At this time of year, our hunter friends often regale us with a good supply of venison – a real treat. I have learned how to cook it through experiment. As all game, it can be tough and needs some special care and attention, especially if it is not a young animal. I learned that an acidic marinade of wild fruit and berries, sometimes beer or wine is what it really needs as a tenderiser. So when I decided to try a pulled venison and found no suitable recipe on-line, I used my wild grape ketchup I made in the summer. As it is already rich in flavour, I added only some juniper berries as a spice along with garlic and onion. My own junipers are buried in snow, so for the time being cannot experiment with them. I used some commercial ones which you can find in most good shops selling spices.
If you don’t have any wild grape ketchup on hand, you can use the recipe I have given and simply use a dark grape juice.
Pulled Venison
1 venison roast (approx. 4 lbs)
1 1/2 cups wild grape ketchup
2 onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
juice of 1 lemon
2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
10 juniper berries, crushed
1 Tbsp liquid smoke (optional)
1 tsp salt
Cut the roast into four pieces. Place it in a slow cooker. Mix the remaining ingredients and pour over it. Turn the slow cooker on to high, and once it is good and hot turn to low and cook for 6-8 hours, until the meat can be pulled.
Remove the meat from the sauce, pull it with two forks. Meanwhile, continue cooking the sauce while pulling the pork. Remove about 1 cup to be used as a sauce, and put the pulled meat into the remaining sauce and heat through.
If you don’t have a slow cooker, you could do it in a heavy, covered pan in the oven 325 F to begin with and then when hot lower it to 275 F for roughly the same amount of time.
This can be used as a sandwich filling, but I served it on a bed of mashed turnip, potato and parsnip with sauteed brussel sprouts on the side. It was every bit as tender and tasty as I expected it to be.
Related articles
- An Introduction to Cooking with Venision (frugalupstate.com)
- Venison steak with Jägermeister jus (marriedwithcauldron.wordpress.com)
Along the Grapevine 