Title: Cooking methods for venison
 Categories: Info, Game, Canadian, Venison, Jw
      Yield: 1 Text file
 
 
  You can do anything with venison that you would beef. Just remember
  that it is drier- less fat, so steaks should be
  marinaded/tenderized/pounded and cooked just to medium, not over-done.
  
  It is important to realize that wild meat can vary in quality and
  toughness, whereas commercial beef is a pretty uniform product.
  Venison factors are:
  
  1- Age and sex of animal. Meat can be as tender and mild as veal in a
  young doe. (And you always get steer meat in a store never bull.
  Castration does make a difference.)
  
  2-Clean kill. If a deer is stalked while it is peacefully grazing and
  dropped dead in its tracks, it will taste far better than an animal
  that has been chased by hounds, then gut shot, then it runs a few
  more miles before collapsing.  The blood is full of adrenaline and
  the acidic by-products of exercise and exertion and the flesh is
  tainted by the torn up organs.
  
  3- Aging and butchering. When I was a kid growing up in Eastern
  Ontario, we went deer hunting in the fall, when it was cool and deer
  were hung to age and tenderize, then butchered at a local abattoir
  that handled beef and pork professionally. We received nicely
  wrapped, properly cut and trimmed frozen packages. It was generally
  pretty good.
  
  Up here caribou is shot all year long and traditionally butchered
  immediately [before it spoils in the summer or freezes solid in the
  winter] And some hunters are more skilled at butchering than
  others... I have been made "gifts" of quarters of caribou that have
  been field frozen with the fur on and wrapped in green garbage bags
  and stored in somebody's back yard for a month or two! I have also
  received superb sausages made by a man who apprenticed as a
  sausage-maker in Germany.
  
  If you know where your meat came from, you will know whether it should
  tenderized or just cooked.
  
  If your steaks are coming from a commercial game farm, they will be
  from a young animal, carefully slaughtered and aged. I would treat
  them the same as any prime beef T-bone. Probably charcoal BBQ'd or
  gas grilled to just medium rare and sprinkled with a little salt and
  pepper AFTER it has been cooked... nothing fancy, no marinades and no
  strong BBQ sauces. That way you will be able to truly taste the
  venison.
  
  For wild meat you may want to marinade first, if it's tough.
  
  **** For extremely gamy meat, try soaking the meat in water for
  several hours to remove any blood, then soak in salted water for
  several hours and thirdly soak the drained meat in milk overnight.
  This helps remove strong odors. [I use skim milk made from powder,
  about half strength for economy.]
  
  After this treatment most meat is quite edible regardless of its age
  and handling. At the very least it can be ground and used in spicy
  spaghetti sauces and chili.
  
  Jim Weller