ilikefood

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Some members of my family do not eat pork because they are Seventh Day Adventists. I will have to check about the use of powdered milk with the sausages. My family members do not have an issue with eating gun-shot deer -- they eat venison on a regular basis. Thanks for the link to Len Poli's website. There is a lot of great information there. I really like the science behind the primary bind with the meat proteins. HKDave - Thank you so much for the Hunter, Angler, Gardner, Cook recipe and website. I think I have found a new favorite website! I will give a report on how the sausage making goes tomorrow, Sunday. Thanks again!

Hello All: I was recently appointed my family's sausage maker. My family had a good deer hunt this year and so there are seven deer to process this weekend. The shoulder and older deer will be made into sausage. We will probably make about 150 lbs. of venison sausage. However, due to religious reasons, pork cannot be used in the sausages. As of right now, I intend to use beef fat in lieu of pork fat. Does anyone have any suggestions how to make a tasty, juicy venison-beef sausage? I will probably add more liquid than usual and if I make any smoked sausages, I will add a good amount of powdered milk. Is there anything else I can do to make a good sausage? Lastly, any good recipes? I made the smoked venison sausage recipe in Charcuterie and will try the recipe again this weekend with beef fat. Thank you in advance! David

Looks really good. Cheeks have become my new favourite cut of meat this year, beef or pork have never been anything short of spectacular when I've cooked them. I agree. I love cheek meat. Although I have never had pork cheek, I assume it would be heavenly.

Thanks everyone for your input! I will pass this information onto my friend. He will probably be disappointed to hear that giant pumpkins are difficult if not impossible to turn into something edible. Although he will probably try to eat them anyways.

Hello: A friend of mine grows giant pumpkins for a contest and has a pumpkin around 300 lbs and one in the 200 lb range this year. He was wondering if there are any good recipes specifically for giant pumpkin. From what I understand (as I have never tried cooking with a giant pumpkin), giant pumpkins do not have a lot of flavor probably due to the large amount of water they are fed to grow to ridiculous sizes. Would a pumpkin soup work for this massive fruit? Any recipes or ideas to help my friend eat through 500 lbs of orange squash? Thanks!

Thanks runwestierun for the recipe! It sounds really good. I had a wild rice cold salad for the first time this spring and it was very good, but your recipe sounds better.

I would not cook "regular" rice and wild rice together. However, the two grains may cook in a similar amount of time if the wild rice is the same size or smaller than the regular rice (wild rice mixes from the store use small wild rice grains that can cook in the same amount of time as the other rice/grains). So, if your wild rice is the same size/smaller than your regular rice, then it might be OK for cooking times. Flavor combination is another matter.

Sorry it has taken so long to post a wild rice recipe. But here is one for Mahnomin Porridge from Hell's Kitchen in Minneapolis, MN. I have not made the recipe yet, but I have heard very good things about the actual dish served at the restaurant. The link to the recipe: Mahnomin Porridge Does anyone else have good wild rice recipes? The wild rice harvesting season will be starting in about 2-4 weeks. I will probably need more recipes to utilize the new harvest. Thanks! - David

Here are the pictures. This is the 2009 harvest, next to a beer can to show the size. There is about five pounds in the bag. This picture also represents the color of the wild rice the best: Close up of 2009 wild rice: 2007 wild rice: 2004 wild rice (I have no idea why I still have this from 2004, but oh well, it should still be good):

I like to add cooked wild rice to soups. Most common soups are chicken and cream of chicken. I add some sherry to the cream of chicken wild rice soup. I would imagine wild rice would go good with any soup to replace barley or any other grain. In short, yes there is a difference. The biggest difference, in my opinion, is the color. Generally, commercially harvested wild rice is very black and shiny. This is due to how the commercial processors process the rice. They are able to keep the majority of the black seed coat on the grain. Also, the "wild" rice from commercial processors can be breed to be uniform size and harvested all at one time, so the sizes are usually more consistent. The grains are also graded by size and sold that way, which is why you can find small grained "wild" rice in rice mixes (so the "wild" rice cooks at the same rate as the white/brown/or other grains in the mix) and why you can buy just plain "wild" rice that is very long. True wild rice usually is less black and more whiteish/gray. I believe this is due to the processing. When I go wild ricing, I send the rice to a local family that uses homemade machines to process the wild rice in small batches. Since the rice from each lake and stream can be different, I think it is hard for the small processors to make all of the rice consistent and inadvertently remove a lot more of the black seed coat than commercial processors do. Since I do not eat a lot of commercially grown "wild" rice, I cannot comment on the taste differences between wild rice harvested in the wild and commercially grown "wild" rice. I will quickly post a couple pictures of wild rice from last year (2009) and from other years to show the difference in color. Also, the color difference may be due to the location of harvest on the water (river rice vs. lake/paddy rice) and the location of the lake/river in Wisconsin. Hope this helps! David

I second the Shaker lemon pie - it is indeed very tasty. Since it uses the whole lemon, including the rind, it has a texture similar to marmalade but with a lemony taste.

Perhaps an apple that bakes up well - i.e., not turning mushy - would be a good choice. I agree. Pick an apple that you would use for cooking such as pie, if you are going to grill it, or an apple for sauce if you are going to sauce it after smoking.

I have made grilled apples a few times and I love them. Although they are not "smoked" they do get some smoke being on the grill while they cook, maybe 15 to 20 minutes (?). I then slice, and toss with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon to have something like a grilled apple pie. It is very good. I would assume smoked apples and then turned into a sauce would be good, just make sure you don't over smoke them. As mentioned, I believe smoked apple sauce would taste wonderful with pork, especially grilled pork chops.

Glad to hear that recipe worked out well. I will definitely have to try that one out now.

I agree, that recipe looks interesting and also looks really good. I will have to bookmark that page so I can make it some day. If you make that recipe, you will have to tell us how it turns out.

Shoulders seems to be more tough than other parts of an animal. I have never eaten venison shoulder as a steak, e.g. cooked at a high temperature for a shorter amount of time, I usually debone and save the meat for making sausage. Other hunters just grind the meat and use in place of hamburger. That said, if you want to keep it as a steak I would suggest some marinade to make it more tender. You could also try to braise the shoulder. Most loins are great cut into steaks and then grilled quickly, but they have less connective tissue and thus easier to chew than shoulder. Also, venison fat is usually thought to have poor flavor so many people trim the fat off. I think a braise with red wine and some juniper or rosemary would taste good.

Hello: I am currently brining a turkey breast to smoke. I am using the herb-brined smoked turkey breast recipe from Charcuterie on page 80. Since only my wife and I will be eating the turkey, what can be done with the leftovers? Do they reheat well? Eaten cold like a deli sandwich? Any great ideas or suggestions for 6+ lbs of leftover smoked turkey meat? Also, with the thighs and one leg (the other leg will be smoked with the breast) I plan to make sausage. Any thoughts on the turkey sausage with dried tart cherries from Charcuterie on p. 132? I may substitute dried cranberries for the cherries if I use this recipe because I have those in the house. Any other recipe I should look at? Thanks! David

Leinenkugels is always a good choice. I grew up in Northern Wisconsin and now live in Western Wisconsin. I don't think most people "pair" brats with poaching/boiling beer. It seems you poach/boil your brats with what ever beer is in the fridge. Many times that beer is Leinenkugels Original. Other potential suspects include Miller, Pabst Blue Ribbon (a personal favorite), Budweiser.

All of those sausages look wonderful!! I wish I could have tried them Great job!

Yes, the fat will get hard and it will get darker in color. The meat will feel leathery and get very dark. If your refrigerator stays at the right temperature, you should have no problem aging the meat for 21 days. If the meat is kept on a wire rack so there is good air flow around the entire roast, you don't need to flip the meat. You could flip the roast if you wish, it shouldn't hurt anything but it also may not help.

My wife and I went to the Hmong International Market on Saturday. We both enjoyed it a lot but I really loved the feel and the different vendors. It reminded me of my time in Southern China, but with different vendors. I purchased some longans and baby bananas. Unfortunately, they didn't have any lychee. I wonder if they will sell lychee during a different time of year? As for the food court, I had the papaya salad from Nyob Zoo and really enjoyed it. I couldn't finish it all so I took it home. My wife, who is less adventurous, had some egg rolls that she thought were very good. She also tried by papaya salad and enjoyed it. We both want to go back and look some more and eat more of the great (and cheap) food. Thank you for opening our eyes to this great market in St. Paul!

I may go to the Hmong market on Saturday with my wife and our friends, who are not as adventurous as I am when it comes to eating. Any suggestions for a few white folks? Also, I enjoy Cantonese food (spent time near Guangzhou) is there any food I should look for? Any particular vendor/restaurant? Thanks!

Thanks for the info! I will have to check it out

I read a recipe that uses a dry rub on a steak made from ground dried porcini mushrooms and rosemary. I haven't tried it myself, but it does sound good.

I usually plan backwards for a nice dinner of fried rice. I like to give the rice a day in the fridge to cool down and make it easier to separate and cook with the following day. So if I want fried rice on Tuesday, I will make rice and beans or a stir fry on Monday.