[Sca-cooks] Venison pie recipe and venison stew recipe

[Philippa Alderton]

--- Jim and Andi <icbhod at home.com> wrote:

Two very interesting venison recipes, which look like
they'd be good, so I'm going to add them to my stash-
THANK-YOU ;-)

I haven't rec'd the original email yet, but since it's
been sent intact, I'm going to try to address Calico's
questions about the nature of venison, and its cooking
generalities.

Calico asked:


> Hi guy's I'm looking for a good stew recipe and any
> cooking tips you care to
> share.  My brother in law shot the poor thing (OK so
> I'm a little
> prejudiced)
> And he needs a little help cooking it.  I told him
> I'd help out but I'm a
> little out of my depth here.  Thanks -- Calico

OK. The first, most important thing, is did he clean
it properly? If there's any leakage from internal
organs, or clotted blood on the carcass, it needs to
be either cleaned or cut away. That sort of thing is
why some people think it has a "gamy" taste- it's just
not been properly prepped. Was it hung, or is it
hanging? How long? Most deer should be hung for about
a week, in cold weather, in order to chill out
properly, and for the meat to age a bit. Do you have
an entire carcass, or did he get someone to cut it up
and flash freeze it?

I'm not going to go into butchering the carcass,
unless you specificly ask, but I will tell you that
venison is at its best, when you cut up the back strap
into little fillets, and sautee them in lard in a cast
iron skillet, with a dab of salt and pepper, over a
wood stove, while you're cutting up the rest of the
carcass ;-)

Supposing you've gotten it cut up into the standard
mix of roasts, steaks, and burger, what you have is a
very low-fat, dry meat, which needs to have a bit of
attention put to it, but is basicly very easy to use.

Because it tends to be dry and low-fat, you want to
use marinades that involve oil, rather than acid
(unless you're wet-cooking it) and cooking methods
which involve fat and liquid rather than dry roasting.
Also, deer fat is definitely strong flavored, and an
acquired taste- try not to keep any deer fat unless
you know you like it.

As far as burger goes, most pro butchers will offer to
add pork or beef fat to the mix. Some people like it,
but I've found that it cooks differently enough from
the venison proper to be obnoxious. I just grind or
have ground the plain meat, and add fat when I cook
it.

My favorite way to do a deer steak is to quick sautee
it in fat, with salt and pepper, or whatever spice
blend might help enhance the rest of the meal, added
just before I take it out of the pan- salt
particularly, since it tends to dry the meat.

Most pot roast recipes work fine with deer roasts,
although you will likely want to adjust the seasoning,
and consider adding things like rosemary and juniper
berries to the spices, since both go very well with
venison.

Burger can be used for your favorite meatloaf recipes.
The trick to it is using mayonnaise as your binder, to
hold the meatloaf together. Mayonnaise works whether
you have added fat or not, and seems to smoothe the
flavors and texture out a bit.

Hope this helps ;-)

Phlip

=====
Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....

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