I miss venison. I don’t know any hunters where I live now, but I grew up in TN with family friends that would give us some. I’ve thought about learning to hunt, but it’s so far outside my wheelhouse I wouldn’t know where to begin.
Steaks: cook some bacon, remove. Flour venison, salt and pepper, brown in the fat along with some sliced onion. Put in the crockpot with a minced garlic clove and a jar of gravy. Let it cook 8 hours on low or till tender. Put the meat on a plate, degrease the liquid if it seems really greasy, and whiz in a blender if you like a smooth sauce. Pour over the meat and sprinkle on the bacon you should have reserved from earlier. … Another: sauté steaks (thin steaks!) briefly in a little vegetable oil on each side, and to the skillet, add thin sliced onion and green pepper, salt, a bay leaf, and a few peppercorns. Pour in a bottle of beer (I used plain old Bud) and simmer maybe 10 minutes, test with a fork, and put on toasted rolls with the onions and pepper, and some A-1 sauce. … Mind you, it’s been decades since I cooked these venison recipes, but I recall both being tasty eats. I soaked the meat overnight in water and vinegar to take some of the gamey bloody taste out.
And I do think people overstate the “gaminess” of venison, or repeat things that they’ve heard. Either that or they only eat ultra-trophy bucks that are way past their prime. The local deer here is mule deer, which I have heard people say that it’s not as good as whitetail or even no good at all, and I’m not sure all have tried it or are repeating hearsay. Hunters and fishermen get superstitious sometimes. But I have had mule deer doe, young buck, several-point older buck, and it’s all good. Spend more than a few minutes processing the raw meat first.
Very rarely and expect a premium price. Fancy-ish restaurants often have it.
Deer don’t have fingers. Glad you’re enjoying their nuggets, though!
Yeah, really.
I’d vote for more jerky. Never met a jerky lover who could resist venison jerky.
The grocery chain Wegman’s has venison imported from New Zealand. I suspect Whole Foods may do the same thing. I honestly can’t figure out why we import it when everybody keeps complaining about being overrun with deer in the mid-atlantic states. There are apparently some odd laws about selling venison here. I’ve heard references to them but don’t know what specifically they are, or WHY they are. I’ve heard you can eat deer you kill, and you can share your venison with friends, but you can’t sell it or donate it to food kitchens. Bizarre and wasteful, if you ask me.
The U.S. has a pretty poor history with commercial hunting so a lot of laws and regulations are set up against it. The New Zealand deer are probably raised on game farms.
Please don’t, unless what you have is actually a pressure canner. A pressure cooker and a pressure canner are not interchangeable. You cannot safely can non-acidic foods like meat and vegetables in a pressure cooker, only in a pressure canner. We certainly don’t want you to star in an “Ask the person who got food poisoning” thread!
A: People call them “pressure cookers” for short, full name is usually “pressure cooker/canner” but who’s going to say all that?
B: A friend of MrsFtG called last week wanting to know if we wanted a deer she had just shot. (Lives on a farm where “deer season” is year round for owners in our state, more or less. Sort of like Jimbo and Ned on South Park.) Passed. Might have taken a few steaks or some sausage, but a whole deer? Nope.
C: I thought the deer made the venison?
A “whole deer” processed and wrapped isn’t all that much. Everything fits in an empty beer case box.