Deer Meat

[happyathome]

I am asked often how do I cook deer meat. Having not been brought up in the country and marrying a man who hunted AND who wanted a wife who could cook from scratch (had he checked with me about that when we were dating, he might have run the other way as I never cooked anything back then but boiled water!) I figured..."red meat...I'll use it like beef". And for most of our 27 years of marriage, I have. It is a dry meat, no fat marbeling through, so I try to be sure it doesn't get cooked into cardboard. I use it in stews, but it needs to be cut in small chunks because even though it is in the stew, it tends to have a dry texture. When we make sausages, we use about 3/4 pork with a good amount of fat in it to one quarter deer. It has a better texture and taste to it. We have made it more half and half, but it doesn't hold together as well. We make salami's and breakfast sausage as well, and the Italian sausage doesn't last very long! I make a few batches of jerky too, section the deer hams and freeze them whole so I can take them out and slice them, put them on the BBQ or slice and pound them for fry steaks. Our deer here are small, around a 100 pounds field dressed. We have a commercial grinder that I use to grind "deerburger" with, adding some pork fat to it.
Hmmm, I haven't had meatloaf in awhile..........

[braided-rug]

Thanks for sharing happyathome.

My husband used to hunt deer with his friend who was from New Zealand where it is a popular meat. His wife got me a cookbook so I used that. I think I posted a recipe here, in hunting recipes in this section.

Our deer are sambar and my husband said they are large in comparison, originally from India? We do see them crossing a road 30 minutes from here or actually along the edge of the trees usually.

I love to buy Italian sausages, I think they are called links in the States. I mainly use the one recipe with fettucine and olives. I have been known to go to great lengths to buy them as they are not as common here as our hometown. Where we are moving to have some in a nearby town. I got some two weeks ago, and dh accidently used bratwurst in the recipe, I wondered why it didn't taste as delicious as usual!

www.sambardeer.com/

[happyathome]

The deer here about our home and in this area of the state are called blacktail deer. They aren't much over 125 lbs. on the hoof. They aren't as big as a whitetail or mule deer which are more likely to be found in the Sierra Mountians of California/Nevada.
We make Italian sauages in links, too, but I prefer to freeze it in one pound packages because I use it more that way!
Oh, I am sure we could have alot of laughs over some of the things we have either added or omitted in over our cooking years! I'll post the recipe for the Italian sausages in the next day or so...you can make them easily....in your spare time.....something we all have alot of, right?! But they are easy!

[braided-rug]

Thanks happyathome.