Venison Stew

We are between beeves right now. Just a couple of packages left from the last one. Next one still out on the hill eating grass. 

However, everyone is working outside today and will want a hearty meal....so...

Venison stew. This is how I do it....

Toss some cubed venison into melted butter, in the right sized pot for the mob. Five-quart today. Or into oil. Or your choice of fat du jour. Venison is lean; it needs the enhancement of some fat or oil.

Next mince some garlic and toss it in there too. Or garlic powder if you don't have fresh. Onion if you want it.

Summer time-pick some thyme, oregano, orange mint, top onions, etc. ...whatever is out in the garden. Chop and add.

Winter time-Italian seasoning works fine. I also have a big jar of basil, thyme, oregano and orange mint that I grew and dried a couple of years ago. That goes good too.

Saute slowly until the meat is good and brown. This is an all day dish.

Add a couple tablespoons of vinegar and cook a bit longer. Vinegar tenderizes and smooths out the potentially gamy flavor of wild meat. I am lucky enough to cook after a  talented butcher, so gaminess is rarely an issue but.....

Add water enough to cook some carrots and potatoes, cubed the way you like them. Toss in a couple of beef bouillon cubes if you need a little saltiness. Add a little of whatever is in the garden or freezer if you wish. This batch will get some mature green beans, as the garden is full of them. Even a couple of diced tomatoes can be good. 

Simmer slowly for a couple of ages, hours or so until everything is tender. If you are a dairy farm mom like I used to be, you can cover the pot and do this in the oven on moderate heat...say 325 or 350. I even made soup in the oven back when the house was where we came when the work was done. 

There are a lot of ways to thicken this. I generally add a large can of cream of mushroom soup. Not exactly gourmet, but, hey, we like it. Then if when nearly ready to serve it is still not thick enough I add some instant mashed potatoes. Or flour and water. Or Bisquick and water. Adaptable. Yep.

Beef is done in pretty much the same way....when we have beef. With it already feeling so much like fall, I expect this will make a pretty popular supper for 7 tonight. Or maybe 6 if Peggy wants chicken tenders instead. 

Pickle Pirates

We started digging garlic this week

We love Refrigerator Dill Pickles We made some last year from a great online recipe and then we lost it.

Today, after hours of searching, we found a substitute and made a batch from cukes Jade's grandpa sent down.

The house smells so good. Garlic, vinegar, dill and cucumbers........they sure go good together. It reminds the boss and me of when we were kids and our mamas canned. Do you remember coming home to the scent of bubbling jam, or new-made pickles or hot, sugary peaches? My mom made such wonderful stuff when we were kids and I love it when something we cook brings those memories back.

These pickles look good too.

They are supposed to season in the fridge for 24 hours, but an infestation of sneaky pickle pirates has been creeping around poking grabby fingers in the bowl.

I must confess, I am not immune to that syndrome, and besides, you really do need to check to see if a new recipe is as good as the old one.

I also admit to never actually following recipes, or at least not too closely, so there is no mustard seed in our batch, I used dried dill and cut the sugar a lot. Didn't have any of the first two and didn't want the pickles to be too sweet. Didn't bother with bay leaves either.

So far they fall on the irresistible side of the nomming scale and had to be securely wrapped up and hidden in the bottom of the fridge so that it may be possible to see how they taste tomorrow.

The best part is that I still have half a bag of cucumbers, so if the pirates capture these I can make more tomorrow.

The Easiest (and best) Macaroni and Cheese

That you will ever eat. Imagine not having to boil up the macaroni first!

First dump two small or one large can cream of mushroom soup into a large, oven-safe bowl. Add garlic powder to taste.

Take a pound of your favorite cheese and chop it up or shred it and dump it in. We use super sharp Cheddar, but about any cheese will do.

Add 4 or 5 cups of uncooked pasta, elbows are fine, but we love shells or bow ties.

Stir it like you mean it.

Add 6 to 8 cups of milk and give her another healthy stirring...you want everything coated really well.

If you have it on hand you can toss in some diced ham (cooked). This really gives it a kick.

Then cover with foil and bake for 2 to 3 hours at 350 degrees. We like ours just a little soupy, so keep an eye on it and take it out when it looks to have the texture you like.

We love this stuff! This is a huge recipe as it is even better warmed up the next day, but you can adjust the proportions pretty freely. Credit goes to Becky for taking a simple recipe from an old ADADC flier and making it much, much better.

Roast Wild Goose

Alan bagged a couple of Branta Canadensis back during the season (nearly dropping one through the sky light on his best friend's parents' house) and he has been after me to cook them. Never having cooked goose (and only having eaten it once...domestic...long frozen...and just plain nasty) I procrastinated.

Finally yesterday I relented, he thawed the goose that was intact (and the one that was much diminished by excess shot) and we hunted up a recipe.

We found this one.

Around here recipes are more like guidelines, so we threw in some extra stuff and left out some other stuff...dumped a box of prepared stuffing that was given to us on top of the critter. Tucked some venison steaks into the pot for anybody who didn't like goose (which could possibly have been all of us). Added a little vinegar, because we have discovered that, in terms of both tenderness and taste, it does a lot for slow cooking tough meat . Dried cranberries because there was the tag end of a stale bag in the freezer....etc

Then we stuffed it in the oven. Because of milking and chores, which keep me outdoors for quite a while, it got roasted about two hours longer than the recipe called for.

Didn't matter.

Liz tugged off the first piece to see if it was edible. Sure enough it was.

That verdict having been rendered the goose lasted about five minutes before the bones were picked so clean I am wondering if I will be able to find enough bits and pieces to make soup tonight. The guy that wrote the recipe says that it tastes like beef...and it really does, albeit kind of dry beef. Sort of like fine grained-chuck roast that got cooked a tad longer than you planned on. Savory and satisfying. I am amazed to find that I really like wild goose.

I recommend the recipe. All the recipes other we read that were geared for domestic fowl and would certainly have produced a meal fit for soling a pair of shoes, but this one made for a delicious change from deer and chicken. I wonder when the next goose season opens....

Sweet and Sour Maple Venison

Compile in a good heavy pan:

4T cooking oil
2T butter
1 large coarsely chopped onion
1 large clove garlic finely chopped
* Optional: a little lovage if you have it/celery if you don't

Saute until onions begin to turn clear

Add:

A couple of pounds of venison stew meat

Saute until brown

Toss in:

Italian seasoning to taste
*Optional: A little more garlic
* Optional: A tiny pinch of salt

Dump on:

1/4 C vinegar
1/4 C maple syrup
1/4 C Ketchup

When all ingredients are nice and brown and bubbly and the house begins to smell really, really good,

Add:

Two or three cups of water.

Seal the pot tightly with foil or a good, tight-fitting lid, and cook in a 325 degree oven until the meat is fork tender and succulent.

Around here that is for about as long as milking and chores take.
Anywhere normal it would probably be around 2 1/2-3 hours, more or less. Take care that it doesn't cook dry as the "gravy" is the best part.

Serve over rice or potatoes.

****This recipe is a happy accident I came up with the other day while working on 1001 ways to cook venison when your freezer is full of deers and you are out of beef. We really liked it and hope you will too.

The recipe

Italian Venison Vegetable Soup

The soup below really starts as just your basic meat and vegetable soup...I make 8 quarts at a time as there are a lot of us and I want it to go extra meals.

First slowly brown the meat, in this case venison, with garlic and onion...to your taste. I use two cloves and one small respectively. I substitute stew beef, ground beef, or regular or Italian sausage or any combination thereof for the venison in this brew. We just happen to be out of all those things right now and down to eating deer or buying meat.


When the meat is well cooked, I add such vegetables as are available..canned, frozen or right out of the garden. This particular batch contained carrots, green beans, lots of cut up grape tomatoes, and yellow and green zucchini, all from the garden plus some frozen cauliflower and broccoli.Also a large can of corn and a can of garbanzo beans.


I usually add a couple of the large cans of crushed tomatoes and as many cans of water as it takes to fill up the pot.

For seasoning...well it varies. This time I added garlic and onion as listed above, commercially prepared Italian seasoning, fresh parsley (but frozen or dried is fine), a dash of Mrs. Dash, a couple leaves of lovage, (but if you have celery, that is better) and half a leaf of sweet basil. I also often include spearmint leaves and orange mint leaves, but mine are all buggy right now. If is a little too tangy a teaspoon of sugar is a good addition. So is thyme if you have time, which I didn't this time, although there is plenty of it out in the herb garden.


When everything is boiling nicely I toss in some pasta. We are fond of weird pasta...strange shapes and colors seem to taste better. Or rice...brown, white, wild or all of them. (you could put potatoes in the vegetable section as well).


In order to call it Italian soup, this time I dumped in about a quarter cup of grated Parmesan cheese, which adds a nice flavor and texture.


Then I set my oven to between 285 and 325 and go to work....temperature depends on how long I am going to be gone. If you can't watch soup or stew it will cook itself very nicely in the oven. (I have yet to meet an 8-quart slow cooker I'm afraid.) Anyhow when I am done milking cows the soup is done becoming dinner.


I really like this recipe because it is very forgiving. You can put darned near anything in it...and I do.