Expert: Keith Patton - 12/17/2008

Question
First am I glad to find your web site. A friend of mine just gave me some venison from a recent hunt. I want to be able to share it with friends during the holidays. One piece is a shoulder cut the other is a hind quarter cut. I have not prepared any venison in many years. What are your best receipts. Thank You and Happy Holidays.

Answer
Richard:

First, you probably want to use the shoulder for stew or something in that order since it is fairly tough and sinewy.  I would debone it and cut out all the sinew and gristle.

One of my favorite dishes for the holiday is what the Brits call hand pies and the Spanish call Tapas.

Basically it is like a fruit turnover without the fruit but with a meat filling instead.  You can use store bought pie crust dough cut into rounds. A three inch diameter round makes a finger pie, a minature turnover, a 5-6 inch diameter round makes a hand pie.

Cube the meat fine or grind or chop it in a food processor to a fine chop or hamburger grind.  Brown the meat in olive oil, then sautee with with onions, garlic, a bit of marjoram and or sweet basil. Season with salt and pepper.   Finely mince potatoes, carrots, or any other veggie that strikes your fancy.  What you are making is a kind of stew/meat filling.  When the vegitables are tender adjust seasonings and mix a bit of corn starch probably a table spoon or two with about 1/4 cup of water.  Stir and pour a bit in the stew to thicken it.  It will thicken more as it reaches a boil.  Add enough to reduce the runniness.  Taste and adjust the seasonings.  Grease a cookie sheet.

Put about 1 Tsp or 1tbs or filling in the small finger pies and more in the larger hand pies placing it on one half.  Wet the edge of the side with the filling with a mixture of beaten egg and water.  Fold over the dough and seal by pressing a fork, flat side down into the dough to crimp it.  Make sure the edge is sealed well.  Poke a small hole in the top to release steam.  Place on the greased sheet.

You can also make your own shortbread dough for the crust or buy some of the italian bread dough in the tubes at the store.  Unroll the dough, it is really one big sheet.  If it is too thick, roll it out thinner and use it.


Another dish is venison mince meat.  Purchase a can of mincemeat filling, the jar variety is better but more expensive.  Now here is a bit of history.  Mincemeat pie used to be just that.  Spiced minced meat in a pie.  The american version of this traidional english dish is overpoweringly sweet and spicy because the took out the meat.  If you read old traditional recipes, they call for chopped boiled beef.
If you remove the meat you end up with a fruity, sweet and overwhelmingly spice mess.  That is what passes for Amercian Mincemeat pie.  Go figure.

Boils some of the shoulder meat till it is falling apart then chop it, you want it like roast beef, fairly crumbly.  Then place it in a sauce pan and add mincemeat seasoning till it tastes about right. This is subjective.

The rump I would debone too.  If you use a good boning knife you can follow the muscles and end up with some nice small roasts.  These can be cut in to boneless steaks.  The trimings can be used for chili or stew.  Any holiday type stew or soup even curry will work with venison.

Roasting the meat is difficult since it tends to dry out.  It needs to be served rare, which is not to the taste of a lot of people these days.  So your bet bet is to stew it or put it in a soup. If you make chili, try this trick.  Grind half the meat in a food processor very well, it will be finer than hamburger.  The other half spend the time to cut by hand into small pieces, about 1/4 inch square.  This gives two textures, fine and chewy.  Second, go and purchase as many dried mexican peppers as you can.  Avoid the fiery hot ones get the big black and red plablanos and others.  De-seed them, then grind them in a blender or coffee grinder.  Add these and lots of cumin to the chili.  Sautee onions and minced garlic add them.  
Chili should be a slurry of meat and chili peppers, onions tomatos no beans. Add a tablespoon or so of sugar, salt and pepper, a can each of tomato paste, puree and crushed tomatos.  A can or two of beef broth should be used too. The last ingredient is a little bakers bitter sweet chocolate.  You should have a dark brown very rich chili with a long slow burn.  Sit this simmer to cook down to a consistency you like.
I have made venison teriyaki and sukiyaki with good results.  Even venison goulash, the authentic hungarian style with nothing but meat in a rich gravy or reduced onions, paprika, salt and pepper.

This recipe is from   http://chiliesvanilia.blogspot.com/2006/01/my-authentic-hungarian-goulash-recipe...

It makes a superb goulash...just the thing for a cold night.  Serve with fresh baked crusty bread and an assertive red wine or a strong dark beer.  Guiness or a dubbel belgian would be my choices.

There a two SECRETS of a good goulash: the ingredients you add to it and the ones you don’t. In my opinion the secret ingredient of a perfect Hungarian stew (besides a good quality Hungarian paprika of course) is onion. A lot.  More.  A lot more!! For 1 kg of meat (two pounds) I would use about 3-4 big onions.  Use as much as you think is enough and add two more.   That seem to be a lot but this will create your thick sauce. As you’re simmering the stew on very low heat for about 1,5 hours, the onions melt into a sweet, spicy sauce, so you won’t have any pieces of it at the end.
What you never ever would add to a pörkölt are any of the following ones: flour, butter, canned tomatoes (all three I see in many „authentic” recipes). There are a few optional ingredients that could be added, this really depends on your taste, on habits and on what you have on hand. (e.g. pork fat instead of oil, smoked bacon, green pepper, fresh tomato, red wine, caraway seeds)

Note:  Not all paprika is created equal.  If not using Hungarian Paprika, use about 1/2 again as much.  Or 6-8 tablespoons.  Taste it and if necessary add more.  - Keith  

Recipe (4 servings):

1 kg beef for stews, cubed
3-4 big onions, finely chopped
4-5 tbsp groundnut oil or olive oil
3-4 tbsp best quality Hungarian sweet paprika
salt and  pepper to taste
I added about 1/4 teaspoon of caraway seed per pound of meat.
Heat oil in a saucepan.
Add the finely chopped onions and cook until translucent.
Now comes an important secret step: remove the saucepan from the heat and now add the paprika – this is very important as if you would do this step still on the heat, the paprika could burn from the sudden heat and get bitter.
Put it back on the heat, add beef cubes and stir so that the spicy onion mix covers th meat evenly. Cover with about 100-150ml water so that the liquid doesn’t completely cover the meat. Add the sliced green pepper, the whole tomato (later will be removed at the end), salt, pepper. Simmer covered on very low heat for about 1-1,5 hours. After 1 hour, check, add a litle more water if necessary, so the stew doesn’t burn. Depending on the thickness of the sauce, cook for 10-15 minutes uncovered so that all the liquid reduces and all what you get is a spicy, thick sauce which covers the meat. It tastes even better reheated, I normally prepare it a day ahead.