venison

[In Dust and Ashes]

I have 4 pounds of venison hamberger meat in my freezer and I want to cook meatballs for a pasta dish with it.
So far, all I know is that it's a drier meat than beef and so I'll need more eggs or bread or something like that. I've looked up recipies for meatballs, but I don't know what's best and everyone I talk to has different ideas for it. oregano, basil, no green peppers, chives, blah blah blah.

any chefs want to give me some tips for preparing venison hamberger?
or the rest of the meal?

[Peter]

if i had to throw down with some venison burger, he's what I'd do off the top of my head..and mind you, this would be with about...1 pound to 1 1/2 pounds of ground animal flesh...

mince onion and garlic very finely
beat two eggs thoroughly
mix the meat with the onion, garlic, eggs, 1/2 cup of bread crumbs, 2 tablespoons ground oregano, 2 tablespoons dried basil, 1 tablespoon fennel seeds, salt and pepper. Form into balls.

Heat up a good skillet and brown meatballs on all sides in small batches, don't crowd the pan! If the meatballs are too close together, the steam created from their cooking will cause them to steam instead of sear, which is bad. so make sure they've' got room to breathe. once they're all seared and browned up nicely, add them to the pasta sauce and cook for another 10 - 15 minutes or utnil they're cooked through.

just make sure you time your pasta sauce right so that it doesn't turn to crap as you cook the meatballs in it.

sound good? good.

[In Dust and Ashes]

I read a recipie that cooked the meatballs in an oven first. is that good or no? the only negative thing I can think is that they wouldn't cook in the sause, so they might be a little more bland. yes?

[Peter]

you could certainly cook them halfway in the oven and finish them in the sauce, but they won't be as beautifuly seared on the outside that way. I think pan-searing them to get the color on them is the way to go. They'll look a lot better that way, IMO. You could even sear them in a pan, remove them, and then start the sauce in the same pan so you get all the flavor from the drippings in the sauce......just a thought.

[gangsta puffin]

venison makes me cry

[Herr Lipp]

never had venison. but I bet it's delicious, as the cuter looking the animal, the sweeter the meat!

[Peter]

it's super-lean. it's not nearly as fatty as beef and it's really dark red. it's beautiful stuff...farmed venison is way better than wild simply because wild venison is super gamey and not so delicious. but yeah...nice and lean :D

[In Dust and Ashes]

This is game venison. I've been warned about the taste, but I have already eaten some steaks from the same animal and I liked them. I don't think any game flavor really effects me. maybe it's my upbringing.

[In Dust and Ashes]

venison makes me cry

why? at least they weren't raised in small, overcroweded pens just to be slaughtered in a giant factory, where all the meat is ground up together so that a single package in the store is made up of 50 different animals.
These deer lead a very nice, fulfilling life in the wild and then were taken down in the "natural" food chain. it's more wholesome than ground beef.

[gangsta puffin]

I wholly disagree. here's my philosophy:

I would rather eat a creature that had a miserable, short life in a cage, who never knew the wonder of the outside, than a happy little deer who ran the woods with it's happy little deer family and was suddendly bambi's mom-ed. It seems more humane to put the miserable animal out of it's misery than to murder the happy one! And this is all coming from the granddaughter of a deer shootin, gun collectin hunting fiend, so it's not that I haven't been exposed to "that way of life." I have never been able to understand how someone can see this gorgeous animal just chillin in the woods and shoot it. I'm a big dork who pretty much cries when she sees a dead deer on the road, which isn't unusual around here.

and PS if we get all caveman and talk about the "natural food chain," that didn't involve guns until relatively recently. which i guess leaves us with bows and arrows, which is even worse. hrm.

[vaya con dios]

Deer meat, veal meat, meat-o-rama! MMMMMMM!!!!
Venison is awesome! Agreed, it is usually dry, I have no tips to get it juicier. Just stick with a decent light marinade, I suppose.

Anyone ever had shark meat? That stuff is tops. Too bad I haven't had it in ten years.

[i]

I've had shark fin soup. Tasted pretty good.

[gangsta puffin]

mako!

[wasp in a jar]

i've not had shark, but i've had smoked swordfish and that was damned fine.

[kendra]

I don't mind eating deer because I know there's plenty of 'em. That said I feel horrible whenever I think about actually hunting them :D

My venison story is ... one day I came home and my father was cooking (and slightly charring, actually) hunks of venison on his grill. Also on the grill was a can of beans, still in the can, heating. I asked Dad if he was pretending to be camping. (He's from WV.) He also once killed a deer, hung it up in a tree, and invited my grandmother from Philadelphia to take a good look at it D: !!!

I like venison, but it does have a tendency to be gamey. I'd take it any day over lamb though.

[Peter]

lamb is YUM.

[cigar store indian]

:-o what does that mean , "gamey" tasting. you people can taste the difference between wild and caged animals?! i've only ever had store bought shit always. I think maybe i ate some jerkey once that my uncle made from something he killed, but it could have been a dog treat for all i know!

[Kelly Kapowski]

love venison, hate shark, love swordfish, love lamb D;


ps. wish i could be a vegetarian but fuckin' 'ell, that shiat is gewd

[Intern Kate]

remember when we had venison at my house on some new year's?

hey can you msn?

[Kelly Kapowski]

hry im there hold on

[In Dust and Ashes]

:-o what does that mean , "gamey" tasting. you people can taste the difference between wild and caged animals?! i've only ever had store bought shit always. I think maybe i ate some jerkey once that my uncle made from something he killed, but it could have been a dog treat for all i know!

wild animals eat different things than farmed animals and it effects how they taste. honestly, I don't have the sensitivity to really know because I grew up overseas where most of our meat was wild.

thus far, I am looking at serving 11 people tomorrow night with this stuff. I dont' know if all of those people can fit in our appartment, but I've invited them, so I guess we'll find a way. I have a horrible habit of inviting more people than is practical to eat dinner.

[kendra]

Gamey is hard to describe. It's like this aftertaste. It's just a taste, that's all . . . the closest I can come to it is how lamb tastes, if you've ever had that. It's like you're chewing the meat and then you get this kind of . . . almost gassy, malodorous taste. It's usually really strong in lamb, at least to me, which is why I don't like it. Venison has it only slightly.

One Thanksgiving, Dad happened to get a wild turkey while out on a hunt. Mom cooked it and your regular old Butterball up. The wild turkey was fine, but much leaner & drier (less fat), and there was definitely a taste to it that Butterball did not have. Wasn't bad, just different.

[cigar store indian]

ahaa. interesting. I am not a fan of lamb. I'll just stick to mcdonalds burgers and microwaveable bacon. D:

[Kelly Kapowski]

irish john's family made me homemade irish stew with lamb a bunch of times and it was the best thing i've ever eaten!

[Peter]

the french bistro in my neighborhood has the most kickin' lamb stew ever. it's $18 and they basically put a full pound of lamb into it with carrots and mushrooms and little bits of other things. It's friggin' amazing.

[In Dust and Ashes]

well the dinner went fine. only 8 people showed up, so that helped it run a bit smoother. my roomate discoverd she doesn't like venison because it tastes too much like beef. and my friend loved it so much he's stealing my leftovers.

I only used 2 of the 4 pounds. so does anybody have ideas for what to do with the last 2 pounds?
I'm not such a fan of meatloaf or hambergers, so that makes it a little more challenging.

[Peter]

you could make some sort of venison/noodle casserole, venison tacos, venison noodle soup......

[In Dust and Ashes]

hmm. venison lasagna... I'd have to make an alternative for my two roomates though, since neither of them like venison.
I could make two small lasagnas. one venison and one vegtable. or I could have enough side dishes that they wouldn't need the lasagna...
things are relaly complicated when people don't like things.

[Peter]

fuck 'em if they don't like venison! why you gotta cook for anyone but yourself, anyway?

jk :D

[In Dust and Ashes]

because cooking with myself is lonely :(

[Cheryl K]

I've only had venison in lasagna and I thought it tasted like Chef Boyardee Beefaroni.

[Peter]

That's pretty rough, Cheryl. A nice venison filet mignon is quite delicious :)

[Cheryl K]

I take that back, I have had venison meatballs and they were ok I guess. But as for the lasagna, it tasted bad initially then when I found out what was in it I didn't eat meat for 6 months. Same thing happened with the sunflower tea. I liked it until one of my friends said it looked and tasted like pee. That was a sucky night. (Dinner on a Huron reservation when I was 13.)

[Peter]

I've heard that drinking cat pee isn't the most pleasant thing in the world :\