice, as well as the experienced meat processor. Tools to process the meat, such as a Weston grinder, mixer or stuffer will also be treasured.

A Bradley smoker will add the final touch to the collection.

It may not be feasible for one family to purchase all of these items, but perhaps one friend could receive a smoker and another a grinder, until all the necessary tools are in place.

One more point this week: Processing meat can be a one-person operation, a one-family operation or may include several families.

It is a process capable of bringing families together for the betterment of all.

Next week: Ideas for last-minute gift purchases on Christmas Eve.