Handling Venison
This section on handling the venison is post-butchering. I will assume that your hunter (possibly with the aid of a local processing center) have taken care of getting the meat in a cookable state. For tutorials on field dressing and butchering, click here.
Frozen Meat: thaw the meat in the refrigerator. Never thaw venison, or any fresh game, at room temperature because it is often high in bacterial content—thawing it at room temperature would give bacteria a nice environment in which to grow. Once thawed, use it within 2 days (again because of the bacterial content).
Grinding Meat: We suggest grinding the meat as you eat it, rather than grinding then freezing as the ground meat can be more prone to freezer burn. Grinding slightly frozen meat is ideal; it will move through the grinder much. After grinding, cook it within a day or two.
Trimming: Always, always trim off as much fat, silverskin or connective tissue (fascia) as possible. This can be a bit of a pain, but it is necessary to reduce any gamey taste. Our rule is if we can trim the fascia, it goes in the grinder for sausages (which camouflage the taste better). What is the fascia? It’s an uninterrupted, three-dimensional web of tissue that extends from head to toe, from front to back, from interior to exterior. It is very thin and filmy. You can generally put the tip of the knife under it and pull it back off the meat.
Marinating: Put the meat in the refrigerator when marinating to keep it safe. Marinating is great for purely flavoring the meat, but it serves a practical purpose too. If you know you have a gamey piece of meat (for example, it came from a mature buck), marinating can get rid of some of that gamey taste. Rinsing and marinating in vinegar for a few hours is especially effective. Don’t marinade longer than 24 hours because the meat will get mushy.
Salting: Don’t salt the meat to tenderize because it removes juices and inhibits browning. (The exception is for a salt roast, where you’re using the rock salt to create a steamer, which keeps the juices in).
Cooking Venison
You have to decide whether cook using dry-heat or moist heat. Dry-heat includes grilling, roasting, broiling, and pan frying. Moist heat includes braising and stewing.
As for cooking times, some of this is going to depend on your oven or grill. Vension typically cooks much faster than beef. But a good rule of thumb is hot-n-fast or low-n-slow, depending on the cut.
The loins, back straps, and rump are best for dry-heat—they make the best kabobs, steaks, and medallions. The lesser quality cuts are great for moist-heat—they make great stews and meat loafs.
Age: Here’s a fact—Bambi is the best meat. The one-year olds are tender and delicious. You can do anything you want with this meat! The older animals—like the 12-point buck—tend to be tough. They make good burgers and stew. You probably don’t want to make buck steak; it will be very chewey.
Well Done or Rare? Because venison is so low fat and doesn’t have much juice, it is best medium to rare. It doesn’t take much to move from medium to leather with venison. If you manage to cook it well done with out turning it to leather, it will still be very dry. So plan on serving it with some sort of sauce.