APauls's Link
1. Prep had better be good. All sinew – gone. If it’s deer, all fat -gone. Which leaves you most times with a super lean piece of meat. It is this lean-ness that makes wild meat oftentimes “difficult” to cook. Fat is what gives meat moisture and more flavour. With no fat, the moisture is in your meat and then the next minute it is gone. Moose, elk, bear…fry some of the hard white fat while trimming and taste it. If it is good, you can leave some of that in.
2. It’s all about temperature. Due to the lack of fat (which in turn becomes moisture) your meat can go from epic to overdone in 90 seconds. Internal temp is that critical. This is where a smoker with probes, or just a meat thermometer, or sous vide can be super handy. You can't afford to overcook lean wild meat. You just can't. My wife never like meat cooked "rare or med rare." That changed.
3. Oil can be your friend. Due to a lack of fat in the meat, a little olive oil on the outside of your meat works great both as a binder for spices but also keeps the meat juicier. It can save you a little in case you leave it on too long. Kind of increases the margin for error a little bit.
4. Best marinade ever – half and half oil and cheap soy sauce. Toss a bunch of whole peppercorns and a couple cloves of garlic. Let’s say for 150-200mm of both oil and soy sauce. Blend with an immersion blender. It gets foamy and thickens. I assume a blender or food processor would also work if you don’t have immersion blender. Cut meat into “steak bites” and marinade for 30-45 minutes. Take out and bbq. Leave whatever marinade is on the meat hanging on the meat. While I am sure others have made this up before me I tried it one time for fun and it is flat out epic. I have served this to all walks of life – hunters and non hunters alike I have yet to have someone not super impressed. Try it – you’ll thank me later!
5. Personal choice – I’d never use a loin or tenderloin for anything but steak or steak bites. They’re just too good, and you can use roasts for everything else.
6. If you want good ground meat, don’t be too lazy to remove most sinew on the ground cuts. It will be in the meat and you will get chewy lumps in the ground. Laziness has cost me here before.
7. Best cuts – (Loins + tenderloin) is steak. Some pieces from the hind can be used for steak, but then I go for roasts, and then all the other stuff is ground and sausage. You can basically use the worst stuff for sausage and it will still make great sausage. Small pieces of roasts or steak that get trimmed off I use for things like Stew or stir fry. It’s still a good cut, and makes for great stew and stir fry, but wasn’t a big enough piece to make steaks out of.
8. Butcher your own meat, it’s easier than you think, and really difficult to screw up.
9. If you are going to fry meat, do yourself a favour and use cast iron.
10. Sous vide is basically a cheat code. If you want your meat moist and 135 degrees internal temp that is what it will be. That being said, when using a sous vide, I like a higher internal temp than if I was BBQing. This is because your ENTIRE piece of meat will be that temp, not just the middle. I like a BBQ steak around 134, but like sous vide 138-140. Also, I don’t understand the super long cook times with sous vide. Unless you’re trying to break down a tough piece of meat, I want it to hit the right temp and pull it then. A couple hours for steak, maybe 5 for a roast. After that, quality wild meat cuts with no fat start going mushy.
11. I will attach a link to an insanely good jerky recipe. I use garlic powder instead of garlic cloves, because I don’t like a gummy piece of clove on my jerky, and I also use like 25% of the red pepper flakes she does. It’s hot enough, and everyone has a different level of heat tolerance. Try it, you’ll thank me later! I will use a nice roast to cut up into jerky pieces. No one wants sinew in their jerky.
12. When slicing jerky if you have a meat slicer, go right from frozen. You get real nice uniform thickness on your slices.
13. An Instant Pot is amazing for things like: Stew, shanks, neck meat, or basically any crappy piece of meat you want to break down. It WILL get the job done and the meat will fall apart. Great way to break down sinew and turn it into that goo some of us love. An easy meal while not the most amazing roast ever is to season and brown a roast, toss in potatoes and veggies (onion, carrots etc) and throw it in there for 40 minutes. Great meal for when you are gone at work and just set it to delay. When you remove everything toss some water in to make your gravy. Add a little corn starch and cold water mixture to thicken and you’ve got yourself a roast+ gravy and veggies meal and you dirtied one pot. The meat won’t be that “Pink roast” kind of deal, but it will fall apart and is good for a base for your gravy ;) It’s not a high end deal, but a tasty quick and dirty healthy meal. The meat might need some salt and pepper but it works now and then. An instant pot is 10x better than a slow cooker. In a slow cooker everything tastes the same. Some how while you cook 4 different things in an Instant Pot they each retain their own flavour. Your meat will taste like meat, your carrots like carrots, and your potatoes like potatoes. As opposed to a slow cooker where it all melds together. I gave my slow cooker away after using an Instant Pot a few times and have never regretted it.
14. Please don’t use an Instant Pot on a quality piece of meat. That’s the equivalent of using a sledge hammer on a finishing nail. Wrong tool for the job. Do use an instant pot to render bear fat though. Works well.
15. Instant pot will make you the best bone broth you can find in less time than anything else. That being said, don’t expect to get any broth out of a bone that you already cooked in there. Ex) Let’s say you cook a bone-in roast or a whole chicken in there and eat that meal, the goodness will already be out of the bones. If you put the bones back in with water, and expect to make broth, it will be weak. You already extracted that stuff the first time.
16. Bear Ribs. Literally the best ribs I’ve ever had in my life. Young bear beats old bear but wow. Iiiiiiiiinsane good.
17. When smoking ribs, if meat is tougher than average make sure you don’t skimp on the wrapping portion of the smoke. (Elk, moose etc) If anything, add time here. On a 3-2-1 make it 3-3-1 if needed. Or heck, even 3-4-1. It’s that step where you wrap and cook covered with moisture trapped inside that really seems to make the meat fall apart and go tender. That step is the real tenderizer. Don’t skimp on it.
18. Hearts are delicious. Dang I threw away way too many hearts early on in life. I love crispy outsides of meat, and you can basically fry the crap out of heart (IMO) and it’s still good. Season and flour and butter and oil combo and get a nice char in that pan. Oh baby.
19. Ground meat is so versatile. For a young family with dual professionals, we end up using it more than anything else. Freeze it flat vacuum sealed so that you can put it in warm water and have it thawed in 15 mins. I used to make roasts out of anything I can. Nowadays I’ll do about 4 roasts out of a deer, but I grind the rest after I’ve removed my steak cuts. We always run out of ground and steak and have oodles of roasts left. But that’s a personal thing.
20. A surprising good steak cut is on the shoulder blade. Both of those pieces on the top half of the shoulder blade. Once cut off the bone you do need to remove the flat sinew that’s in the middle, but on animals like moose and elk the remaining pieces are thick enough to get some dynamite steak bites out of. Really tasty and surprisingly tender.
21. When making ground, it has to have some fat. If your moose, elk, bear fat wasn’t tasty add in a little beef or pork or good bear fat. Even after mixing my ground is so much leaner than store bought super lean ground. I shudder to think what is in store bought ground.
22. Freezing, thawing, and re-freezing meat is good. It tenderizes the meat. As long as your meat didn't go bad while in the "thaw" stage, it's good to refreeze again. I don't know where that myth came from but the meat gets better each time. I don't typically set out to do it, but have done it many many many many times and the meat only gets better.
Hope this helps someone enjoy some of the wild meat they have in the freezer!
APauls's Link
Good stuff above and I'll revisit this thread when I have time and add my 2 cents.
Then I process my own. My grind has very little silver skin. I only coarse grind once- no fat added. I think it makes for a better bite.
I just had a avg cut of elk pan fried Rare to MR...and used it reheated for sandwiches the last couple days- fantastic
Note the cast iron, and a little bacon grease ;)
Your #4 is great the way it is. I also add a couple of splashes of Worcestershire sauce to it. Not a lot as a little goes a long ways, but it tops it off nicely.
scent
Great tips.
If you don't think you like venison steak rare, cut a piece of loin about a half inch thick, cook it real hot in a cast iron skillet just searing both sides and leaving it super rare in the middle and try it. I think you'll be amazed at how good it tastes and how tender the meat is.
Bacon grease and garlic powder were made for venison steaks and burgers!
Cook venison burgers med rare or barely past. If you are going to have leftover burgers, cook those to very rare so they aren't dried out when you warm up in the microwave.
The neck meat makes THE absolute best roasts. Cook in a slow cooker or Instant Pot with a little beef or chicken broth, make gravy from the juices, shred the meat, make a sandwich with white bread, cut in half, add mashed potatoes in-between the halves, and cover all in the gravy. This is called a hot beef sandwich in the Midwest.
Great thread, Adam!
BC: "I have a hard time cooking a venison roast without it drying out. I might try the smoker. Any tips would be helpful. Thanks gents." Look into getting a sous vide. It's game changer for game meat. You can put that roast in the water, set it for 125 and walk away for a few hours. Helps tenderize it a bit, cooks it medium rare, maintains the moisture and all you have to do after that choose how you finish it, be it grilling it to get a char, cutting steaks or medallions off of it and searing them quick in a hot cast iron pan or just cut it and serve it. I corned a venison roast once and cooked it overnight. It was tender as could be and we gobbled it up.
When I save a backstrap, I leave it in ~1-1.5 pound chunks. When I thaw, I gives me versatility in how I want to prepare. EX. If I want to stuff/butterfly, I slice them thick. If I prepare as a steak, I can vary cut thickness depending upon how much each individual wants/thinks they can eat. (I vary the cooking times to achieve no more than medium, rare. I like using high heat source, cook to rare, pull off heat and tent with foil for 10 minutes.
Freezing wild game. I vac seal ground. Press flat. No added fat. I add fat at the time of prep. (Found does not seem to age well in freezer. I double wrap all steaks, roasts (Even meat I will grind. First wrap is with Saran/plastic wrap. Work out any trapped air. Second wrap is with butcher paper. Don't be shy. Paper is cheap.
I freeze all my grindable meat. I grind/make sausage and burger as winter time projects. (IE I hunt when it is season and deal with that aspect after season) I also weigh the grind meat before I freeze. I try and freeze amounts in a premeasured amount. (EX. I will freeze 4 lbs per pkg. If I want to make 10 lbs of sausage I will pull 2 packages. I also freeze some 2.5 lb packages. (EX for bacon where I do a 50/50 ratio of ven/pork.
(You will lose some moisture from venison when it thaws but that is ok.) I will put the meat in plastic tub lined with paper towels (Fridge for 3 days+) This soaks up watery stuff. After I grind venison, I balance out remainder with fatty pork. (Ground pork butt)
I warm it before I cook it. I cook venison to 120 degrees if it’s rested before eaten. 122-123 if I’m eating it hot. I cook it fast over high heat. I put plenty of salt and pepper on it. That’s good enough for me.
Bowfreak's Link
I just crock potted an elk shank earlier this week. I doused it with a good seasoning, typically something like a BBQ rub, and then cooked it on low for about a day. Let it cool to the point I could handle it easily and then pulled/shredded the meat. I use a really simple concoction of ketchup, mustard, liquid smoke and Tabasco to make BBQ. It is one of my favorite meals. I love the taste of this BBQ with those simple ingredients. Give them a try, it is great.
Just by chance I picked up some seasonings in Wyoming one year at a gas station. Do yourself a favor and pick up these two seasonings: JJ's Gunpowder and JJ's Gunpowder and Lead. They have others including Sweet Heat, which I used on the shank earlier this week but I believe the Gunpowder and Gunpowder and Lead are the best. These two seasonings are garlic and pepper based. Nothing ground shaking but really really good seasonings.
Thank me later.
One other thing I will add......find yourself a source for pork fat. In my opinion it makes much better ground/burgers than beef. I do a max of 10% fat for my burger unless I am making sausage or brats, then I do 20-25%. I have a local BBQ establishment that I hit up routinely for his pork trimmings. He will give me as much fat as I need. The last time I picked it up I had about 15 pounds of fresh fat. I use what I need and then cube and vacuum seal the rest. I will use it throughout the year as I kill a few more deer or hogs in the winter. I also give it to friends who don't have a good place to get their fat. He gives me the fat for free and I eat at his restaurant and from time to time when he hands me fat I give him a $20. It is well worth it to keep the fat supply going.