GAME COOKING

      Title: GAME COOKING
  Categories: Game, Info, Jw
       Yield: 1 Text file
  
  
   Venison is the generic term for meat from a large group of related
   grazing animals. It includes caribou, reindeer, deer, moose and elk.
   For all practical purposes it also includes musk oxen, antelope and
   buffalo [bison]. The recipes are generally interchangeable. musk oxen
   and buffalo cuts tend to be more tender as these animals are more
   sedentary by nature.
   
   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.
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