Let's get to cooking!!

Hunting Wife said:

These sound tasty! Made me think of another one...

Goose stir fry. Slice the breasts thin, stir fry quickly with celery, carrots, water chestnuts, snow peas, some grated ginger and whatever else strikes your fancy. A little soy sauce and toasted almonds, serve over rice. I'm normally not a huge ginger fan, but waterfowl and ginger were made for each other!

For corned goose breast, I just subbed geese in for venison in Hank Shaw's corned venison recipe in Buck, Buck, Moose. For pastrami, I use his pastrami recipe here. Use the absolute largest goose breasts you can in the pastrami recipe. It's really hard to keep smaller ones (snow geese for example) from getting way too salty. I'm dialing it in, but it's taken a couple of tries. Even when on the salty side though, the flavor is outstanding.

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Hunting Wife said:

These sound tasty! Made me think of another one...

Goose stir fry. Slice the breasts thin, stir fry quickly with celery, carrots, water chestnuts, snow peas, some grated ginger and whatever else strikes your fancy. A little soy sauce and toasted almonds, serve over rice. I'm normally not a huge ginger fan, but waterfowl and ginger were made for each other!

For corned goose breast, I just subbed geese in for venison in Hank Shaw's corned venison recipe in Buck, Buck, Moose. For pastrami, I use his pastrami recipe here. Use the absolute largest goose breasts you can in the pastrami recipe. It's really hard to keep smaller ones (snow geese for example) from getting way too salty. I'm dialing it in, but it's taken a couple of tries. Even when on the salty side though, the flavor is outstanding.

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Colorado kid said:

I hope we get more contributions from you, Hunting wife!! You're the 3rd person who clearly knows their stuff and who has referenced that book to me. Gonna have to buy it now!!

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Colorado kid said:

Nitrates are a preservative. I don't think it's necessary in pastrami. Store it properly or eat it in a reasonable amount of time and you shouldn't need pink salt. Use kosher ot sea salt. How do you like cooking sous vide style? Its pretty impressive, isnt it?

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wllm1313 said:

I love it, I honestly didn't cook much until I got one now it's how I cook virtually all my meat and about 50% of all my other recipes.

I almost feel like is a requirement for a hunter to own one, I realized after my first steak that the "tough" issue I was having with wild game meats was simply that they didn't have much fat and were drying out on the grill or a pan. For a bit I was doing elk and mule deer steaks for 12hours+ but then quickly realized that 90min was fine as the issue wasn't the inherent toughness of the meat but it drying out.

Also my wife and I work pretty long hours and being able to toss dinner in the water bath and then only having 5-10 min of finishing once we get home is phenomenal. Also not having to worry about dinner getting destroyed if my wife gets stuck in an 8 hour surgery that went 15 hours is amazing... we had some issues with crockpot cooking... apparently you can screw that up...

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SherpaPhil said:

Awesome thread, thanks!

I cook game a lot, and I BBQ a lot, but I have never tried a long smoke on any kind of venison. I have always been afraid that without any fat, it would just end up really dry. Is this something I should be worried about, and if so, how do I get around it? I got several roasts in the freezer from a young whitetail doe, both from the front and hind quarters. How should I give them a go on the smoker?

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JohnCushman said:

Braised meals are also a good choice for long work hours, if you don't mind leaving your oven on all day. Put your onions and carrots and celery and bell peppers and root veggies and garlic in a bowl after cutting them. Season them with salt and pepper and wix together with a little olive oil. Season your roast on all sides and sear on high heat on the stove in an enameled cast iron dutch oven and any pot with a cover that can be put in the oven and take it out and put your veggie mixture in and sautee in the oil you cooked the roast in for a few minutes. Spread them out on the bottom and put your roast on them. Fill the pot with red wine (I like burgundy) and beef stock to cover the roast. Cook at 250 for at least 8 hours covered. Leave the roast alone and don't uncover it to look at it while it cooks. When you're ready to eat take the roast out and put in a bowl and cover it with foil. Strain the braising liquid and thicken it with a cornstarch slurry to make a gravy. I actually add heavy cream to it and thicken with a roux sometimes for a creamier gravy. Season it to taste. I take the potatoes and veg mix and put it in a blender and puree it or in a bowl and beat with a hand mixer to get a little thicker mash to make something like mashed potatoes. Serve the roast and puree with a little gravy and serve it with a nice side salad. The roast will be amazingly tender and juicy. I like using tougher roasts. Gerald showed me this on a bear roast at the first HT bear hunt, and I continue to tweek it and use it.

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SherpaPhil said:

Awesome thread, thanks!

I cook game a lot, and I BBQ a lot, but I have never tried a long smoke on any kind of venison. I have always been afraid that without any fat, it would just end up really dry. Is this something I should be worried about, and if so, how do I get around it? I got several roasts in the freezer from a young whitetail doe, both from the front and hind quarters. How should I give them a go on the smoker?

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JohnCushman said:

Instead of soy, try sesame oil for the cooking and toasted sesame seeds with your stir fry. Also, when you do corned meat, soak your meat in water for a couple hours, changing the water every hour after you pull it from the brine. That will remove some of the saltiness. I also found when I smoke meats for pastrami, mesquite smoke adds a bit more of a salty flavor if your meat is already salty. Hickory is a good wood for smoking pastrami. Are you rubbing the meat with mustard along with the seasonings for the pastrami? I have found that plain cheap yellow mustard is great because of it's strong vinegar property. You don't taste a mustard flavor in the finished smoked product. That will also counteract the saltiness. But, I have had the best luck with any corned meat buy soaking in water first. Even for when you boil the corned roast. If not, the salt will bleed out into your braising liquid and will also make pastrami salty after the smoke.

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Colorado kid said:

Thank you and that sounds fantastic!! I'm stealing this one and adding it to my archives!! Have you tried this with both pheasant and grouse? If so, which did you prefer??

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cedahm said:

I mostly do it with pheasants since Blue grouse don’t last very long around my house (a lot of times they don’t even make it off the mountain). Mostly just badly shot up grouse end up in the sausage box in the freezer (I keep an old waxed box in there for torn up birds). It may make zero difference, but I use less sage and more chives (plus a little flaked red pepper) with blues since they tend to taste pretty herbaceous already.

I tried it with geese once and I won’t do that again. For whatever reason the spices and notably, the orange, did not go well together. I am now referring to everything Cushman has written in this thread for any and all geese, though, so no longer an issue

I flushed a handful of grouse scouting the last two days and am already thinking of last years ‘Nashville Hot’ fried camp grouse and salivating. Any Nashville chicken recipe will work.

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