Oh Deer, What to Do with You

Hunting wild game has never been a huge aspect of my life. I want to say the reason why is that my dad has never been a huge hunter himself. He was always one that preferred to go fishing or better yet, fly-fishing. That is where I get the love for fly-fishing. I’m sure if he had taken me hunting growing up that I would also be a hunter.

Fly-fishing trip in Colorado

Now that being said, I have nothing against hunting. I have plenty of friends that go hunting (and I love to get to enjoy the fruits of their hunting labor). I think hunting is a necessity for controlling the population of the different animals, and they are pretty tasty, too.

Over the years, I’ve heard of many different ways of preparing certain game for cooking as to help cut back on the “gameyness” of the meat. One in particular was venison, or also known as deer meat. I’ve heard of people soaking the game in buttermilk, salt water, citrus water, and just plain water. 

 

Just recently I had a friend offer me some venison because he needed to clear out his freezer since turkey season was starting. So not only did he give me some tenderloin, but also some deer sausage. Now, I’ve never cooked deer meat… I’ve only eaten the meat. He said he was interested to see what I decide to do with it. Well, I had only thought about testing two different methods of soaking meat (he did later send me a recipe… I think that was a hint of he wanted me to cook that so he could try it).

But, I digress. So I portioned the meat out into two separate bags… one with buttermilk and the other with just plain ice water (I did leave a couple of pieces not in anything thing as a base to judge from). 24 hours later I take them out and get ready to cook them. Made sure to pat the meat dry before searing them off in a cast iron skillet with a little salt and pepper.

Searing off some of the deer meat in my cast iron skillet

Now the whole point of trying out both of these methods was to see if they work on tenderizing the meat and pulling out the gameyness of the meat. I wanted to test out the two most popular theories I’ve heard over the years. The buttermilk soak did do both. I only noticed that the ice water did tenderize the meat some but didn’t do anything about the gameyness of the meat.

Now, don’t hate me or judge me for admitting this, I have never been a big fan of the gameyness taste in certain meats. I can do without it. So with this little experiment I tried out, I prefer the buttermilk soak. The meat was more tender and didn’t have that sharp distinct gamey flavor. Now it did have a slight hint of that flavor but it was overwhelming.

So if you are one that really likes the strong game flavor… don’t do a buttermilk soak. Stick with a water soak. Maybe even treat it like a brine and add some other spices to the water… I think I’m going to need to ask for some more deer meat to try that out!

 

As for that deer sausage I mentioned… I turned that into a breakfast casserole! Browned the sausage and mixed it into some cream cheese and smeared that between two rolled out cans of crescent rolls. The pan didn’t last long… maybe 10 minutes. I’m glad I took a picture and grabbed a piece when I did!