Ground, Ground with Beef Fat, Breakfast Sausage, Regular Sausage, a Roast, and God only knows what else.
So first I made chili with the regular Ground. It was good, kids liked it, not too gamey. Good stuff.
Then, I tackled the Ground with Beef Fat which I learned was a good candidate for burgers--the beef fat helping the otherwise very lean deer meat stick together and hopefully stay juicy. Hopefully. I looked to Amy Thielen and her 'The New Midwestern Table' book as I thought it was a good candidate to tackle meat harvested from the North Woods, and I was not disappointed. Deer Camp Kefta Kebabs is the name of the recipe, only I did no kebab-ing I did burger-ing, and I didn't follow the whole recipe but mostly--and add 'ish' to every measurement.. Here is what I did:
Something like 1 1/2 lb venison with beef fat
Diced up small sweet onion--carmelized/brownish in butter and some olive oil, salt and pepper too. (let it cool before adding to mixture)
2 tsp(ish) ground coriander
3/4 tsp (again, ish) ground cumin
1/2 tsp (you get the idea) cinnamon
1/8 tsp cayenne (actually I was out and I used Chipotle, close enough)
2 tsp ginger--I had some in a jar from making "Chicken Wings ala Olga Dale"
2 garlic cloves grated--same as above, so I eyeballed it.
1 egg yolk
Mix that all up with your hands. Do it. Don't be scared.
Make yourself some nice little patties--sliders for Hawaiian Buns is what I did, you know the kind.
I wasn't in a grilling place in my day so I used a grill pan. The smell was delicious.
I grilled a couple of minutes each side then put on a sheet pan and covered with foil.
Put in a bun and done.
My notes to self on this were that I really need to lessen the cooking time, especially for sliders, and especially for venison--even with the beef fat. They were on the dry side, but I believe this to be operator error.
Just another plug for the Amy Thielen book 'The New Midwestern Table', great book, great food.
http://www.amythielen.com
