Great Venison Cooking

Posts Tagged ‘grill’

Venison loin with fresh rosemary and thyme.

One of the things I most love about our community garden is that everyone is eager to share what they grow. The other day, one of our neighbors loaded me up with Thyme and Rosemary—two of my favorite fall spices. The smell of fresh herbs in the kitchen is so incredible. They taste pretty good too. So tonight I pulled them out to spice up my venison back strap. So delicious! I served it with creamy braised radishes for an easy and elegant meal (if only my dining room table wasn’t full of all the dishes I’m donating to Purple Heart on Monday).

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For several years, Rick has wanted to smoke an entire deer on a spit. The problem? We don’t have a fire pit with a spit. Is that enough to deter my hunter? Heck no.

Our neighbors have one of those portable backyard fire pits. It’s small, but Rick figured a very small deer would fit over it. So, this summer he got a Spring buck that dressed out at 26 pounds and put it in the freezer until he could figure out how to make a spit for the fire pit. For the record, a whole deer—even a small one—takes up a lot of room in the freezer.

Alas, Rick was foiled on the spit. He just couldn’t find a non-commercial grade rotisserie that would hold more than 12 pounds, and a commercial rotisserie was not in our 2010 budget. So, he opted for option 2: to build a grill over the fire pit and slow roast/smoke the venison. Enter Home Depot where 1 grate, 4 steel rods, and a few bolts later, we had a grill for the fire pit. Better yet, we had a glorious early fall weekend day approaching. The BBQ was on!

If you’ve ever seen the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” specifically the scene with the lamb grilling in the front yard, then you can visualize the roast. We too were in the front yard. But we invited the neighbors, so it was okay.

In the end, this adventure in grilling was worth every minute. It was one of the best roasts we have ever made. Absolutely amazing. So, if you’re feeling up to the challenge, this is what we did…

Friday night is usually venison burger night for us. There are a ton of ways to cook venison burgers, and I’m always experimenting with more. Tonight I thought I’d try mixing mozzarella cheese with the ground venison to see if it would help with keeping the meat from falling apart on the grill. It did. And the burgers were moist, even though we cooked them well done. Perfect!