Random Chunks of Venison

[Awnry Abe]

So I officially broke all ties with PETA this past weekend by taking my first doe in the anterless portion of the season. I must admit, I wasn't too interested in the hunt or the meat, but I have ulterior motives. I raise boer and other goats, and the time of reckoning for learning to process one is near. I didn't want to waste that meat, so looked at deer as a close-enough anatomy match to get some meat processing practice. I figure that if I totally butchered her, I would at least have cheap dog food.

However, so far I think I've done ok for a total nube. I definately took a "dont want to take life for granted" approach and did the best i could. I have a small bit of some hair to deal with. But what has me most puzzled is what to keep whole and what to grind. I know the tenderloin and blackstrap are typically kept whole. I think I did a very good job of getting them out in good shape. But the hind quarters and front shoulders deboning I was kind of crude about. I have several 1-3 lb chunks of meat that I cut from the bone. I did not do a great job on them. Are they even good for roasting? And what about the ribs? I used my sawsall and clipped them right off. Are they worth cooking?

(as an aside, I found the whole process rather addicting. DD14 sat in the stand with me 4 mornings straight, which was a tremendous memory for both of us. MO has one more weekend left. I think I might go for seconds...)

[Paquebot]

"Chunks" are steaks in disguise. Trim off ragged edges and narrow tips and freeze them as if they were roasts. When you want steaks, partially thaw a chunk and you can make nice even slices. Don't think of big 8" beefsteaks but 3" venison steaks are just as good.

Ribs don't have enough meat to bother with. Too much fat and not enough meat even on big deer. Strip out the meat between them and mix it with lean meat trimmings to add a little fat when ground. Or, you could do your sawsall and cut them into 1" horizontal strips and cook them down for broth except that there may be too much fat. You can do the same with the neck and spine by sawing them into 1" rounds and slow-cooking them until the meat falls off the bones. Add onions and garlic and pressure can. A dog would starve in short order if it relied on scrap meat from me.

Martin

[Spotted Owl]

Youtube can be your friend. Lot of good stuff there.

Remember above all else. Trim. Get all the fat, sinew, tendon, silver skin, off. Or the best you can, it will give you a much more pleasant end product.

Wild game is or should be some of the best table meat you should ever eat, bar none. Take care of it right and all the stories of nasty, gross will be unfounded. However you will at times run into an animal that is just plain rough to eat. We have been working on a deer shot three years back. It is just a rough animal on the fork.

Keep with it. If not for you and your enjoyment, for your kids. Kids hooked on the outdoors don't generally have time to get hooked on other things.



Owl

[Paquebot]

It's unlikely that this is going to be a tough or rank deer being that it's a doe. And if there's only 1 to 3 pounds in chunks, it wasn't a big one to start with. Were it a buck, I would also had get rid of all fat but not in the case of a doe. In fact, I keep ground doe fat in the freezer in the event that I have to convert an old skinny buck to ground meat. I've a cousin who is a butcher by occupation and he tells many stories about how he made the rankest buck into some halfway decent ground meat and sausage by using excess doe fat from another deer. With a doe, it has very little taste. It's actually tallow which is very much life beef tallow which is often added to ground venison.

For packaging, ziplock bags are perfect. You can get just about all of the air out and the meat will keep for years as long as the bag remains intact. I'll pack 1½ pounds of ground meat in a quart bag and 7½ in a gallon. Used 2 big bags to make jerky two weeks ago and the meat was just as red as when packed. My code was BB03, Big Buck 2003.

Martin

[katy]

Congratulations CrownRanch on your first doe and having your DD with you.

First time I boiled venison, it had an odor that I couldn't stand, found a

reference in a game cookbook to use a couple of bay leaves in the water to

completely eliminate that problem, and it works.

The silver on a roast disappears during the baking period, the tendons

however will muck up the meat grinder if left in. Found out how good the

neck meat is when someone gave me a package of it, from the procesor. Slow

cook or pressure cook. Enjoy and good luck on the next one.

[ChristieAcres]

After pressure canning 1.5 deer, since I cleaned out the freezer, I can second Paquebot's suggestion. Can as much as possible, add onions, garlic, salt, and pepper. If you have mushrooms, add them, too. I also add organic beef broth. The result was delicious meat read for any dish! I had some canned Venison w/Chanterelles, sauteed with BBQ sauce, yum! Great for soups, chili, shepherd pie, Taco's, lasagna, etc... Dog food? In his dreams...

I take the chunks of meat, put them in a deep, covered pan, and slow roast them at the lowest oven temp(mine is 170) for 12 hours. Cut off a slice, test it for tenderness. Then I soak it down good with homemade barbecue sauce. There are dozens of different varieties of barbecue sauce, this link will take you to recipes for the "top 10" styles. Due to my own preference, I use a thin sauce for cooking, then a thicker "finishing" sauce for the final stage. Usually, another 6-12 hours at 170. Here is part of a deer I killed Tuesday. I start out with the neck in a covered roasting pan. Took about 18 hours to get it fall off the bone tender. First picture is the neck, after 12 hours. The second picture is the totally tender meat, off the bone, in a giant bowl ready for about 80 barbecue sandwiches. That was after a further 12 hours with BBQ sauce. This morning, I'm making bread. There's going to be some serious eating going on around here. On the bottom is a picture of some chunks in the initial barbecue sauce. When I make a hindquarter, or something of that size, I tend to keep it whole, and slice it after it's done.

[blooba]

Originally Posted by Spotted Owl

Kids hooked on the outdoors don't generally have time to get hooked on other things.

Owl

You do have to keep an eye on the supply of Deer Crack though.

[bja105]

For the hair, use a torch to singe it. I use propane, Mapp, or air/acetylene, whichever I find first. It does not take much heat or time to burn off deer hair.

I trim off everything that is not red. Buck or doe, we don't like the flavor of fat, sinew, 'Silver skin.'

Cook long, wet, and slow, or fast and rare. Well done deer steaks are tough, since there is almost no fat in the meat.

My favorite way to eat venison steaks, chops, or cubes:
Thin cut or thick cut pounded thin(best) chunks. Roll in flour. Fry in skillet with olive oil on one side until blood comes to the surface of the other side, then flip.

[Silvercreek Farmer]

Those chunks would probably slice up into some nice jerky. Put them in the freezer until they are stiff but not hard, then slice into 3/16" strips. With the grain if you like it tough, against the grain if you don't want jaw cramps. Just dip (no need to soak) the slices in Dale's steak marinade and dry in a dehydrator until they are like rawhide. You can also use the oven set on the lowest setting with the door cracked open.

[hiddensprings]

We grind a bunch and add some pork fat to it. I use it in place of hamburger in just about everything. And, I second the Jerky suggestion. We LOVE deer jerky here

[Gianni]

Learn to read grain. Cut chops across the grain and jerky with the grain. [To be technical steaks are cut with a saw, chops with a knife or cleaver] Get every bit of bone dust from your sawzall off of anthing that you want to eat. They make a bone scraper for that which will make it easier. I also get all silver skin and fat off of the meat I eat, does or bucks.

[salmonslayer]

Congrats on your first deer, we put a couple in the freezer here as well. The tenderloin I like to eat either the same day or the next day without freezing...just briefly introduce it to a BBQ flame and then eat. Backstraps we cut into small round steaks that we pan sear until cooked rare and make a red wine and blackberry reduction sauce to go with. The leg quarters can be easily butchered into roasts by separating them at the various membranes and they are great for pot roasts slow cooked as described above.

Now for the extra chunks (neck, various scraps and pickings) we like to cut it into stew meat size and freeze for stews, soups and chili. If we get a big meaty deer I will save the ribs and BBQ them but its slim pickings meat wise and for me its more of a good snack. We also keep the bigger bones for making soup stock and we flesh out and tan the hides for various craft projects and the scent glands can be used for trapping bait.

I actually prefer venison over beef and a smaller doe will give you some mighty fine eats.

[partndn]

Originally Posted by Spotted Owl

Youtube can be your friend. Lot of good stuff

Keep with it. If not for you and your enjoyment, for your kids. Kids hooked on the outdoors don't generally have time to get hooked on other things.



Owl

Amen to that!

[johng]

The large chunks can be cooked slow in a roasting bag with carrots and taters. I normally grind it all into hamburger. Make sure to add some beef fat to your hamburger or it will be too dry. The backstrap and tenderloin I normally have cubed. Any stray chunks can be ground or made into jerky. Most meat shops will do this for you fairly cheap.

[Cash]

My ex-BIL used to make a venison sausage in links that was heaven on earth. IIRC he mixed the ground meat with pork fat as well as a blend of spices and herbs from a recipe he inherited from his father. I'm not sorry he's no longer my BIL, but I do miss that sausage.

[francismilker]

My two cents here..............

I'm no expert by any means.

My first advice would be to make absolutely sure the animal of any species is killed, gutted, and hanging to chill as soon as possible. If it's too warm outside to hang them for a day or two, quarter it up and put it in an icechest with salt and ice packed around it. Go out everyday and drain the bloody water off of it and refill with ice and salt. When you get clear water (may take a few days) the meat is well "bled" and thoroughly chilled enough to cut up.

I don't care to do much with any specific cuts other than the backstrap and loins of any critter I kill. All other stuff gets cut into chunks for bar-b-q or ground up. When I get through rendering all the meat I can off of a deer or goat, it looks like it has been picked clean by army ants. I use it all!

[Copperhead]

We attempt to harvest and preserve a dozen deer a year, here in WV. We diligently remove the fat from the meat. Occasionally we'll get a well-marbled doe that takes longer, but as a rule, put on a movie and start cutting

Shoulders = Burger. Once the fat is removed, the sinew, silver skin, and yes, even tendons won't matter if your meat grinder is sharp. We don't mix any fat into our burger, but we will add a few tablespoons of olive oil to the frying pan. Using a large canning ring, we make 1/3 lb burgers that we freeze on a cookie sheet. Each sheet holds 15 (3x5) burgers per layer and we decided that 6 layers was enough. Use wax paper between layers and freeze solid. A good stout knife (we use a USMC Kabar) will pop the burgers apart. We keep (1) 30lb block in the upstairs freezer and the rest in the bottom of the deep freezer, wrapped in a new heavy duty trash bag. Upper elementary and middle school-aged kids, who can keep from cutting themselves with a knife, cut shoulders.

Backstrap and Tenderloin = Steak. Using a sharp fillet knife, remove the silver skin like skinning a catfish. Woe to anyone who "accidentally" cuts up a package of steak for vegetable soup!!! Even if it was the best vegetable soup she ever made We slice ours 1/2" thick, rub in spices, rub in flour, fry in olive oil until pink in middle. Each Backstrap is cut into 3 pieces and vaccum packed and frozen. Only Daddy cuts/trims these!

Ham are complicated! First remove all the surface fat. 2nd, separate the ham into individual muscle groups. You'll notice some groups are long and have a long grain, other groups are shorter. The long groups are best for jerky but make suitable roasts or canned meat if we have enough jerky. The short groups are be roasts, or canned meat. Only a well trained highschooler gets to cut a ham!

All the shanks (meat from the lower legs) go into burger -- remember: if you can't sharpen your grinder, or at least replace the cutting blades, it's time for a new grinder

DW doesn't like neck roasts: something to do with bones, tendons, and chunks of fat so the neck and remainder of the carcass is lovingly shared by the dogs, pigs, and chickens.

Still working on a way to properly utilize the bones. Wish I could find an economical way to grind them to powder. Tried burning them in a wood stove, but aside from the smell, realized that it was an extreme waste of phosphorous (which is more valuable) just to harvest the calcium, but it did get the yard cleaned

[Paquebot]

Originally Posted by Copperhead

Still working on a way to properly utilize the bones. Wish I could find an economical way to grind them to powder. Tried burning them in a wood stove, but aside from the smell, realized that it was an extreme waste of phosphorous (which is more valuable) just to harvest the calcium, but it did get the yard cleaned

All but the supporting leg bones will compost and that includes the head. The most heads that we composted in one pile was 7. After 6 months, only the lower jaws remained and those eventually vanished in the acidic soil. Leg bones are designed to be almost invulnerable from the outside but not from the inside. Those bones from the latest deer are out to be picked clean by crows and other scavengers. Next spring, they'll be roughly broken up with a hammer and then into the tumbler. All other bones plus feet and head are presently in the tumbler where I hope to get one heat cycle before cold weather sets in. Then it will be just like a slow-cooker except for several weeks instead of hours. The hide, which would cost more to take someplace to sell than it would bring, is draped over a hot compost pile where it is also slowly cooking. Other than the coyotes having enjoyed the gut pile by now, no part of the deer will leave here in its present form.

Also included were any large chunks of fat containing glands plus shock-damaged meat. Not only is the free bone meal salvaged but blood meal as well.

Martin

[Awnry Abe]

Thank you all for the excellent tips. I thought I had done a decent job of using much of the animal until reading this.


...Tenderloins are on the menu tonight...