sjemac

Alberta actually. No. One deer would never last an entire year. We got through 4-5 a year and this year we got a moose so that will replace more than a couple of deer. Since I've got this one labeled and put in a special spot in the freezer I will only be posting pics and recipes from this specific deer here. Since he was so cleanly killed (I personally hate the word harvested) nearly all of the usable parts are there to be cooked.

No squirrels, but we do get these in our back yards from time to time. They really don't go for ganache.

Most of the meat we eat in our house is game. I'm blessed to live in an area of the world possessing a variety and abundance of game. Moose, deer, bear, ducks, geese, pheasant, grouse, rabbit and hare can all be found in my freezer and a trip to the coast every summer gets us a few hundred pounds of salmon and halibut. Other than the occasional chicken or pork cuts we buy VERY little meat. Over the last 12 years I have killed and processed 60+ big game animals for our food and literally thousands of waterfowl, gamebirds and small game. I've learned a lot about butchering them and cooking them, including utilizing charcuterie and sous vide in their preparation. I thought it might be interesting for some to follow a single deer from the field through processing to the dishes it ends up in throughout the year. I won't show or talk about every single dish since a lot of it ends up being eaten as hamburgers or pretty pedestrian stews and stirfys but I will try to highlight some of the unique or special recipes I make with it. PS. This is not meant to be a back and forth on the morals, need or ethics of hunting (lots of other places to duke that out) but to merely talk about one animal from a culinary point of view. Some of the initial pictures may be a little graphic for some but I've tried to tone it down as much as possible. Anyway. Here's the product in the raw form. A young buck I shot in the back country west of my home. The land is designated as Forestry zone, so there are no homes or crops allowed and only limited grazing by cattle permitted. Some logging takes place but there are few roads. This deer is about as free range as any meat can get. I was able to get a steady and clear shot and put the bullet between his nostrils into the brain. A knife thrust to the heart sped him along and helped to bleed him out. The boys helped in the cleaning. After hanging by the pelvis with the hide on for 20 days at about 2-4 degrees C this was the state the deer was in. Normally I save the ribs off of younger deer but on the ones I hang, the rib meat is quite thin and dries out quickly. Starting the hide from the rear -- note the fat deposits. The deer completely skinned out. Again, note the fat layer on the outside. With sharp knife, all the outer fat is carefully shaved off of the meat, leaving the wide flat muscles coming off of the shoulder available for stir fry and fajita cuts. Front legs removed, exposing back loins. Spine and rib cage is all that is left. A front quarter, ready for boning out. With wild game we NEVER use cuts like those done for beef, but instead separate out all the individual muscle groups and package according to whether they are grilled, braised or ground. The long bones are cracked, roasted and used for stock making. A sampling of the cuts we get. Clockwise from top right: Neck meat (stews), Top Sirloin (grilling and one of the best cuts from the animal), Tricep (stews and braising), two Under Blade cuts (perfect for fajitas), and two heels (calf muscle) with the achilles tendons attached to add body to the liquids they are braised in. Everything cut wrapped, boxed and ready to freeze. Weighed 57 lbs of nearly boneless (fatless and silverskinless)meat (we keep the shanks on the bone). By comparison, the cow moose we got yielded 285 lbs of boneless meat so one moose equals 5 deer in terms of meat yield. The first two dishes (other than the fresh liver eaten the day after the hunt): Venison Bibimbap: Tenderloins in a balsamic orange sauce with stuffed potato and beet puree (bad pic). The tenderloins weren't aged but removed the day of killing -- they tend to dry into jerky if left to hang at all.

-20°F -20°F -23°F -25°F -22°F is our forecast for the next 5 days. Add in 10 to 15 mph winds that will give us windchill temps from -40 to -50 F and it's just about perfect for flash freezing stuff up here. I do most of my stock and demiglace making at this time of year for the rapid cooling factor. I put a bottle of apple wine on the deck to chill the other night and left it for about 25 mins -- about 15 minutes too long. We had alcoholic apple slurpees with our dinner.

Why do you prefer the females? Do you taste a difference? ← The females contain the coral or unfertilized roe. It is great stuff to use in sauces and dips or -- as I most commonly eat it -- simply picked from the cooked lobster, mashed with a little butter, salt and pepper and spread on toast. Then again, I use all the green tamale and the white fat too. Stuck in Alberta till summer, the best price I will get is about 9.99 at the Asian markets.

There is a law in Maine prohibiting the harvesting of large female lobsters as they are considered brood stock for this fishery. Legislation is being prepared to enact similar laws in other New England states. I'm sure they will eventually pass a law in that regards here too. Right now, you only have to throw females back that actually have the roe on their tail. Until that day, I buy the girls.

As Kerry Beal pointed out, going sv, you'd not be cooking the meat scraps to "cracklins". To do that requires the rendering to have reached frying temperatures (150C+ ?), whereas limiting the rendering temperature to below 100C prevents that. Frying those bits of meat is going to flavour the rendered fat. And I think Keller would NOT want that flavour in his lard ... My expectation is that choosing sv (or adding water to the starting brew, whether blitzed or not) is done with the intention of preventing "frying" and flavouring... The added-water route allows things to be inadvertently speeded up (higher temperature) once the water has evaporated/boiled off. Natch sv prevents that. Is this the first use of sv to deliberately prevent flavouring? ← I've since tried it with diced pork fat and while yo do not get the cracklins from the bag, they crisp up quite nicely in a frying pan afterward which is what I meant originally. The first use of sv in rendering fat is what I think you mean -- correct me if wrong. I would say that is part of the reason. The main reason -- for Keller -- may be that it effectively renders fat without requiring a lot of attention during the rendering process and doesn't take up oven and burner space.

I think that's because salt/sodium is somewhat necessary to tasting glutamates/glutamic acid. ← That is true. Also a salt solution outside of food will initiate osmotic movement of water to equalize the concentrations of sodium inside and outside of the cells of the food being cooked. This movement of water and ions takes flavor compounds with it. So a stock lightly salted at the outset could have a better flavor at the end than one not salted. I, myself, never salt my stock since I never really know what their end use will be. Some will be used as is for soup. Others will be reduced until they have the consistency of syrup. Thus, I hold off of the salt as much as possible until the end use has been decided.

Yep. Larger lobsters are not tougher but get that way due to overcooking (a 6 pounder DOESN'T take twice the time of a 3 pounder). They are easier to get the meat out of. They provide more meat since you can get the meat out of the legs. In Canada, the really big ones are also often a lot cheaper than the 2 pounders. I buy the big boys (actually girls) when they are on sale and prefer them to the smaller lobsters.

Hello 1985 called. It wants its meal back!!! Didn't photograph well and is a little retro but it tasted so good and sometimes we've got to go back to the tacky "classics". Besides, I was cleaning out the fridge and nothing really fit anyway. I had venison (white tailed deer) tenderloins in a balsamic orange sauce with balsamic beet puree, steamed green beans and a stuffed baked potato with monterry jack cheese, green onion and smoked paprika. A snack later. Not something typically served in S California or NYC I'm willing to bet. It's -35 degrees celsius here tonight so it's a great night for stock making (the steam warms and humidifies the house) my snack is a by product of that. Roasted moose marrow on toast. Again it doesn't LOOK great but it tastes amazing.

I confit wild ducks and geese quite often. With geese I use the legs only but with small ducks (like the wigeon pictured below with Canada goose legs) I use the whole duck. The breast ends up slightly drier than the legs but this can be rectified by breaking it up and mixing a bit of the duck fat with it. Canada goose makes a fine prosciutto BTW. VERY dark however.

And what is meant by sea level saltiness? Is there a certain ratio of salt to water? ← For me it's when it tastes like sea water. But then having grown up on a coastal island that flavor is very familiar to me.

Part of winning the Next Iron Chef show probably included Symons getting some sort of guaranteed contract with FN. This (the 10 episode DI slot) probably fulfilled their obligation to him. I would expect he will now fade away.

[Host's note: To avoid an excessive load on our servers this topic has been split. The discussion continues from here] Favorites: Brown Bourdain Batali Ramsey (too over the top on the Yank version of Kitchen Nightmares though) Meh!: Nigella (her "quick n' easy" show turned me off) Oliver (getting too gimmicky) Dislike: Giada (too much of that grimace/smile/gaping maw) Paula Dean (she's just so folksy you wanna puke and her cooking kind of nauseates me to look at) Emeril (that ship has long sailed) That Guy Guy from the diners show. Want to shoot the TV: Rachel Ray (I cheer for her to cut herself)

A few years late but:

Buy large bone in shoulder and blade roasts in pork and beef. They are cheaper by far than the individual cuts or roasts from the loins and legs. Within those roasts are prime grilling muscle groups, braising muscle groups and trim that is great for soups. For instance with a large blade roast you get the muscles on the inside of the blade which are great grilling steaks and the tougher muscles on the outside for braising, pot roasts etc. The bones can then be used for stocks and soups. Blade and shoulder cuts are normally half the price of prime cuts even though a blade cut still contains some of the muscle groups that command the premium prices.

Like Keller, I salt all my discardable cooking liquids (except dried beans) to sea level saltiness whether it be for blanching vegetables or cooking pasta and potatoes. I find that the color sets better in the salted vegetables, the pasta is nearly flavorsome enough to eat plain and that potatoes blanched this way develop a better crust on pan roasting. The salt penetrates and the flavours of all of the above seem more rounded. I tradeoff by using less salt in the sauces that may go with the above. Lobster and crabs are also cooked in sea-like salt water as well as being shocked in an ice bath of salted water. They maintain their juices better than those cooked/shocked in fresh water. I also salt any meats I plan on grilling or searing at least an hour to a couple of days before cooking. More for crust development and flavor than juice retention. Chickens, lean pork and turkeys I always brine before roasting. Brining does definitely aid in juice retention during cooking. Stocks and sauces of course never get salted until just before service.

Rendering fat by sous vide. I used Keller's method from under pressure. Results can be seen HERE. I like this method as it leaves a layer of gelled liquid at the bottom that can be used to fortify stocks and sauces. If I was rendering pork fat by SV, I would cut it into strips instead of grinding so that I could get the cracklins. I think grinding maximizes the yield though..

Rendering by Sous vide: Ground beef fat. This was brisket trim so there was quite a bit of meat in it. Fat vac packed. In the immersion circulator for 1.5 hours at 85 degrees Celsius. The liquified and strained fat. Note the layer of liquid at the bottom. This liquid would normally evaporate in the stove top or oven method. Here is the refigerated, solidified beef fat with the liquid now a layer of easily removed gel at the bottom. The gel is frozen for adding to beef or game sauces that might need a little more mouth feel. The fat was quite beefy in flavor, due to the higher amount of meat than I would usually use but since this batch will be used to confit moose shank meat, the flavor will be a complement. The leftover meat/fat/sinew can be browned and used to create a quick stock (mine was fed to a very appreciative Labrador). I think if I used this method with pork fat I would dice it instead of grind it so that I would have some wonderful little nuggets to crisp up and salt as a snack afterward.

Fire 'em in the pan afterwards. MMMMMMM

The Thomas Keller Sous Vide book has a method of rendering fat using sous vide that postively keeps the fat from over heating or browning. I'll be trying it with beef fat tonight. Pretty basic: Grind, vac pack and heat in water bath. Strain and cool. (Sorry I don't have the book with me so the specifics are missing)

Venison Bibimbap: Watercress, carrots, Mushrooms, green onions, kimchi, bean sprouts, venison flank marinated in Bulgogi marinade, Ngo Om and korean bean paste. Put together -- Raw egg yolk hidden under bean paste.