Recipes For Venison

Mie crop-eating deer: venisons of the forest

The prefecture is distributing cookbooks to restaurants featuring ways to prepare "gibier" (wild game) venison dishes, a part of French haute cuisine, hoping in the process to revive its mountain communities.

Deer-caused crop damage — mainly rice — in Mie amounted to ¥140 million in fiscal 2009, the second-largest hit after Hokkaido.

"In the fall, deer come down to villages from the mountains. They come in herds and eat whatever is being grown. Even if we set up fences and barriers around the fields, they easily jump over them," lamented Kosuke Maekawa, 70, a deer hunter who lives in Sakakibara, near Tsu.

In 2007, when the central government revised measures against wild animals, Mie lifted a ban on doe hunting in addition to stags. With this, the number of wild deer hunted or captured surged, and reached 10,979 in 2009. However, most of the carcasses were buried.

The prefecture launched the cookbook project in fiscal 2010 in a bid to make game meat a local specialty. Since March, after researching restaurants nationwide that were serving venison, Mie started distributing the cookbook for free. It introduced 18 special recipes, including "onigiri" (rice-ball) burger, sesame dumplings and miso-based venison hot pot.

Eateries, housewives and food firms have flooded Mie with inquiries, prompting distribution of more than 2,000 copies of the cookbook and a planned reprint.

"We hope to create a situation where a venison is not only on restaurant menus but also on people's dinner tables," said an official in the local agriculture, forestry and fisheries bureau.

Between July 4 and 24 Okuise Forestpia, a restaurant in the town of Odai, served up venison dishes based on a recipe featured in the cookbook.

The key to expanding consumption seems to be establishing a stable supply.

In Mie, hunters commonly share fresh venison with friends and the meat is not sold on a commercial basis. At present there are no guidelines about the supply of deer meat and also there are not enough slaughterhouses to prepare the meat.

Nagano and Hyogo prefectures, where crop damage is more serious than Mie's, are a step ahead, as they have guidelines to safely prepare venison and enough butchers.

Choosing the Right Cuts for Venison Recipes | foodthailand

Searching for venison recipes? It’s easy to find delicious venison recipes in cookbooks for wild game, online and even in hunting books or on hunting web sites. When cooking with venison, or even beef and pork, it’s important to understand the various cuts of meat. Using the appropriate cut of meat for the recipe insures that the meal comes out as expected. Attempting to prepare a lesser cut of meat with a recipe intended for a prime cut is a recipe for disappointment.

In spite of obvious differences, beef cattle, hogs and deer are all similar animals that butchers process into the same type of cuts. In the United States barbeque ribs are a traditional favorite for beef and pork, even to the point of competitions for the best in ribs. Venison ribs are great in the smoker and can be cooked using a good barbeque rub or sauce.

The lesser cuts of venison have familiar sounding names as cuts of beef. The shank of deer is the same as beef, namely the upper part of the legs. Brisket is meat from the side of beef or deer, between the front shoulder and hind legs. Flank meat comes from the underbelly. While these are meaty parts of beef cattle, the deer is a much leaner animal, yielding far less meat in the shank, flank and brisket. These areas, along with the neck, are usually processed into ground venison. Ground venison can easily be used in place of ground beef in many familiar recipes, especially spicy recipes like meatloaf and chili.

Venison sausage, made from ground venison, is a treat for many individuals. One of the all-time favorites is venison summer sausage. Many a butcher shop that processes venison has their own proprietary blend of spices that they use in specialty venison sausage. Venison brisket and flank meat is often made into venison jerky, an American creation.

The best cuts of venison come from the rear of the animal, from the rump and round. The rump is equivalent to the buttocks area and round cuts originate from the area between the rump and rear shank. Venison steaks and roasts come from the rump and round areas. The medallions, similar to tenderloin in beef, are the very best cut of venison. It’s best to cook the premium cuts using recipes developed for venison to make the most of their tenderness and flavor.

Alan B. Stables is a freelance writer on alternative agriculture, has organized alternative agriculture events and has also been a guest speaker in Brazil, China, Egypt, Italy, Latvia and Spain, on how to market agricultural produce for maximum returns.

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