Eight to nine hours of butchering today. 3 sides of calf later, I’m tired. Yet again. I’m happy to report that I used my new kitchen power tool for the first time, with great success. My main objective was bone-in shank. Mission accomplished. But what I thought I’d try to cut, and am now giddy to eat, are some ridiculously … Read More
Yes, $63.47/kg
Fact #1: elk is a solid red meat Fact #2: calf moose trumps elk Fact #3: both would be better with considerable fat marbling Which makes me wonder, why don’t people farm raise fatty elk and moose. Hm. Anyway, all you can really make out on the label is $7.74. That’s not so scary. What’s scary is the price per … Read More
My poor neighbors
I pretty sure I drive my neighbors crazy at times. This morning it was still dark, and I was on our back patio searing a serious amount of beef and some bacon. I live in an apartment, and the smells inevitably waft around. It’s worse when I’m smoking foods. It’s probably a love-hate thing, I’m guessing. It was, however, a … Read More
Butchering #4 – Whitetail Deer
Butchered the fourth big game animal of the season this morning. A white-tailed deer. Looks big, but cut weight was just under 40 lbs. For context, my calf moose was 100, and Henry’s 2 or 3 year old bull moose was 240. My dad’s cow elk was high 100s-200 I think. So my adventure in cooking venison begins. First lesson … Read More
Butchering
Not everyone’s cup of tea, I know. But I just got back from butchering the calf moose I shot. It yielded 100 lbs of meat – and oddly, exactly 50 of super-lean super-clean burger, and 50 of varying steaks and roasts. It took very close to 5 hours from start to finish, including grinding of burger and cleanup. This is … Read More
More on Food: Wild Big Game
Tomorrow morning I’m up at 5 to head north on a hunting trip for a variety of big game. I’m going to be looking for my first calf moose, but the guys have tags for a whitetail buck, elk calves, cows, bulls – so who knows what will come of it. As my foodiness has exploded over the past few … Read More
‘Mo’ Meat’
I’ve been studying meat cutting again. Got a call yesterday that there will be an elk to butcher this weekend. And next week, I’m going on my first moose hunt where I actually have a tag. I’m planning on having a game dinner here, likely on Nov 11th. I’m hoping to have some home-made fresh sausages, smoked sausages, hickory smoked … Read More
Blind Tasting, and BAD butchering
I just had dinner guests do a blind tasting of two different species of geese to tell me which they preferred. Both were rotisseried, basted in garlic butter with fine rosemary, thyme, sage, and parsley. The final concensus: both were extremely close in flavour and nearly impossible to distinguish one for the other. And both tasted so much like roast … Read More