Venison: It’s What’s (Better) for Dinner
In the interests of being as much of a locavore as possible (definition: someone who consumes only locally grown and raised food – really tough to manage in Michigan in the winter when the farmers’ markets are not operating), and in trying to avoid industrially-raised animal products in general, I don’t eat much conventional beef. I like beef, of course. I’d really like to begin the practice of buying a side of grassfed, free-range beef from a local farm every year, but the lack of a full-size freezer in which to store it is rather preventative.
Enter venison. It’s lower in fat, and contains no growth hormones, chemical pesticides (from chemically treated feeds, the kind feedlot animals eat), or antibiotics. After all, you are what you eat – and in turn, you are what it ate, too. Unlike meat sold in the supermarket, the person who guts a freshly killed deer can clearly see what the staples of its diet were (generally, grass, corn, and other wild greens for which it foraged). With venison, you don’t have to worry about what you’re getting on the side. Aside from these logical incentives to cook with venison in lieu of industrially raised beef, there’s this: it tastes good. You basically just need to know someone who likes to hunt for it in order to get some.
I know many people who aren’t fully comfortable with the idea of eating deer meat. But deer are herbivores, just like cows and chickens and the other animals we consume. They have always been a part of the North American food chain, and of the human diet. The only thing that makes them different is that we can’t buy parts of them in the grocery store. If we couldn’t buy cow parts in the grocery store, it might seem strange to eat them, too. Am I making sense, here?
I also want to laugh whenever I make a “beef” recipe using venison, and someone says in surprise, “Wow! It tastes just like beef!” I always want to respond, “No, it tastes like venison.” What they are really saying, of course, is “I’m surprised this tastes so good.” I always wonder what they were expecting.
Of course, if you shoot your own deer, you want to have it processed at a reputable place, so that you can be sure it’s your deer you’re taking home, and that it’s been processed cleanly. You want to make sure you know how many pounds you should end up with after processing as well.
I’m happy to say that I haven’t bought beef since last October; Eli shot two deer during rifle season, and so I have plenty of venison at my disposal: roasts, steaks, chops, and ground. So far, it has gone into chili, nachos, spaghetti sauce, lasagna, meatloaf, sloppy joes, and what I call “man style” French Onion Soup, all of which have been delicious. Eli himself makes a mean venison roast with potatoes and carrots in the crock pot (his secrets are red wine and onion soup mix). There’s venison in my crock pot today, performing in my friend Jen’s recipe for Chicago-style Italian Beef (see photo, above). It smells amazing, wafting through the house.
If you have the opportunity to cook with venison, or to eat it at someone else’s table, I advise you not to turn up your nose. What’s in front of you is probably pesticide-free, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, and as local as it gets (translation: it didn’t travel many hundreds or even thousands of miles in a refrigerated truck to get to your supermarket, and it didn’t take more energy calories to produce than it provides). It’s likely to be flavorful and tender (and yes, you might think to yourself, “Wow! It tastes just like beef,” but don’t say it out loud).
That said, I do have a few tips for the home cook:
- When using ground venison in chili, soups, bolognese sauce, and the like, use it just as you would ground beef. Same quantity, prepared the same way.
- When using ground venison for meatloaf, burgers, meatballs and so on (anything where the meat is pressed together), add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and a handful of breadcrumbs. Venison is so low in fat that it needs a little extra help to bind it together, just as really lean ground turkey does. For burgers, a couple of tablespoons of prepared pesto adds both the needed extra fat and some great flavor. Or, you can mix it half-and-half with ground beef.
- When cooking a roast or broiling steaks, rub the meat well with olive oil before cooking, for the same reason given above.
- When cooking chunks of steak for soup or something like stroganoff or a ragout, sautee in a few tablespoons of butter or olive oil.
- Side note: deer processing services sometimes offer to add beef fat to venison when they grind it, to increase the fat content and bindability. You can certainly have this done, but you might want to ask where the fat comes from if you’re interested in avoiding industrial beef.
Look out for some venison recipes in future posts!