Venesin recipes

Hunting season is upon us, and in honor of this hobby I wanted to take a moment to discuss using its bounty. If you are lucky enough to have a hunter who can process their own meat this hobby may actually pay for itself, if not consider this part of your entertainment budget for the month. Either way, limiting your loss by using the meat is a win-win situation. Cooking with venison is a bit of a challenge because of its low fat content. If your hunter is planning on making burger out of the meat, be sure to throw in some fat (yes, you read that right) when processing to make it cook better later. I buy the cheap fatty hamburger in the tubes when it goes on sale and ask my hubby to mix the wild meat 1/2 and 1/2 with the cheap burger. This helps make the meat more palatable for those who are not used to it, plus the fat from the hamburger helps compensate for the lean venison. Here are a few more cooking tips to help you prepare your new bounty.

1. Do not expect this meat to taste like beef, its not beef.
2. Wild meat will have a bit of a wild taste to it no matter what. The extent of how much of the taste it retains depends on a few things. Here are a few things you have control over that will affect the taste of your meat - First the meat needs to be handled properly when killed, be sure your hunter knows how to do this. I am not an expert, so the library may be the best resource for this. Second, when they trim the meat, make sure they cut all of the white off they can.
3. When using venison burger, you want to use it in recipes where the meat is not the dominant flavor. A good example of this is chili or stew. Because of the mix of flavors and volume of spices added, the wild taste doesn't seem to be noticed as much.
4. Stick with recipes that involve lots of spices. I have even been known to make hamburgers of it, but only after adding onion soup, worshtishire sauce, egg and garlic.
5. If preparing filets, consider soaking in a marinade overnight and/or wrapping in bacon. The bacon fat will help with the leanness of the meat.
6. If you are still not "feeling it", consider having the meat turned into jerky, summer sausage, or brats at a butcher shop. You drop off the meat, they add the spices and do the curing and you simply pay by the pound for the processing.

Pic pulled from Archery talk