Jersey Boy Venison

Last night Stinger started to work on the process of butchering his first deer harvest. By the time we got set up he was only able to get through one front quarter, but he established plans to finish up the rest tonight-Saturday morning at the latest. After seeing how good these steaks looked lying on the work bench (handcrafted 3 years ago by my Dad), we decided to run a test pattern on one to see if the overall effort was going to be worth it, or might we be better off to just grind everything other than the most choice cuts into sausage and hamburger (something I'd personally planned to do after eating less than stellar venison steaks on more than one previous occasion). Turns out it was in fact worth the effort.

After seasoning the steak with salt and pepper and rubbing it over with olive oil, I put it over indirect heat for about 20 minutes at around 200-250 degrees inside the covered gas grill. I did this in an effort to heat the steak all the way through before slapping it directly over the hottest flames our old gas grill could muster. My friend "Scottic" recently told me about this technique and I thought it'd be a good time to give it a try. Apparently this is how good restaurants are able to serve a steak that's done on the outside, medium to medium rare on the inside, but still hot all the way through while maintaining all the steaks natural juiciness-it works. I was very pleasantly surprised as this venison steak tasted as close to beef as you can get without having come directly from a bovine. My taste buds were able to detect absolutely no wild or so-called gamey taste...at all, and Stinger was of the same opinion. It was a very pleasant culinary experience to say the least and I for one will be going back for more at the earliest opportunity. Based on this experience, I might even start dear hunting again myself after having given it up for sleeping about 17 years ago. Now that's something to think about!

As a note, after grilling the steak to about medium, we covered it lightly with aluminum foil and allowed it to set for about 5 minutes prior to diving in. Also, bacon was NOT used to disguise the taste of the meat: a common old trick of the trade used by a lot of hunting goomers to make otherwise average tasting wild fare more palatable. Apparently it's not necessary with venison, if you do things right. Oh, and I have to believe that letting the skinned carcass hang for 3 1/2 days below 40 degrees with an additional 48 hours in a cooler, made a difference as well. And all that stuff we've read about soaking the meat in salt water to get the gamey taste out, might not be necessary after-all, based on this one experience.

~Seasoned and ready for the grill

~Fresh from the grill and ready for testing

~Test pattern being ran by the butcher, the baker and candle stick maker himself-Stinger

 As good as this shoulder steak was, we can hardly wait to taste the tenderloin and rib-eyes. I can only imagine how good those bad boys are going to taste after spending a little time under the lid of an actual real life, well seasoned charcoal grill: you cain't go no better! I'll keep you posted....