ashnistrike | Marinated Bambi Shoulder

It's been way too long since I've posted, so you get a recipe for venision.

Background: One of Nameseeker's co-workers enjoys hunting deer. His wife, however, does not enjoy eating deer all that often. We, on the other hand, like venison a lot, but don't hunt. So the co-worker gives Nameseeker spare meat from his freezer in exchange for brownies. About the third time this happened, I realized that venison was no longer a once-a-year-must-get-this-perfect treat and I could afford to experiment. The following is the result. It's a non-recipe recipe, which is to say that I didn't write down how much of anything I used.

Take one venison shoulder (this one was about 3 pounds). Cut away the fat and cut the meat from the bone. You should end up with a bunch of tenders ranging from itty to the size of half a boneless chicken breast--in our case, just enough to feed two. Cover with a marinade of:

olive oil (a lot)
red wine (a lot)
balsamic vinegar (not nearly as much, but enough to taste)
honey (a little more than the vinegar)

The honey should be as dark and as good-quality as you can get. I used wildflower honey from the Madison farmer's market: the color of molasses and almost more savory than sweet. Trying to find more things to do with this honey was the major impetus behind this recipe.

To the marinade, add:

garlic
ginger
clove
cinnamon

I used dried and powdered of all these, to spread the taste around as much as possible. But you could use fresh easily, and doubtless to good effect.

Marinate for an hour and then saute the meat, using a little of the marinade for sauce. Be careful not to overcook the small pieces.

I liked this better than any of the venison recipes I've tried from any of the game cookbooks we own. The sweet and gamy tastes combined nicely, mellowing each other. And I was able to control the doneness of the meat better cut into tenders than when I've tried to roast a whole shoulder in the past.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Because my head is large and stuffed with Useless Facts, I feel compelled to point out that some guy out west died of Mad ~~Cow~~ Deer Disease a while back, but then again he was basically living on venison, so once in a while's probably about as safe as properly-provenanced beef, I suppose... :)

(BTW, still trying to clear schedule enough to settle in with your ms. -- have I completely lost you with c7, or are you as buried in Life Stuff as I've been? :) )

I've been buried, but thank you for reminding me. I can bring some beta-reading with me to Ann Arbor this weekend.

Hunted venison is probably safer than beef, frankly--more free-range is usually better. I would have to double-check with Nameseeker, but am pretty sure that prion diseases mostly come from doing screwy things with feed. Besides, if I never ate any food that had once made someone sick... I wouldn't eat, I guess. My general rule is to A) avoid fake food and B) take reasonable precautions. I then eat red meat, sushi, fresh-ground peanut butter, and chocolate mousse without quibbling.

I think the dude in question was hunting, though -- wish I could remember where I read about it, looking over last year's booklist it could have been in the Omnivore's Dilemna or The scavenger's guide to haute cuisine -- Crap, I read too much, I'm surprised I remember anything about anything at all... :)

I'm not freaked out, honestly. Like I said, some of everything will make you sick. And prion diseases are scary, but not common. I take a bigger risk every time I get in my car and drive to work. And probably the same or greater risk when I buy meat and vegetables at the store.

yum. please pack in dry ice and ship to philadelphia. thanks.

I'd be happy to if I had extra. :)

I haven't had good luck roasting venison either. Did you just saute it in the marinade and its own fat, or did you add some more olive oil or something at that point? Though I guess if there was a lot to start with.

The one time I tried sauteing venison -- in Swansea, so a long time ago -- I treated it just like lamb, but it turned out that my idea of "medium" and

rysmiel's were sufficiently different that I had to return his to the pan, and it went all peculiar in the way proteins sometimes do when heating is discontinuous.

Just in the marinade, and I suppose whatever fat I wasn't able to get rid of. These were thin little tenders, so I don't think I went for more than a minute a side, less for some of the smaller ones. But I was going for medium rare, as I like my red meat red and Nameseeker is irritated that I want to cook it at all.

Actually, a lot of very-low-fat game meats go wonky if you try to cook them to medium at all. Ostrich is another one; it turns into leather.

You can roast venison, but I've seen it work best with a good cut that's not actually secretly several little cuts (which is to say, not shoulder). Unfortunately, those are rarely the cuts that hunters give away, nor the ones we can afford from farms. We did have a very good venison roast at our wedding, though of course we didn't actually prepare that one ourselves.

Hello, All! I'm the wife of an avid hunter, so I not only cook venison, but butcher it as well. Butchering your own not only saves money, but allows me to take care to trim the meat and I know exactly what is going into it, and what is being thrown away! I've been eating venison since I was a baby in Northern Vermont, and I never liked it until I learned a few "secrets" to preparing it correctly.

In response to a previous post...the fat and sinew of the venison are really what give it that "gamey" taste that many people don't like. My husband and I learned this from butchering videos, and also from a local hunting Guru that we are friends with who is affectionately known as "The Legend" around town. I am very careful to trim ALL the fat and silvery sinew, and leave only beautiful red meat. We also age our deer for 10-14 days in a large refrigerator, but I realize that unless you live in a very cold climate, or have a friend who owns a large apple farm and has a HUGE drive in commercial freezer (like we do) this is not feesible for many to do. It is a helpful step, but not a necessary step.

The poster who asked if you cook the deer in its own fat, I would give a resounding "NO!" unless you LIKE a real gamey taste. No one in my family (myself included) likes that taste, so I am very careful to trim the meat. It's a painstaking step, but well worth it when your non-venison eating friends rave about your roast, and are converted to game meat because of your hard work and effort! That is what I am most proud of! If you want to use fat, use butter or olive oil...that is all I use when I cook, and my venison turns out delicious every time. I cook roasts the same way I cook beef roasts...I'm a slow cooker fan, and use my favorite beef Pot Roast recipe.

Also, be sure to rinse the meat off before cooking to get rid of and blood or stray hairs...a valuable step I learned from watching Shemaine Nugent (wife of rocker Ted Nugent) do a cooking segment on Spirit of the Wild, Ted's hunting show on the Outdoor Channel.

I cook venison like any comparable cut of beef. I find that doe meat is more tender simply because male hormones tend to make the meat tougher. This is only my humble opinion. I marinade everything, and I find that we enjoy grilling our venison most, second only to sauteing in butter on the stove.

Thanks for letting me share my "unprofessional" opinions with all of you! Good luck to all in your venison cooking adventures! My husband just returned from the first day of muzzleloader with fresh backstraps to cook up (he was triumphant on the hunt!!) so I'll be going to cook now!

You can save some money by doing your own butchering, but be careful so that you don't become part of the meat.

Marinated Bambi Shoulder

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