I have a freezer full of deer meat. I’ve been making venison burgers (I use Leite’s Culinaria recipe), deer fingers and nuggets (roll pieces in flour, egg, and panko then deep fry, serve with sriracha mayo), meatloaf (one part venison to one part beef and one part pork), and deer stew. We also have a metric crap-ton of breakfast and dinner sausage made with it (not that good, IMO- too dense). We have a dehydrator, so we make jerky.
What we have left is a whole lot of steaks and roasts- I have no idea what to do with those. I’m not real keen on just cooking them up like I do beef or pork, because I’m pretty sure they’re going to be tough as hell and not so good.
My brother in law is a hunter and shares freely with us, so we have lots of venison in our freezer. We treat it delicately because we love the flavor and don’t want to add anything to mask it. But one really good recipe we stumbled on is a dry chili rub that DH developed for pork loin - is equally delicious on venison loin!
Also, a red wine sauce made from pan drippins is very good with venison.
I’ll have to look up a rub for a loin, then… I have to do something with these things. And that reminded me, I also grind some coarse and make chili with it.
We eat a lot of venison. One of my favorites is a stew my gf makes which is an adaptation of beef bourguignon. I don’t know her exact recipe (most are not written down anywhere), but I know it takes all day to make.
I wait for my co-worker to cleaner the previous year’s uneaten venison from her freezer then feed it to my dogs. I sometimes feed it raw, sometimes cooked with rice, different ways. Alas, she’s divorcing her husband so I may not see any meat this year.
To me, venison is pretty variable. With my really good young, early deer I do different things then a rutted-out late season deer. Seeing as how you’re enjoying the hamburger, I’d try braising a roast, there wont be too much seasoning to hide the flavor and cooking it down will help with the toughness and lack of fat. Look for a simple osso bucco recipe you might like and steal it.
More recipes! I need to clean out my freezer. I’ve been using this website but I haven’t done much besides sausage patties, backstrap, and bacon-wrapped haunch.
Interesting website. I will have to peruse it more tomorrow, but just from a quick glance I learned that venison meatballs are called faggots, and there really is such a thing as snipe hunting- I thought that was just a joke.
I love a good venison roast. Cook it slow in the crockpot and make sure you add a onion it helps eliminates the gamey taste. Potatoes, carrots, string beans, peas and corn make great additions. Season to taste I usually add salt that’s all it really needs. Enjoy!
I have a couple friends who really enjoy hunting. They get licenses for PA, MD, WV, then pay extra for antler less tags. They get more meat than they can eat so they give it to us and we do what we can to thank them.
I’ve never seen venison in a store anywhere- do they carry it at some places? My roommate is a hunter. We already had a lot from this year, but last week a friend of his was behind a pickup when a cleaned and dressed deer fell out the back and onto the road. They didn’t want it so they brought it to us and we ground most of it up.
If you have a pressure canner, cube the meat and can it with just a little kosher or pickling salt. It is good just heated straight from the jar, but you also have the makings for very quick dinners just by adding a few things to the canned meat. Soups…stew…chili…pot pie are the work of minutes rather than hours. In Ukraine and Russia canned meat in general is called tushanka and they have built all manner of delicious meals around it
That sounds really good, but I’m not a canner. I did get my roommate a pressure cooker for Christmas (shut up, it’s what he wanted) so maybe we can experiment with that in the new year.
Did you end up moving to Pittsburgh? If so, you can use mine. I’ll even coach you through the first batch, not that it is difficult. Main things are that your jars and lids be clean and that you pack the jars properly full of meat.
I used to make green chili out of it. My Dad would make a spicy sausage, and my Mom usually made pepper steak (the braised kind). I wish my Dad was still in good enough shape to go hunting.
