How do you prepare your venison?

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tomhenry

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I'm thinking about picking up the sport again but never really liked any part of the deer except the tenderloins.

I'm looking at jerky but, other than that, the rest of the meat is gamey. Ground, etc, just can't get rid of the gamey flavor.

What do you do with your venison? I've read how that some hunters take what they want and then give the rest to a shelter or some such.
 
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When I married my wife she was not into the taste of wild game. She started soaking whatever meat,Venison,duck or goose the day before she cooked it in buttermilk. Then before she cooked it she put it under the cold water faucet and cleaned out most of the taste. It will remove most of the gamey taste anyway. On the venison hamburger we would use 50% venison and 50% pork butts and that worked fine for her.
 
The key to cooking venison is to not over cook it. There is no fat to speak of and it will dry out quickly. You can try mixing burger with some ground pork butt. In addition to the jerky you mentioned I’m sure you’d like Sumer sausage and Italian sausage. I use venison for anything that beef is traditionally used for. I never understood the term gamey taste. You can grill the burgers and chops/steaks with some Montreal steak seasoning. You can even throw them in air fryer for 5min. I use burger for tacos and meatballs as well. Melt some mozzarella cheese on steak with spaghetti sauce and have venison parmigiana. The trick is to use your imagination and make sure you trim steaks good. There is sinue (silver connective tissues) that can be unpleasant and tough if not removed.
 
I get flank, ground and links from a hunter friend. It's very lean so I stew it up. Mucho yum. Joe
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Older bucks can be a bit gamey. Younger deer, especially those that lived near farmland, are great. I love neck roasts, shanks and shoulder meat that’s slow cooked with lots of onions. I like to toss in a pack of Lipton Onion soup mix.

The football shaped Sirloin roasts from the hinds are good smoked, but you need to be careful not to over cook them. The rest of the hind quarters can be a bit dry, so I prefer to have that ground with about 15% beef fat. It’s excellent for burgers, tacos and chili.
 
Was “ the cook” at our hunt club naturally we had lots of venison. Always soaked it over night covered in cheap cola. Ground was mixed with fresh pork from local farmer, have to admit it was excellent. Roasts or larger pieces were cooked in crock pot on low for about 4-6 hours with garlic, onion carrots celery and potatoes, wish had some…
 
As posted, shoot a young one, cool it down fast as you can.
I know folks in S Texas who had an Ice House preselected and would take harvested deer there as fast as the Law Allowed.
Or a little faster. It can be a little on the warm side in Tejas during Deer Season.
 
The gameyness comes from how you prepare the carcass. Skin it out ASAP. if it's cold enough you can let it hang a few days but I usually butcher it up early. If you like gamey flavor, let it hang for a week in the skin. That will rot er up nicely. If a butcher shop treated their meat that way, they'd be shut down.
Young venison is as tender as veal, just darker. But I've had old bucks that were not gamey or tough, and these were Pa acorn fed mountain deer living nowhere near corn or hay fields.
Any more I save the fish and cut up everything else for jerky and grind the rest into hamburger. The burger gets used for chili, taco meat, meatballs etc. Sometimes I'll save the backstraps for chops or Sautee 3" sections with onions and mushrooms and then reduce with a red wine to make a sauce. Don't over cook, it still cooks when removed from the heat so if you want medium rare, take it off when it's rare. I'll also do an entire haunch of a young deer on occasion in my Brinkman charcoal smoker. Baste it with port and lay some fat bacon straps on top. Converted a vegetarian with that one.
And with all this except the jerky, avoid salt while cooking, it tends to dry out the meat, so use salt at the end of cooking.

John
 
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My favorite easy way to fix the the tougher parts is to cook in crockpot for hours on low with several bay leaves and some sage. When tender mix it up with a package of Stovetop dressing. Use the water from cooking for the liquid.
 
I think a lot depends on what it was feeding on. Grass fed deer, shot out of a hay field, have very little "gamy" flavor.
I shoot 3 or 4 a season and don't make jerky. Chops, roasts, stew meat, burger and kebob meat. I will make some specialty sausage on occasion, but recently casings have risen in cost and I toss more than I use as I only make 10-15 lbs.
 
Deer are foraging animals subsisting on just about any available shrubbery, weeds, crops, even tree bark. The diet will have a great effect on the animal's flavor. Here in Colorado we have mule deer that live most of the year on sage brush and rabbit bush, and these do not compare with deer around alfalfa, sugar beet, corn, barley, or other crops.

Steaks, chops, roasts are marinated overnight in the refrigerator in Italian salad dressing (vinegar, oil, garlic, spices). Drain, then on to the grill or skillet or pot. The vinegar (acetic acid) acts as a tenderizer while also leaching out residual blood and much of the gamey flavor. The oil penetrates and acts to supplement the low fat content, keeping the meat moist while cooking. The garlic and spices in Italian dressing add very nice flavors that complements just about any game meat.

WalMart offers their Great Value brand Italian dressing in a large bottle (nearly a quart, I think) for about $4, goes a long way.

Ground venison for hamburgers or sausages benefits greatly from added fat content. Pork suet, pork butts, or even cheap hamburger (high fat content) will work very well, and I've used all of those with good results.

Learned this from an old boy in our hunting group many years ago.
 
venison

i have tried several different ways to make it more palatable for my wife and her family. city folks who don't eat wild game.

i started aging mine on ice for a week, have gone as long as 2 weeks. my family doesn't live around here. when getting together with inlaws they always request that we bring a deer roast.

we have converted all of the inlaws except one. no hope for him. he wont eat any meat that doesn't come from the grocery store. he evan turns up his nose on fresh caught fish. go figure.

krs/kenny
 
I liked to take a piece of backstrap and pound it out to 1/4in. or so. Then rub butter and lots of black pepper all over it. Pan fry on med. high heat. Flame with Brandy and serve. Be careful with the flames, I still have some scorch marks on the cabinets over the stove.
 
Am joining the chorus of shoot young one, clean immediately and skin as soon as possible. If needing more than salt/pepper/butter in a cast iron pan, cajun spice dry rub it before frying it med rare in cast iron with butter.

If needing to go high class, marinate in Pete's burgundy marinade over night, then medium rare in cast iron fry pan.

Dr Pete's
 
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