Cooking Wild Meat

Richard is sharing his wild meat – sometimes from last year's hunt, and sometimes it arrives from freezers of his friends who are gifting last year’s product to make room for what they will be catching this year.  

Another way wild meat comes to us is that Burley, one of Mak’s philosophy friends, had to move back to the U.S. for more graduate school. Burley used to name her animals, and thus the meat from the animals is marked with that name.  At first I thought, now this is odd.  But this morning when Mak was sharing wild game maple flavoured sausages, I was thinking ... ah, I am eating Sally.  I looked more carefully at the gifts of wild meat. I see that tomorrow we will be eating Tony.

When I am eating Richard’s meat, there are no first names attached.  I just think ... moose, elk, deer and I don’t have to think the word “bear” for that will be the last package I take out of the freezer to try.  Yes.  I will do that one on a day when I am looking for high adventure.  Kelve might go in on  that with me, for he is always willing to take just one step beyond normal when it comes to food (ie, remember when he decided to try a jalapeno, straight).  I have already found a bison burger recipe, thinking I could substitute bear for the bison and see what product we get.

When I bought the new red creuset, I searched the internet to find a beef bourgingnon recipe to use in that new pot.  Then it dawned on me ... I could substitute elk for beef ... not that the thought was amazing, but the amazing thing is  I actually thought about it and then cooked it.  We are on our third iteration of that recipe with most of us saying either, “This is just like beef, only not as fatty”, or as in the case of Amir, “This is just like lamb”, but not as fatty”.

Oh, sweet hunters that share their meat with us.  Send me a quick email and I will attach the bourgingnon recipe in a reply if you like.

Arta