Venison! (Part 1)

Vegans beware...

Hunting season is coming to a close and I am glad to say that I have stocked up the freezer for the year. For me, deer hunting is not so much about the "sport" as it is about the meat. Last year was a bit of an experiment to see just what we could do with venison and whether or not the family would like eating it. That last part is important - it's not just enough to tolerate food, our family really likes to cook and eat good food. I'm happy so say that we have just about quit purchasing beef altogether. There are times when I just want a good rib eye steak and there's nothing you can do to venison to make it taste like that. But for just about every recipe that calls for beef, I'm slowly, but surely, learning how to replace it with venison.

I decided to run a series of blog posts talking about how I prepare and cook venison. I've heard so many people say, "I don't like venison. It tastes "gamey." Most of them don't know what "gamey" means, they just know that they've tasted something in venison that they didn't like. I'm pretty sure I know that it is, and I'll talk about that later. Everybody that has eaten venison that I've cooked has liked it - including people who said they don't like venison! I don't think there's anything magic in what I'm doing; I've just developed a system that works for me. So, in the coming days, I'm going to discuss:

• Cleaning and processing a deer (or, "I have this deer I just shot. Now what?")
• Preparing and storing the meat
• Preparing for cooking (yup, I don't just thaw it out and cook it)
• Recipes!

The recipes part will be fun. I know lots of folks just cook deer meat battered-and-fried or put in a crockpot for stew. I'll give you my own personal recipes for steaks, chili, kabobs, deer-o's (my play on gyros), fajitas, shepherd's pie, breakfast casserole, ... oh, it just goes on and on. Tonight, I'm trying yet another new experiment - lasagna! My mouth is watering already.