Cooking venison

So, I get an e-mail from my dad. He got into the lottery a while back to hunt deer at the local state park. He says he shot a doe, didn't say how big, heavy etc.

The e-mail says he got all the meat back from the butcher. My mom refuses to eat any of it, and it grosses my sister out, so it's up to me and him to divide this up. He has 8 steaks, 2 loins, 2 backstraps (?), 4 roasts, 2 racks of ribs, and 17 lbs. ground meat.

So anyone who has recipes or secrets or tricks, I'm all ears.

I do know that venison steaks with a little salt and pepper burning on the grill sounds really good, too bad I have to wait at least 3 months for grilling weather. Maybe I'll fire the grill up for New Years, screw the cold!

YOU KILLED BAMBI!!!! OH THE SHAME, THE HORROR OF KILLING A GORGEOUS ANIMAL. WAS IT HURTING YOU, NO! OH THE HUMANITY OF IT ALL, THE LOSS---the taste as it comes out of your fying pan or grill!! Got a winter coat? Fire up the grill and enjoy.

Good timing - a friend who is a hunter just dropped off a venison steak, a couple pounds of ground and a couple pounds of sausage, and I'm looking for good recipes to enjoy Bambi too

Mix the ground meat 50/50 with pork, season and stuff into sausage casings.

I like to treat deer roasts and loins like I would lamb... that means mint jelly!

I'm not sure if I have ever had the ribs as "ribs". My grandmother used to make stew with all that sort of thing.

My brother-in-law makes AWESOME jerky. I'll ping him for a recipe when I'm picking up my own stash if you like.

http://allrecipes.com//Recipes/meat-and-poultry/game-meats/venison/Main.aspx

backstrap is the filet mignon so slice 1/2 inch thick and pan fry use some kansas city or cheyenne seasoning . make some new potatoes ,salad .

Enjoy the harvest!

Advanced question for extra points: I'm really interested in dry curing venison - that is, treating it like pork and making prosciutto, coppa, pancetta, that kind of thing. I'm concerned it's too lean, though.

Any insight?

pan sear on high heat put in oven to finish

create red wine pan sauce with challots..

Serve.

In reply to alex:

Wild meat, particularly venison has, to say the least, flavorful fat. My 1930's vintage Joy of Cooking shows beef fat being laced into the surface of the venison after all the natural fat has been trimmed off. I don't think treating it like pork is in the cards. Gotta hunt bear for that.

Take some of the meat to a butcher that does jerky. You haven't lived until you receive a 4lb. bag of jerkied deer meat.

One of the recipes from that link piques my interest: marinate the backstrap in apple cider for 2 hours, then in hickory BBQ sauce for 2 hours, then wrap in thick-cut bacon and grill.

We need a drooling smiley icon for that one.

Treat it like meat. Cook it with conventional recipes that you like. Don't go getting into all the weird, celebrate nature recipes that people come up with. Most are truly horrible.

Approach those ribs with caution. As in try it first. I've found deer ribs to be some of the nastiest meat I've ever had in my mouth. The fat in there has an incredible stench and adhesive property. Made me want to gargle with acetone. Works ok ground up in sausage, but not to eat. But, that's my opinion.

Thanks for the heads-up, because I would've tried to make them like pork ribs...drowning in BBQ sauce and slow-cooked for a long damn time.

You are lucky he's sharing the good parts. Any time I get venison it is usually the stuff that is least desirable.

Find a butcher to make you some sausages (or make your own -- see gratuitous hotlink below):

Things that cook for a long time with lots of moisture are best. Keep in mind this animal has lived a long eventful life compared to the meat from the grocer, so it tends to be tough.

Also, next time, man up and butcher it yourself, you learn so much about where your food comes from that way. Try to find someone with some experience with raising beef or pork, since they'll know the most about the different cuts. Just remember two things 1 - Just make it look like what you see in the store, and 2 - What isn't on one cut will just be on the other.

Appleseed wrote: Take some of the meat to a butcher that does jerky. You haven't lived until you receive a 4lb. bag of jerkied deer meat.

Bah make it at home....or better yet send it to me and I'll make the jerky. The guys at my old office use to always bring me meat so that I would make them jerky. I learned from my grandparents and so it is the old style jerky made basically only with salt and pepper.

We could never make it at home. We'd eat it as soon as it was done.

Whatever you do, don't cook it like beef.

I usually cook to an internal temperature of 140F, which is rare.

If I'm doing a roast, I'll put butter along the top as well, and baste often. The meat has very little fat.

I eat deer, moose and I bought half a bison. Fat content similar to fish, more iron than beef, free-range and local (a friend of mine raises bison on her farm nearby).

PM me if you have any questions.

spnx wrote: Whatever you do, don't cook it like beef. I usually cook to an internal temperature of 140F, which is rare. If I'm doing a roast, I'll put butter along the top as well, and baste often. The meat has very little fat.

I tend to lay strips of bacon over the roast (changing out the strips as needed).... mix in beef suet as I grind for burger ( sometimes add pork sausage to the burger grind)

spnx wrote: I eat deer, moose and I bought half a bison. Fat content similar to fish, more iron than beef, free-range and local (a friend of mine raises bison on her farm nearby).

Bison is spectacular.

As a 25-year hardcore whitetail hunter, I've become a purist over the years. I agree with spnx... don't treat it like beef. Ever see a steer flitz and dart through the woods? Nope. Totally different muscle structure and muscle fiber construction. Cows are full of slow-twitch muscles - short, plump cells which use fat stored in the tissue for slow release. Deer have more fast-twitch muscles - long, skinny cells which store fat elsewhere and use sugars and glycogen for fast activity.

Grilling is a fine way to make a burger or a steak. I like to grind in 1 pound of bacon for every 10 lbs of venison to make the burger. The low fat content of venison burger tends to make a slightly grainy, dry texture sometimes. Adding the bacon not only adds fat, but flavor. The big bonus is that bacon tends to supplement the venison flavor, not cover it.

I've smoked venison before with limited success. The best part of a deer to smoke is the loin, and they aren't very big. Plus, the loin is one of the mildest, most tender parts and makes one helluva fine dining experience when cooked medium rare.

Braising is your friend. Long, wet, low heat.

Take a couple of those steaks, use a tenderizing hammer to whack them out into 1/2" thick. Sprinkle both sides generously with salt and pepper, dredge in flour. Heat a good iron skillet with a couple tablespoons of oil until almost smoking. Slice one big onion and saute until transparent. Set those steaks in there and brown really hard for a while on each side. Turn down the heat and add a bit of water to deglaze. From now on you're stewing/braising. Add an appropriate amount of canned crushed or diced tomatoes to partially cover. Put a lid on it and simmer for an hour. A side of mashed potatoes and broccoli makes for a fine meal.

When you add the tomatoes you can toss in a little something to make it regional; add some fresh basil and cracked fennel (with a touch of cracked red pepper) for an italian twist, sage and rosemary makes a nice savory addition, or a tiny bit of cumin and chili pepper makes a pretty nice brazilian stew.

If you plan on doing any roasts, get a slow cooker. I have to go find my mom's recipe for Eastern Pot Roast. If you have ever wished to know what heaven tastes like, this is it.

Will post later.

In reply to curtis73:

Speaking of tenderizing, what about doing some air aging? I've seen some pretty simple methods to air dry in a fridge, so you should be able to get a good section to age and start breaking down before cooking.

I've wondered about that and wild meat- just to see of the "gaminess" gets aged off.

Also- does the "low and slow" method work for meat like that? Tenderness, I mean- I think something has to be done with the lack of fat. Maybe brine city?

Good luck with it- least you'll be full.

alex wrote: Advanced question for extra points: I'm really interested in dry curing venison - that is, treating it like pork and making prosciutto, coppa, pancetta, that kind of thing. I'm concerned it's too lean, though. Any insight?

Leave the skin on, salt temp and time. Before you know it, it's cured.

I have friends who have done it, but I personally don't know all the details. I would think that venison would be pretty awesome, considering how much fat gets taken off of ham these days.

I would agree with only using the rib meat for sausage making. I've never heard of anyone using the venison ribs as, well...pork ribs. I prefer hot sticks and summer sausage for the scraps. Just make sure they mix it 50/50 or so with pork. I love it when the summer sausage gets dried out too. Great for sandwiches.

As a moderately long time hunter, venison eater, cowboy and other things, I'm going to disagree with the notion of deer having no similarities to beef.

Why yes, I have watched cows flitz and dart through the woods. I've been chased on horseback by a cow for over an hour, wasn't sure the horse was going to make it. That cow was mighty determined to kill us. I've watched cows leap over fences, fight bears, and lots of other things that were mighty fast and skillful. If you think cows can't move fast, you haven't been around cows much.

Venison is lean, usually. Not always. Do generally cook it like a very lean meat. But beware, some deer are mighty fat. We've taken deer that are just plain obese. That said, I have not seen the meat marbled with fat the way beef will. The fat is layered over the muscle, not throughout it.

Venison ribs are considered wonderful by many folk around here. Can't figure out why. I've tried them a few times, they were always awful. I kinda put it up beside muskrat. That's supposed to be wonderful also, but I've yet to eat it where I thought it was wonderful.

Once upon a time Marlboro cigarette company put out a few cook books. Seriously cool cowboy and outdoor photos in the book. My friend worked at a print shop that printed out the cartons, so one night we sat down with a 12 pack and scissors and cut out all the UPC labels off the boxes that filled the trunk of his car.

I bought two cookbooks with the labels.

Here's one from the Cowboy Cookbook; Venison with 40 Cloves of Garlic.

Garlic, Bambi, Bacon, three of the four food groops!

http://www.grouprecipes.com/121673/marlboro-venison-with-40-garlic-cloves.html