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We're going to be the proud recipients of a venison roast in the next couple of days and rigorist is kind of baffled about the best way to cook it. Anyone have any suggestions? Me, I've never cooked :bambi:

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I have no idea but I'd really like to try it. As long as it's wild Bambi, not farmed Bambi.

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I've always heard that venison should either be slow cooked or cooked extremely fast. Apparently anything in between will result in very tough meat.

My favorite method is to soak the meat in buttermilk for a day. Cover it in buttermilk, and about 8 hours later pour it off and replace it with fresh buttermilk. The next day rinse it off and pat it dry. Season it with pepper and any other spices you like, but do not salt it until it is fully cooked. Sear the meat all around and then put it in a slow cooker. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.

This method makes an excellent stew, but it should work for an entire roast also. For the stew; add root vegetables (i.e. carrots, potatoes, onions, et cetera) and cover the whole thing with broth. Beef or vegetable broth will do, but a venison broth would be better. Toward the end you can add a little bit of a roux made with slightly browned flour to thicken the stew.

Edited fo spelink erroar.

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This recipe looks solid. Check the note at the bottom of the recipe for how to do it with a whole roast rather than one cut into pieces.

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We always ate Bambi as ground meat or as sausage, so roasts are out of my experience. Braising is probably a good way to go, though. Let us know how it turns out!

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Place that hunk of Bambi in the crockpot with some carrots and potatoes, add water until potatoes and carrots and at least half of that hunk of dead animal is covered. Cook on high for at least 6 hours. Then discard carrots and potatoes and liquid because they'll taste gamey as hell, but the roast won't.

Wait, that was the recipe for pronghorn roast. Nevermind.

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I know the Fat Ladies have a recipe for venison cooked in hard cider, but my book is at home.

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toughness is highly Dependant on the cut of meat, and how well it was aged. and then some animal are just tougher than others. A couple year old doe is much more table friendly than a 6 year old buck

gameness depends a lot on how the animal was handled after death, a clean kill with a fast field dressing and a quick cool down give you the best results. proper draining of blood and rinsing off the animal is important as blood seems make meat taste off fast. fat in wild game can contain a lot of gamy flavors, so trimming off any fat before cooking can help.


generally if your frying or grilling, don't cook venison any more than medium or it will be shoe leather tough. for a roast, keep it moist, a slow cooker works great this way. Wrapping a roast in pork fat, and then a heavy layer of tinfoil can help a lot too.


slow cooked stews are always good. if you have a rather gamy animal, learning how to cook various curries and chillies is handy, as the spices hide the flavour of the meat.

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Deer: Hang Time | Field & Stream


Deer: Hang Time

Good venison comes to those who wait awhile.
Article by Field & Stream Online Editors. Uploaded on January 11, 2006



There are some persistent myths about aging venison that may cause you to stock your freezer with inferior meat this season. I'm sure you've heard them: Deer meat can't be aged like beef, because it dries out if left hanging. Or: Aging is simply "controlled rot," and why let good venison rot? And: You only need to hang deer a day or two for tender meat, so any longer is a waste of time.

None of this is true. To understand why, and to find out the best methods to age venison, we have to turn to science.

A Chemistry Lesson
Despite its different taste and lower levels of fat, venison is very similar to beef. It contains the same basic enzymes, particularly lactic acid, and goes through similar changes after the animal dies.

First, the muscles go into rigor mortis, a stiffening lasting at most 24 hours. Butchering a deer during rigor mortis is one of the worst things you can do. It can cause a phenomenon called shortening, where the muscles contract and remain tougher than if butchering took place a day later.

Proper aging begins as soon as rigor mortis ends-and this process is definitely not controlled rot. Rot is zillions of bacteria eating the muscle cells, their waste products creating the familiar stench of decaying flesh. Bacteria attack only after meat is exposed to the air, and bacterial rot is accelerated by higher temperatures. It doesn't happen at all if the meat is frozen. To properly age your deer, you must keep it at temperatures above freezing and below about 40 degrees. This holds bacteria (and rot) at bay, allowing natural enzymes to do their work.

Venison, Restaurants, and Supermodels
Meat is made up of long muscle cells connected by a fairly tough substance called collagen (the same stuff plastic surgeons inject into the lips of supermodels to make those lips full and "pouty"). Collagen causes most meat toughness. Young animals have little of it between their muscle cells, but as an animal gets older, more develops. Natural enzymes break down this intercellular collagen as meat is aged, so the longer it hangs, the more tender it becomes. (Commercial meat tenderizers, such as papaya juice, do the same job-but natural aging is more flavorful.) This is why beef served in fine restaurants is aged a couple of weeks or more. It's also the reason a prime restaurant T-bone costs so much; it takes money to cool a large aging room.

Supermarket beef is aged perhaps two to three days. This isn't bad, since beef-or a deer-hung that long does age slightly. But neither becomes as tender or flavorful as after a week or more.

Aging at Home
Maintaining a consistent temperature is the main problem with home-aging venison. I live in Montana, where outside temperatures during the firearms season normally range from around 20 at night to 40 during the day. My garage provides some protection against cold and sunlight, so deer that I hang there won't usually warm to more than 40 degrees and won't freeze at night. If your weather isn't ideal, you can home-age venison in a spare refrigerator. Skin the quarters and bone-out other large sections of meat. The quarters from a typical deer (or even two) will fit in an average-size refrigerator.

Young deer don't have much collagen, so aging for a couple of days is plenty. Older bucks benefit most from the extended period, and many hunters who do it properly actually prefer the taste of mature bucks. After aging, the steaks are as tender as a young doe's-but with a rich flavor reminiscent of the best restaurant beef.

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The best venison I ever had was aged 3-4 days at 50+ degrees hanging upside down from my shed rafters in Wyoming.

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I got some elk meat Saturday... what the hell do I do with it?

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I want some Impala meat.

Where is Joe P. when you need him?

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What, you think there are impala just grazing the gardens of Johannesburg? Or kudu?

Or maybe you think the fridges at Woolworths and Pick 'n Pay are well-stocked with aged cuts of game? More likely, but still not actually the case. Satheffricans eat cow, sheep and pig like the rest of the developed world. (Kenyans eat goat, but that's another story.)

If I find some I'll email it to you.

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Here's an Impala with some serious meats on it.

http://image.superchevy.com/f/images..._side_view.jpg

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Ha. Don't give me that.

You guys have guns.
You guys have impalas.
You have overnight shipping.

Do the math.

Where's my impala?!

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Here it is:

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Funny looking impala. :shrug:

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My sister offered me venison steaks yesterday. Apparently my brother-in-law bagged two deer this year and still has the license for a third. Not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I am intrigued.

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My Dad used to grill venison steaks. His secret was to spread apple slices all over the top of them while grilling. That apparently removed the harshest of the gaminess. Apparently it worked, because they were fantastic. Just watch out for the bones when eating (or even handling), because the cut edges can be extremely sharp.

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...a traditional English holiday/Christmas dinner. I was thinking about doing something like this for New Year's, but can't figure anything out beyond roast goose and some type of pudding (figgy?).

Some of my searches haven't really yielded anything I would consider authentic or interesting. I'm looking for perhaps something out of the Victorian Age or something.....

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Thank you, liv, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Absolutely perfect.

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Yay! I'm thinking of taking on that plum pudding myself. It looks damn good.

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I was going to recommend Delia Smith for something more contemporary. I'm not a fan of English desserts, but the Sticky Toffee Pudding on her Christmas special might convert me. Couldn't narrow it to just English Christmas, but they should be in there if anywhere.

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Has anyone ever cooked whole wheat pasta and have it end up being something tasty? I had a Kashi microwave lunch that had whole wheat pasta in it and it was really yummy, so I know the stuff can actually taste good, I just don't know how to make it happen.