00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
00:00:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I’m joined by renowned chef Jesse Griffiths to talk through different ideas and techniques for elevating your wild game cooking during holidays and beyond. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camera for Conservation initiative. This week, as we head into the holiday season, we are talking cooking. We’re talking about wild game preparation, recipes, techniques, concepts around how to become a happier and more effect dive chef and operating better in the kitchen, making your deer, your turkey, your upp and birds. Whatever it is that you’ve put in the freezer this season, how do we best use that, How do we best prepare that and share that with our friends and family over Christmas or the New Year’s or whenever you’re listening to this. That’s what we want to get to and my guest is one of the absolute best in the business to help us do that.
00:01:26
Speaker 3: This is Jesse Griffiths.
00:01:27
Speaker 2: He is a very widely known chef, the author of several different cookbooks, The Hog.
00:01:33
Speaker 3: Book, the Turkey Book, a Field.
00:01:36
Speaker 2: He co owns a restaurant in Austin, Texas, Die Dewey. He’s been a frequent guest on The Mediator’s show and podcasts, and it’s just an all around terrific leader in the space of hunting and fishing and using those foods to just enjoy the fulfillment of your hunting and fishing experience. And that’s really what we want to achieve today is talk through a handful of things. Number One, what are some ways that we can think through and plan and prepare to cook wild game so we actually enjoy the process, so we’re not stressed out on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or New Year’s Day or the big date night or Thanksgiving or Easter or whenever it is that you’re going to be making this great wild game meal for your family or your friends that you really want people to enjoy and.
00:02:24
Speaker 3: Have a great experience with.
00:02:26
Speaker 2: How do we do that in a way that you know, actually leads to a great meal, keeps you from being stressed out, keeps you from feeling all this pressure that you need to knock out this perfect meal and you can’t have it overcooked or undercooked or whatever it might be. So that’s one set of ideas we talk through. Second thing, we talk through our actual ideas recommended preparations and recipes and meal menus and types that you might want to consider for Christmas or New Year’s.
00:02:55
Speaker 3: Or any other big event coming up.
00:02:58
Speaker 2: And then finally we talk through some key concepts specifically around venison. We do talk through some highlights when it comes to wild turkey preparation, but then we spend a little bit extra time later in the conversation specifically on preparing and making the very best deer meals that you possibly can, fully utilizing venison in the best ways possible.
00:03:20
Speaker 3: So that’s our chat today with Jesse Griffiths. Is a good one. I think it’s perfect for this time of year.
00:03:25
Speaker 2: Hopefully you’ve got a bunch of meat in the freezer, Hopefully a deer or two has been tagged and bagged, and you’ve got a package and ready to go, and this is a great time to celebrate that success with people you care about at this most wonderful time of year. As I say so, enjoy my chat with Jesse Griffiths, and enjoy the upcoming holidays. I’m wishing you a merry Christmas, happy holidays. Whatever it is you celebrate, however you celebrate, I hope it’s a terrific season for you, and looking forward to wrapping up the year here soon and getting ready for twenty twenty six, which which I can’t believe is already here. So without further ado, enjoy my chat with Jesse. All right, joining me now on the show is Jesse Griffiths. Welcome to the Wire Hunt Podcast. Jesse, thank you Mark. It’s it’s been a long time coming, so I’m really excited to.
00:04:19
Speaker 4: Talk to you here.
00:04:20
Speaker 2: I know, I kind of am disappointed in myself. I guess I will put one hundred percent of the blame on myself for not having made this happen sooner. We have so many shared friends, we’re in the same circles, we probably have cross paths very close to each other multiple times over the years. So this is, like you said, a long time coming and very well timed. I would say, Ja, I’m gonna jump right into like the inciting incident. There’s this phrase using like film and stories and stuff, called the inciting incident, the thing that kind of sets the story in motion. And my inciting incident is that my wife is stressed, she is overwhelmed, she is already worried about the days in weeks to come, and I’m hoping you can help me, Jesse. I’m hoping you can help me because we’re talking in mid ish December right now, and the holidays, the holidays are bearing down on us very quickly, and I got to believe that my wife is not the only person who is feeling that, who is feeling stressed by everything going on, whether it’s family coming to visit, whether it’s gift giving or thinking.
00:05:31
Speaker 3: Or anything like that.
00:05:31
Speaker 2: And then, of course there’s all the food, there’s all the meals, there’s all the get togethers, the gatherings, that the feasts of one kind or another, And that is obviously where I’m hoping you can help me and my wife and so many other people. But I got to ask you first, how are you on that front? Do you feel that stressed during the holidays or when there’s big events like this coming up. Or is this like your moment to shine? Is this your super Bowl?
00:05:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s it’s my favorite time. I got to say Thanksgiving my edge out Christmas because that’s my that was my day to cook. I take full control. I mean, you can bring a bottle of wine, but other than that being not even don’t even think about it. I am. I am in charge, maybe to a fault, but it’s a I mean it’s a it’s a cooking holiday. It’s an American cultural cooking holiday. And there’s not a lot of Christmas could be another one this whole holiday season. There’s a lot of excuses to celebrate with food, and I think as hunters we have we get that kind of extra bit of excitement and the ability to serve something and then somebody’s like, so what is this and they’re like, oh, well, I’ll tell you what it is. But also it’s going to come preloaded with a story, so everybody I can listen to this very compelling retelling of how I masterfully got this turkey or hog or deer.
00:06:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:06:58
Speaker 2: So for for folks who don’t have that built in sense of confidence or the excitement that you have coming into this, what would you tell someone who’s a little bit reluctant, who’s a hunter who has deer in the freezer or turkey or something, but maybe approaches this with a bit of reluctance or that lack of confidence. Because I do think there’s a certain pressure, at least that I’ve always felt whenever I prepare venison or turkey or any other wild game for friends and family, especially if they don’t you know, hunt or fish themselves. I always feel this pressure like, Okay, this might be their only exposure to this. I’ve got to nail it. I really need to make sure that they have a good experience. What would you say to somebody like that who’s a little bit nervous.
00:07:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you’re right. And there’s an incumbent on us to make these things totally shine because we’re stepping out, you know, we’re not going to the grocery store and getting a pre fat in a turkey or a outstanding Redbros that’s just loaded with all this fat, which is like the nerfing of animals. You know, it’s just like just adds these these uh you know, bumpers to it that that give you a little more leadway. I think that uh, it’s it’s going to come down to a lot of organizational skills. You know, I come from a background in kitchens and that’s everything. You know, you have to be highly organized. And I’m not just talking about the day of or the day is leading up too, but like you need to just be thoughtful about your approach, like pick what you want to do with an eye towards execution. You don’t want to be working on on details or hunkered down in the kitchen making sure that everything is perfect, like right before serving. So I’d say, like, be thoughtful about what you want to cook. I mean, you can still do like Showstoper stuff that’s slow cook. You know, you can throw it a crock pot. You could cook it the day before and reheat it. Possibly without getting into details here because I’m still speaking in some broad stroke, but I really think that, you know, we’re gonna we’re going to talk probably more conceptually than than details. I’m not gonna be like, oh, maple syrup’s going to be the thing that takes every dish to the next level, but really it’s going to be more. It’s gonna be concepts. Like you know, I want to cook, I’ve got a hind leg of venison, or I’ve got a big top round and it’s like, okay, well, let’s break this down and think about how we’re best going to execute this so that you’re, you know, drinking eggnog right before it goes out, and you’re you’re cool because it’s done, you know, and you’ve you’ve kind of full proofed it or at least thought it out, you know, Thanksgiving for me, our holiday meals that are big, I have them very well mapped out, and I have it to where there’s a phrase in the kitchen’s called ali minute, which means like to the minute, which means like there’s certain things that you cook all the minute, you know, and then there’s certain things that can be done and just on a reheat schedule. And so I minimize the all I’m a net or the things that I have to do with some immediacy. I really try to so like gravy is going to be made a date or two beforehand, all these things, I’m really trying to minimize what I’m doing in those last few minutes before serving, because then you can also call on people to help you and be say, hey, this just needs to go from cold to hot, Like how do I do that? Not my problem. Get it done, you know, work done. So I think that you know, step one conceptualization. Pick a cool recipe, pick something that’s within within bounce, you know, and within your your comfortable comfortability zone of being able to execute it. Research it, figure out what can be done beforehand, and also set a reverse timeline. You know, we’re eating it too, okay, So by eleven thirty it’s a very very latest this stage needs to be done, you know. And then at one point thirty this needs to be done, and then at two o’clock it’s on the table.
00:11:10
Speaker 2: I was originally going to have us kind of talk through some high level almost like pillars of preparing certain types of wild game or commandments of it. But you’ve got me, You’ve got me already laser focused on the upcoming events. So I think I want to reverse things and I want to continue down this line of thought that you’ve started here because I’ve I’ve realized that I am guilty of something you discussed there, which is which is you know, the minute by minute stuff. I’m always I’m always doing everything all at once. I’m stressed about it. I’m running from place to place, i can’t keep track of where anything is. I’m trying to have this sauce cooking while I’m also preparing this cut of meat, while I’m also trying to figure out what the potatoes are doing, while I’m also trying to do this, and it never seems to go well because of that. So this whole kind of reverse timeline and the conceptual kind of plan of how to break that out down that makes a lot of sense. What other I guess can you? Can you continue down that line of thought? Continue as we get into the day when you’re when we’re talking about Christmas, let’s say, hypothetically or whatever the holiday might be that somebody has coming up on a day like that, when you start executing on your personal plan, what does that look like and what are some of the little things that you do during your day that the average person probably isn’t thinking about that would make it less stressful, that would make the actual outcome better.
00:12:39
Speaker 4: Mm hmm definitely. I create lists, I write it all out, I have timelines. It might be helpful that we can What we can do is we can go in and we can dissect the Thanksgiving many if you want. Yeah, sure, it’s going to be very, very recognizable. So I think that, you know, and that’s always that’s always key too. It’s like, if that’s what you want to have, that’s like really traditional stuff, then go for it. But I mean, you can always put it in the context of game. So if we maybe that’s the best way, because then it’ll be it’ll be more. Okay. So Thanksgiving we had turkey. We had a wild turkey breast, okay, a big wild turkey breast. We had a wild turkey leg quarter.
00:13:22
Speaker 5: Uh.
00:13:22
Speaker 4: We had a ham from a faral hog, a green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and a whole pan of roasted reod vegetables out of the garden, and we had rolls. Uh that’s it right, pie too. My first course doesn’t matter. We had some oysters and boot and this is that. Okay, that’s you can weed that, throw some summer sausage and some cheese or whatever. Let’s let’s concentrate on that main course. So the ham began six days beforehand started brining it because I knew I split this ham with a friend of mine, so he’s kind of simultaneously and he’s a carpenter, so his skill set totally different than mine, but we’re working kind of in tandem. So I’m like, you know, six days beforehand, I’m texting. I’m like, hey man, you start briding that ham and he’s like no. I was like, you need to do that. He’s like, but it’s six days. I’m like, I know. You know, it’s got a brian for four days. Then you’ve got to smoke it, and then you’ve got to cool it down and then you’re gonna bake it. So if I did all that Mather right, that’s six days, So start now. So I’ve got it broken down. So the first thing I started doing was briding this ham, knowing that it needed to go that long made space in the refrigerator. If I didn’t have space there, I had a cooler set up with a bunch of ice packs that it was rotating in and out. It’s just organization, you know, through and through. The turkey breast is something that I’ve been doing for a few years now because it gives everybody turkey, which they want, but it also enables me to serve very nicely cooked wild turkey to them, but nail it and so I cook it SUV, which if you’re not familiar, is when you vac seal it and then cook it in an immersion circulator which maintains a very precise temperature. Literally, I think the only thing I ever break out this immersion circulator for is Thanksgiving turkey because in my mind, my opinion, that is the best way to cook a whole turkey breast because wall to wall it’s cooked to a very precise and perfect temperature. Also, let’s be set it aside and just forget about it. So for three hours it’s gonna cook in there, I’m gonna pull it out, and then I’m gonna give it a quick sere in butter. So back up three hours from from the from serving time, and I know that it needs to go in at that point. Actually it it’s called three and a half hours. So those are my main proteins. The hog will be brined, pulled out. I’ll dry it off re away all day, maybe for like twelve hours, so that it developer gets a nice dry crossed on it before it goes into the smoker. It smokes for several hours until it’s basically just cooked through, and then day of it’s going to go into the oven and bake with a glaze on it. So you know, in order to make my life a lot easier, this brining and smoking, it can happen way ahead of time, Like I could have that thing smoked five days before the day that we’re going to serve that. And if having that done five days before enables me to tackle all these other tasks, that’s going to be a great idea, you know. So let’s say I’ve got my ham smoked, I’ve got the glaze, mate. So now all that has to happen to that ham is it needs to go into the oven. And so then I’m going to start thinking about everything else that goes into the oven, and I’m going to kind of find an average temperature that it needs. The oven needs to be set up, so three fifty is probably good, like middle of the road. So if my other is at three point fifty, then I can still bake the green bean cast role, I can still roast all those vegetables, and I can keep my mashed potatoes hot in there too, So I’m like cool, Okay, So I’ve got a place, you know, I’ve got a hot place for all of those things stovetop, I’m and be seering off that turkey breast and so I’m also thinking about where things are going to get cooked because you might be confined to a four burner stove, you know, you might not have a huge kitchen it so you also, for me, a huge source of stress is space, you know. And it’s like when stuff starts stacking up, it gets really you know, and then you’re not you’re not moving as efficiently. You’re also defeating one of the main things. And I mean, I’ll get down to like I would like to state what I think is the number one most important thing, not just about cooking for holidays, but I mean about cooking wild came in general, is don’t forget to enjoy it like you like deer hunting, right, If we could somehow maintain that linear enjoyment from the preparation of going on that hunt to processing the deer, scanning it, getting it, getting a cold, packaging it, and then eating it. If we can maintain that throughout, you’re really winning the game at that point, you know. And so if you set yourself up for success by just being clean and organized and just kind of have it at all, you know, planned out, just game plan this thing like you would have hunt, you know, it’s just you know, I’m going to start downwind at this point, I’m going to walk up through here. You know, there’s there’s they pass through this pinch point a lot. It’s the same style of planning that you would would do for the day in the kitchen, you know, like at this point, I want to be here, you know, and I want to make sure that I don’t Like when you’re turki hunting, you don’t want a lot of stuff around your feet, you know, in case you have to move, you don’t want to knock something over. And so it’s the same thing. I don’t want to have a place to set pants over here and things like that. So I think, you know, just that that constant conceptual organization is going to make the execution not only tolerable, but the downright pleasant. Yeah. So yeah, there we are with our our hamd, which is more or less cooked. All it needs is the final application of heat. You know, three and a half hours before serving time, the turkey has has started in the circulator. It’s you know, at one hundred and forty degrees for three hours. On the nose, it’s already seasoned. You know, it’s got lemon and garlic and a few sage leaves tossed in there, and it’s got salt and pepper on it already, so it’s going to be good to go. All I gonna do is cut it out, get some butter, hot in the pants, see it off, put that nice brown on there. I mean. This year, another thing that I did, which I think really speaks to this conversation is we had a couple of add ons people, you know, so we’re going there’s three more people coming. I was like, well, I don’t think this turkey breast is enough, so I’m gonna pull out a turkey leg quarter as well. I don’t need to figure out how to execute this in a relatively small kitchen so that we have this extra bit of meat. And then I’m like, yeah, but we still need to make gravy. And so I thought, well, wait, what if I just made turkey leg gravy? You know, essentially just brown the turkey leg off, added some onions, added a little flour, and then added turkey stock in there. And then two days before we’re serving, I’ve got this turkey leg cooked perfectly with a ton of the slightly thickened turkey stock. It’s essentially two things, and one I’ve got my gravy and my turkey leg all in a pot, all ready to go. It’s cool. It’s going to be even better on the reheat because a lot of times these braised and slow cook things, once they cook, they kind of tighten up a little bit, and then once they cool down and sit that that moisture, that liquid will seep back into that muscle structure so that we’ll get even more tenderness. And that applies to a venison stew or anything you slow cook, Like if you cool it and then reheat it, you’ll notice that it’s more tender, it has more moisture to it. So instead of making gravy and having a turkey, you know, the turk, the dark meat part of the turkey, I just could buy those two things. And it’s like, if anybody needs gravy, just take a spoon and spoon that onto the mashed potatoes. And so now we’ve got our turkey breasts, we’ve got a turkey like quarter, we’ve got our ham, and it’s all essentially done. You know, there’s there’s I know what I need to do with that moving forward. I gotta seer off the turkey breasts. Beyond that, everything else is just coming out of the oven. Mass potatoes. You know, I make those the morning of just so that they’re fresh. I feel like reheating them is almost harder, but you know, just you know, organized get up that morning and peel the potatoes, put them in water, and then you know, just start them with plenty of lead time. That’s also something you need to think about. It’s like how well does this item hold like hot, you know, for for a while. You know, bashed potatoes in keep them hot for probably three or four hours, and they’re gonna be fine, just either on a low heat or in an oven, or just give them a little bit of a reheat. And so that’s an advantage that you have this with a side like that green bean castle again, you know, I had all the components of it, and I make mine totally from scratch. You know, I’ve got like it’s a turkey stock and milk sauce, like a Beshmel sauce that I’m gonna toss them. That’s essentially like a on him but a mushroom soup mixed goes. I blameed on my green beans off beforehand, had them cold, and all I had to do was a symbol my cold green beans. The sauce mix that up I do my I make my own fried onions too, and that was another thing I had to do that morning, you know. So so far the morning of I’m making mashed potatoes and I’m frying off these onions to go on top of the green bean castle. And then I need to chop up all my root vegetables. I’ve got sweet potatoes and beets and turnips and carrots out of the garden and I just chopped them all up awesome with a little bit of I can’t even remember it’s olive oil or duck fat, salt and pepper, and those are in the pain that I’m gonna serve them out of. Another trick, you know, like I’m constantly like cooking in the thing that I’m gonna serve it out of, so when it comes out of the oven, goes on the table, I’m not trying to spoon it into something else. Even the mashed potatoes, I’m mashing them in the pot that they’re gonna get served in. So there’s very little what we say plating the green bean castle. It’s already in the castle. There’s cold ready to go into the oven. So now it’s go time, like forty five minutes before we’re gonna sit down. You know, I’m thinking about pulling the turkey out. The root vegetables are in the oven, the mashed potatos are reheating, the green bean cast role is in the oven, the hand is in the oven. The rolls go into the oven. Ten minutes out, and you know, I have one person, two people maybe helping me, and all I have to do is slice the turkey, put that on a platter. We’re ready. We’re ready to go now. I mean, I hope people are listening and be like this guy, what I mean, I do think about these things in that way. It’s just like and sometimes I will alter the menu in order for it to be more easily executable, therefore more enjoyable. You know, I’m not going to put like, Okay, well, I’m also gonna retissary of goose out in the backyard while all this other stuff’s happen, because that’s just not gonna be much fun running in and out stressing about how good it’s going to be and worrying if all these people that don’t hunt are then going to be like that one’t very good dude, Yeah.
00:25:10
Speaker 2: Well, I think you know, regardless of the I think everybody will have their own version right of how complicated they want their meal to be or how much will be homemade versus you know a few things that are pre helped out. But I think what you just said there makes a lot of sense no matter where you are on the experienced list, which is spread out the timeline so that you have enough time to do this so that you don’t need to rush all at once, have that planned out. I love the scheduling idea, like the like the reverse engineering.
00:25:41
Speaker 3: I need to do that.
00:25:42
Speaker 2: I do that for a lot of other things in life, but I’ve never done a good enough job of doing that when you know, really trying to prepare with a meal. So that is a simple but huge suggestion.
00:25:56
Speaker 3: What do you what do you.
00:25:59
Speaker 2: Think about as far as menu choice? I guess what I’m trying to get is menu choice. I came from a family that looked at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner as basically the same thing. We replicated Basically Thanksgiving dinner happened again Christmas. My wife’s family thought that was atrocious and she couldn’t believe that we would have basically the same thing again for Christmas. Where do you stand on Thanksgiving versus Christmas?
00:26:25
Speaker 3: Menu choice?
00:26:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean personally, for me, Thanksgiving is at this point almost a set menu. I love the green bean cast role. You know, I have a garden and also green beans. We had tons of them so in the Turkey and sometimes I think it’s important to, you know, go with the tradition. I like that too. You know, I’m not going to do something crazy, and I think that’s it’s nice in the ham and so also I think that the the audience, it’s what they want, you know, It’s like they want these comforting things, and so I’m very much into that. Christmas, however, all bets are off. You know. I think I’m pretty sure that this year we’re gonna have a Chinese dumpling making party on the twenty fourth, and we’re gonna just kind of wing through a lot of the freezer. I’ve got tons of ground pork, which is perfect for dumplings. I’ve also got turkey and shrimp and fish and things like that. So Christmas for me, in New Year’s Eve as well or in New Year’s Day can be all over the board something, you know. But I do. I love the idea of just going in and doing these blowout dinners with game and dim sum is I mean, my daughter loves dumplings in Chinese dim sum where you just have ten different things and this is a pain in the butt, don’t get me wrong. There, it’d be a whole lot of work. It’s all done the day before and it’s done together, which is fun.
00:28:07
Speaker 2: You know.
00:28:07
Speaker 4: It’s like that, you know, it’s not and again back to like the essential point of this is enjoyment. It’s just like making the dumplings is going to be fun, you know. It’s like it’s going to require a lot of organization and a bunch of recipes. But we’ll have everything made by the twenty fourth, and then on twenty fifth we’re steaming, frying or baking everything off, you know, and it’s just all done and that’ll take a matter of forty five minutes. And the nature of that also is that it doesn’t all have to be ready at the same time either, which is cool. You know, you can kind of just do one thing and then the next you know, you can be in the kitchen with a glass of wine and just like at these it’ll be done in fifteen minutes. Let’s just have this now and everybody eats, and in the next next course, you know, a little bit of rabbit next, and then next up is as a flounder. Next up is some hog, followed by some more hog, and then more hog, more whatever. But you know, I think for me, I like to get a little creative with it. I mean, you think about the Italian Americ relitis. I have more of an American Italian tradition, and the feasts is seven fishes. You know, on Crystal Eve, you have seven different fish dishes, And I think that you can honor that tradition, but you could get as creative as you want. You know, I’d be like, just make seven different things with fish. What’s seven things? I’m like, I don’t know. But then within that concept, what I would do is say, like a couple of these things have to be cold and pre made, you know, so you’re not making all seven at the same time. One might be like a soup or something that’s a reheat. One might be something that you have to do in the moment, all of them new, and then you know, just like kind of stage it out so that you’re not having to be all hands on deck, moving around hot pants for with all these different things. But you know, I think it’s also an excuse to just you know, really get into it and get that enjoyment out of it and experience that, you know, and uh yeah, just use the game. You know what it is for us, it’s it’s it’s I think it’s really it’s great for celebrating, you know, like that that deer. You know, this pecan fed dough that we’re about to eat. It’s like, it’s going to be amazing. And let me tell you again, let me tell you about it. You know, it took a master of woodsman to pull this off.
00:30:37
Speaker 2: So yeah, I love your point though about how this should be almost an event in itself, right, And I think a lot of us, I’ll speak for myself, sometimes have been guilty of it just being a means to an end, right. But the way it sounds like you approach it is you really are looking at the cooking process as a part of the celebration itself. And so in doing a little bit of forward thinking and a little bit of preparing ahead of time, you set yourself up for the ability to do that. You can invite people to do it with you. You can have some wine while you’re doing. You’ve got some music playing that is part of the get together and that seems to make a lot of sense.
00:31:18
Speaker 4: Yeah. Do you like Do you like siding in your rifle?
00:31:21
Speaker 3: I do, Well, let me take it back.
00:31:23
Speaker 2: I’ll take it back sometimes if I’ve got friends there, it’s a fun thing. Otherwise it’s usually I get the job done so that I can get out there and hunt.
00:31:30
Speaker 5: To be honest, Yeah, yeah, if we if we start looking at this as like every step of the way, I mean, going on on X, you know, six months before that turkey huh, being like, I bet they’re right there.
00:31:46
Speaker 4: You know, that’s fun. It’s fun. Yeah. For me, scanning a deer, hogs whatever, very rough. You know, I do a ton of it. But for me particularly, I don’t know how many times i’ve you know, somebody else has gotten a deer and I’ll be like, hey, you want me to skin that? I love it. I love when you feel the skin off and you see steam come off of it, because making that it’s it’s moving from deer to food real quick. At that point, it’s like the temperatures coming down. And I find that very that’s enjoyable and so like if you can just that mindset of like, hey, I’m gonna enjoy this rather than not. And so many times it’s it’s just a choice for making. And if you set yourself up, you know, like hey, I’m gonna hang out with friends. We’re gonna we’re gonna map out this dinner, like we’re you know, let’s just create a real time, conceptual Christmas dinner here. We’re gonna just cook five dishes from one deer or one elk or something cool. It’s like everybody just gets together and like kind of brainstorms it, or maybe everybody takes a dish, but you but you know, now it’s like, hey, we’re not gonna all there’s there’s five dishes. We’ve got a four burner stove. Therefore we can’t all four be on the stove. So one person gets the stuff, one person gets the other. Months person’s gonna, uh, you know, have something a cold dish. You know, maybe somebody’s bringing some sausages and then the grill just on the porch. It’s gonna be going, you know, you map it out that way, and all of a sudden, you’re you’re in kind of a different realm of enjoyment. You know, you’re not in everybody’s way. You’ve got it mapped and it doesn’t have to be over complicated. I’m I’m I’m not. I’m trying not to overcomplicate. I’m trying to decomplicate these things with these with these suggestions. But I think you know it could be supremely fun.
00:33:37
Speaker 2: So let’s talk through a few more specific ideas as far as menu. I would love to start with deer and then maybe tackle a couple other categories, And just if you would be willing to throw out a couple of favorite preparations or suggestions that would fit well for this Christmas or New Year’s time frame. And of course these can be used any but we’re just thinking kind of a big special celebration.
00:34:03
Speaker 3: What would be your.
00:34:04
Speaker 2: Top handful of venison dishes that you know somebody might want to consider and look up the recipe and check it out.
00:34:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, we like to have prime rib at Christmas or all the time, right, But something you know in the medium rare z you know, like and also I like to think about that too, like different textures, different cooking methods, different outcomes. So maybe some medium rare beer or but by that I mean something that’s roasted or grilled. And then then coming from that idea, you could just continue on that prime rib rap and you could say, oh, like a nice horse radish cream, some mashed potatoes, some cream spinach would be really nice with that, and you could, you know, just all of a sudden, have like a really nice Christmas menu right there. You could also think, you know, we like Christmas has like kind of this spice note to it, so like your warm spices like cinnamon and clove, orange, maybe red wine, things like that, and you could think like, oh, well, we could make some sort of stew of venison, or we could do a pot roast, but just putting a little bit of these things in there to kind of just elevate it beyond like a salt and pepper pot roast, you know, just like a couple of clothes in they’re a little creating a cinnamon, a couple of bay leaves and a little orange zests, and all of a sudden, it’s a little more christmasy, you know. And then you know, you serve that alongside your medium rare grilled backstrap, or maybe you’re gonna grill off the high round off of an elk or something like that, or tender loin off of a mouse, and then you could have like a little braized slow cook upon it. And like I said earlier, that could be done, be done five days beforehand, you know, and just read it. And it’s also going to be good with the mashed potatoes. You know. You could serve some raw I love raw venison, you know, like a little just classic carpaccio or classic tartar or something, you know, like some some tindon bowing and you chop that up and mix it with them, a little bit of chopped caper and parsley, a little dab of mustard, and serve it on some little toasts you know beforehand, uh shank a neck ribs, you know, I just adore deer. I love venison. I think you could go in a lot of different directions, but what I would conceptually aim for mostly is, you know, if you’re comfortable with it, something raw, something grilled, medium rare, something slow cooked, maybe something brothy. Maybe you do a soup course, you know, something like a French onion soup with a deer shank in it. Yeah, it’s always really nice and it can be really done beforehand. There’s a lot of ways to delve in there. But you know, while you’re thinking about all your little stations where you’re cooking and trying to stay out of your own way, also think about the different textures and flavors and preparations to kind of get a diversity of that and that I’ll make that more meaningful. When we’re finding restaurant menus, you know, we never go like hot item, hot item, hot item, hot item. There might be something cold in there. It might something broathy, something that has more brightness and acidity, and that just makes a meal just more profound, you know, and your your senses are you know, you’re covering the spectrum. It’s like a song. You have base notes and you have trouble, you know, and you want to get everything in between.
00:37:37
Speaker 2: Are there any other, uh, for lack of knowing the proper vocabulary, these other diverse categories that you want to mix and match when thinking through a meal. Because that’s a great insight. And I’ve heard some of this talked about with different types of flavor types, and but I have not really understood it myself. Could you expand on that if there’s any other ways we should be thinking about this. Like you mentioned brothy or silky or smooth, I imagine there’s crispy or crunchy or different ways to think about. What else would fall into this this I don’t even know how to speak about it because I don’t know the right words. How else would you speak about this? What other types of diversity would you add into a meal like this?
00:38:22
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that’s a lot of it right there is you know in temperature, I mean temperature, texture, brightness. I really those are like the foundational things, ok there in creating something in a menu that’s diverse. And again, this can be as simple as you want, or you could just do a monster mixed grill of things, you know, like and like the shock and all platter that’s just got everything piled up on it. You know, You’ve got different cuts. So people are like, what’s this? So this is the tenderline, this is the backstrap. This is a little bit of soloin. These are two different sausages that we have. This is a slow cooked shank or a big chunk of neck right here that we put a slow cooker for seven hours, and it’s in there too. And so then now you’re looking at it and you’ve got you know, this is different from that a little bit. Then you’ve got the sausage and it can be all over the place, and then that’s fun too. And then that’s just one shot. You put it all on a platter and it’s you know, a little primal and people love stuff like that. And then you’ve just got some vegetable sides around it, and it can be that simple, you know, and it could all almost all be executed over a fire as well.
00:39:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so let’s talk birds. You mentioned your Thanksgiving turkey preparations. Would you add any other turkey ideas to the Christmas menu for folks to consider? Or upland birds or waterfowl? What are a couple other things to think about?
00:39:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean my first where I always go first with that would be some sort of pate or tureen, and I lose a lot of people with that. You know. I’ve got many many goals in life. One of them is to get everybody a little more are a little less afraid of those words. It doesn’t have to just be liver. I mean you could make a pat or a tureen out of ground pork or ground venus like no liver whatsoever. These are just words, you know, like basically just cold preparations. When I think birds, that’s one of the first things that I think of. It is like, that’s a great starter that can be made a week ahead of time and then just popped onto a plate.
00:40:38
Speaker 3: Done.
00:40:39
Speaker 4: Yea like reacts, which is like shredded, slow cooked. Any bird would be great, from a dove to a turkey, you can do that with and it’s really nice. I’ve got several recipes for it. There’s recipes that exists all over the place for things like that. Very simple. You serve that with a little bit of pickle, some some mustard, and some crackers or some toasted bread. First course done. Other than that, birds, I mean roasting birds whole. While I do it and I encourage it it, we might be kind of delving into a realm of creating some stress, which is how this whole conversation started. It’s like, are we gonna nail a whole roasted bird for this? And I’m not trying to dissuade anybody from doing that, but I’m just saying that the there’s a there’s a degree of peril that you could Yeah, with that, you know, it’s like you know, but you know, fortune favors the bold, So maybe you’re gonna nail you know, six roasted mallards for twenty people. That’d be really cool. I think that for me. When it comes to birds, separating them out, like I discussed with my own Thanksgiving menu, separating the legs from the breast, particularly with game birds, is a very good idea. It’s a fail safe. You know, you don’t have to worry so much about the legs being right on, and you can get those done way ahead of time. They can be cooked to perfection three, four or five days before go down, and then they’re cool and all you got to do is gently reheat them, and you know they’re there. You don’t to worry about it, And then that gives you the opportunity to nail the breasts, which is where the more precision needs to happen, whether that’s a duck breast where it needs to be very nicely seared and the fat needs to be crisped. But those duck legs are already separated and they’ve been slow cooked, and then you’re going to put them back together and everything’s going to be perfect. The medium or duck breast is going to be there, and then those almost shredding duck legs are already cooked. So no matter what the bird is, that would be my recommendation. You know, I just got done with a really fun pheasant hunt with Ryan Callahan up in South Dakota, and that’s you know, we’re also hunting, so this is I mean a similar topic, and that if you’ve been hunting all day, you don’t want to rush back to camp and be trying to throw together at dinner and then eat at ten pm. Right it’s the worst. I want food to be on the table at seven, so that it’s just like anybody want needs to go to bed, you know, if we’re going to get up early, it’s it’s doable. You know, you don’t want to be waiting on that same concept. So you know, you know, at lunch when we come back in for a minute, I would like run into the kitchen get the legs going from the pheasants, and then in the evening when we get back and it’s time to assemble everything, then I’m cooking the breast. The legs are done, you know, they’ve been slow cooking all day, those pheasants you know little runners. So I mean they legit took four or five hours to get tender, but I’ve got that done. You know, the legs are done and then the breasts take ten minutes maybe, and so that works out. That’s that’s a lesson in planning as well. So for bird Yes, i I’m an avowed bird eater. I love game birds. I love we eat a lot of dove, we eat a lot of turkey. I don’t live in a region with a lot of other upland birds, but when the opportunity arises, I like to do that. So I think the key concept here would be separate your breasts and legs, playing everything out. You know your your breasts are going to cook at the very end, and you can have your legs pre cooked. You know, I’m pre done.
00:44:28
Speaker 2: So if somebody wants to go the turkey row for Christmas, like my family would do. You mentioned you did the turkey breast for Thanksgiving. What is your number one best recommendable? How would you recommend someone prepare a turkey breast for a Christmas dinner? You mentioned you might mention it kind of generally earlier, but how would you kind of spell it out in detail to just nail it for that Christmas dinner wild turkey breast the Jesse Griffiths way.
00:44:58
Speaker 4: Yeah again, So I’m going to go, like, like I said, like that that souv method with the emerging circulator for me, like I said, it’s the only time I break it out, and I have not found a better way to cook turkey breasts. So one one hundred and forty degrees sounds a little low for turkey breast, but since it goes for three hours, it alters the texture and essentially pasteurizes it as well. It’s it’s not a complex method, you know, in a circulator. I don’t know how much they cost, you know, like anything, but it’s not like five hundred dollars. I think it’s probably around ninety dollars to buy this crazy little tube that mounts into a pot and then it maintains a temperature to very precise. You can do one hundred and forty point five degrees on it. I like one hundred and forty degrees for three hours for the turkey. And what that really enables me to do is pre season my turkey brust with you know this classic poultry seasonings of say age rosemary, parsley, maybe some celery, leaves, salt, pepper, garlic, lemon. You know, it’s like when you smell it, like that’s familiar. That’s poultry seasoning right there. It’s pre season it. And it can sit for two or three days sealed in that bag, and then that bag just drops into that water. Three hours later you pull it out. You don’t even have to see it. You could just slice it right there, and it is. It is the thinnest tip of that turkey breast and the thickest part are cooked exactly the same and they’re cooked perfect, very tender.
00:46:34
Speaker 2: And so you are not brining it. Is that what you’re saying, or is that technically sort of a brining method by putting it in that bag with salt water for so many.
00:46:42
Speaker 4: Days there’s no water involved, but as the salt reacts with that turkey breast, it is. And this is this is a funny thing for me. I’m always like complaining about people saying dry brine, because brine to me and implies a liquid. This is a dry brine. This is you know, you’re pree. Other thing you’re doing with that is you’re seasoning it throughout. So it’s not just season on the outside. So all of those flavors, the salt is, you know, the limon and the gar like, are hitching a ride with the salt to the interior of that turkey, so that when you cook it, you’ve got that flavor throughout, you know, and so it’s really nice. I think, you know, that’s probably for me, the ultimate way to cook turkey breast specifically, but also you could roast it seared off really beautifully. Another thing that I kind of a standard that I apply to a lot of poultry is that, like I particularly if you have the skin on poultry, I like to only cook it direct heat or in a pan on the skin side, and then I like to cook the flesh side in liquid. So typically it’ll be some sort of stalk from that same bird, you know. So to spell that out, it would be like, if you had a skin on turkey breast, what I would recommend would be to seer beautifully that skin side. Then when you flip it over, add stock to the pan, and so that flesh side is cooking more gently with moisture, and also you’re getting a lot of steam. You could throw that into the oven and then just monitor it, you know. You can either do that with a probe, a remote probe thermometer, or just check it, you know, and then once it hits your target temp, which I would say it would be one fifty if you’re cooking it conventionally, pull it out. And then you’ve also got the starting of your gravy, you know, or a sauce, and you just need to whisk it all a little butter to that and then it’s that’s done as well. But what you’ve only applied, that applied that dry heat to that one skin side, and it keeps it. It tends to eat poultry a lot more moist.
00:48:51
Speaker 2: I have a dumb question, but it just a rose and it’s something I’ve thought about while doing it over and over in the years, over the years, but have never really now what the correct way to do it is. If I’m checking the temperature on something like a turkey breast or a backstrap or something like that, should I be I feel so silly asking this. Should I be sticking that the momare in the same hole over and over or should be doing different holes every different time? Does that matter? Can I do it too much? Like it’s taking it in and out of the oven, or checking it over and over on the you know, on the skillet. Is that a bad idea in some kind of way. That’s two part question.
00:49:29
Speaker 4: I guess, yeah, and I mean I appreciate that I a food scientist might call me out on this and say, no, I’m wrong. I feel like it doesn’t matter that much. You definitely want to be hitting the thickest part, you know, So a turkey breast or any any bird, poultry breast is relatively tear drop shaped, and so there’s going to be one thickest part of that that you definitely want to be probing, because that’s the part that needs to be to signify the rest of us done. Yeah, I don’t think it matters that much. I mean, if you can, you know, if you can still see that little and just kind of keep going to the same one, you might experience some moisture loss of bubbling up out of there. But to minimize everybody’s stress, let’s just say that it doesn’t matter, and then let’s believe that too.
00:50:22
Speaker 2: Fair enough, all right, We’ve talked upland birds, we talked turkeys, we’ve talked deer.
00:50:29
Speaker 3: You alluded earlier to some ideas with you know, a ham. You mentioned a creative idea around.
00:50:36
Speaker 2: Fish, seven fish ideas for Christmas the Italian tradition. Are there any other you know, off the wall ideas or a fish or hog suggestion that you want to throw in the mix for people to be thinking about over the coming weeks. Or do you feel we’ve covered some of your favorites?
00:50:54
Speaker 4: Oh? No, I love I love the idea of talking about fish. You know, here in Texas for the longest time, but they started closing the flounder season in the month of November, which totally support you know, it protects them during their you know, vulnerable spawning time. There was several Thanksgivings where if I had caught a big flounder, we would eat that for Thanksgiving, big stuff flounder. You know. That was before I kind of got locked into the turkey and ham. But I still think that it’s it’s we’re going after the same thing here. It’s like something big and celebratory and you’ve got a nice twenty three inch flounder and you’ve stuffed it with fresh blue crab meat and peppers and corn bread and butter. That’s pretty celebratory and it feeds a ton of people. And it’s the whole thing too. You know, it’s impressive. People like all that whole flounder. You know, doing a whole roasted fish is very cool for something like that for a celebration. And now if you know, I will freeze a flounder, you know, for such things. If I get a nice, big one, I’ll freeze it, you know, be like oh, or even if it’s not a holiday, you know, just be people over. We might have just a whole big flounder. I think that uh, you know, fish that that cook whole nicely, you know, would things like flounder even I mean a lot of saltwater fish. You know, you could do big red fish on the halfshell, your rock fish from the West Coast, bigger ones, you know, you can roast those whole, and then also another you know, like up there with the Pataisan toureenes. I want to normalize fish soups too. You know. It’s like the rest of the world loves fish and broth and things like that, and there’s just exquisite recipes all over the world four fish soups, and they when done right, they can be beautiful, you know, really really nice. And I think people just they see those two words together and like nah, fish soup, and I’m like, yeah, but really listen to hear me out here. It’s like it’s you know, some potatoes and tomatoes and pepper are a really route you want to go with it, And it can also be made in a big batch. It could be made beforehand, and then you could just have your dice filets set aside and then literally the last minute or so of those get added in and so they’re cooked perfectly. And then you can start to throw other stuff in there. You can clams and muscles and shrimp and squid and all these other things can kind of go in there too, and then you’ve got a party paea. You know, like if you go out there and you know, like cook outside a big paya, throw whatever you want in there. You know, up squirrel, you know it’s awesome and piea. You know, just just think, you know a little bit creatively around that stuff, and don’t be afraid to do seafood. Seafood’s very celebratory and you know, the rest of the world getting somewhat in agreements in agreements with me on that. And then the hogs, you know, we we have. That’s the very prolific here. I tend to hunt a lot of hogs, and if we get a particularly beautiful one, then it can be a really nice centerpiece. The one that’s got a lot of fat can roast nicely like a nice dry heat roast. Whether that’s in the oven, you’re also throw it on the smoker cook it. So you could do a whole arm roast a whole big shoulder. You could do a ham, you know, in many different styles, not just the way that I describe, like brining. You can just slow roast it being put it in a crock pond. And then there’s also things like porktto where you could bone out the backstrap and leave the belly attached and roll that up, tie it and roast it. Got a rescue for that in the hog book. There’s all kinds of stuff hogs are. Hogs are really easy to play with if you’ve got a particularly nice one, like if it’s got a lot of fat on it, and they lend themselves nicely to cooking large pieces of them, if they do have that intrinsic fat and so, and most people love pork, you know, a really good fat wild pig could be absolutely delicious and slow cooking things, you know, like a big roast like that. I know, hey, that’s going to take six hours, but also it’s gonna hold well for another six hours after that, you know, so I’ve got so much leeway with that. Like if we’re eating it too, it just means that I need to have that in at eight you know, I’ve got a pre season in the refrigerator, a big arm roast. It’s in the refrigerator, it’s ready to go at eight am. Just goes right in the oven, you know, at two o’clock, no worries, it’s just done. You know. It’s so easy. But you know I’ve seasoned at twenty four hours ahead of time. I had it in a refrigerator in the pan. I’m going to serve it out too, you know, again like cutting down on those steps.
00:56:12
Speaker 2: Is there is there a resource for people, like a like the best book or something that you would ever recommend to someone that talks about just those simple foundational principles of cooking and planning, you know, the stuff that I’m sure you guys learned in the first week or two of culinary school or something like just the basics the foundational skills or things to be thinking about that if anyone was out there and just thinking, man, I got to figure out my my my cooking game, you know, not specific to anyone recipe or cut, but more so just you know, this foundational stuff you’ve kind of been referring to over time.
00:56:50
Speaker 3: Is there anything like that?
00:56:53
Speaker 4: I’m trying to think there’s there’s books out there that talk a lot about more venu or restaurant than younts like that. I can’t think off the top of my head about like a conceptual approach more for the home cook. I’m sorry, you know, that’s okay. I think the Hogbook I don’t talk about this with a laser focus so much, but a lot of these ideas are presented in there, and I talk about you know, packaging and pre looking, like how things can just be cooked the day ahead or a couple of days ahead and then reheat it. And but I think, you know, it’s it is an essential thing, you know. And sorry, I might have to loot back with an answer, but I can’t think of anything.
00:57:39
Speaker 3: Well, well, that’s okay.
00:57:42
Speaker 2: I’ve just found myself over and over again hearing you and thinking myself, jeez, I wish that I knew some of these simple things that probably seems so simple and you don’t even think about to yourself, but the average everyday person out there is like, oh yeah, simple but makes a lot of sense and makes my life a lot easier to make my u you know, the final product probably a lot better. And I guess that’s a perfect way to kind of wrap this up, because what I wanted to do, and I was going to leave with this, but now we’ll end with it instead is I do want to talk foundational principles, but we’re going to zoom out away from the holidays and just talk about veniceon in particular, since most folks listening to this that’s probably their number one and I would just love to hear to kind of close up our discussion here today. The three commandments for preparing venison from Jesse Griffiths. If you had like three hard fast rules or pillars, key things that you must never you know, forget, what would those three things be?
00:58:41
Speaker 4: Jesse? Yeah, okay, I mean yeah, I’m gonna have to think of these off the top of my head. The number one field care. You know, everybody says, you know, like how you know that it’s true. It is really true. I think that the transition of life to food has to be monitored as best as possible. But it’s also got so many of the variables. You know. I’m here in Texas. You know, the day I shot that dough, it was eighty two degrees, and that’s common, that could happen in February. So I’m in a way different situation than somebody in Wisconsin, you know. But after the fact, after that hide is off or to lead the high hot, let’s just after the gods are out for me. The key thing is cold and dry, like keeping that animal obviously as cold as it possibly can get, but also as dry as possible. Like down here, we tend to throw things into coolers full of ice to quote unquote bleed them, and I think it’s pretty detrimental to the how the meat turns out. No other meat industry in the world does that, you know, you know, kill uh, you know, commercial bee for domestic pork and then put them in an ice bath. It doesn’t happen. They keep everything cold and dry for the reason. So I think keeping stuff as cold and dry as possible, making minimal cuts until it’s time to butcher, you know, allowing rigor mortis process to go all the way through. But that’s defined by the size of your cooler and a lot of other things. You know, these are optimal, you know things. I understand that the real world situations get weird and you get bad shots. Just like there’s a bullet, it’s a spine, it goes down and it Nike’s the stomach. You know, it’s just like you gotta rense it off, you know. You know, let’s just we’ll just work through that. But as as a rent, well keep it cold and.
01:00:43
Speaker 2: Dry before you go any further, sorry, before you go any further than that. One one quick follow up on that note, speaking of like real world situations, right, I know, the perfect situation would be able to have a walk in cooler or somewhere where you could keep that deer hung at a consistent temperature.
01:01:00
Speaker 3: But in the real world, a lot of us have to hang our deer.
01:01:03
Speaker 2: If we’re not you know, if we’re gonna keep it around for a while and not gonna deal with it right away, we’re gonna hang it up, you know, on the back deck, or hang it up on a tree in the backyard, or maybe you have somewhere you can hang it in your garage, But temperatures are fluctuating. So even now when I know it’s gonna be cold enough here, but it might get really cold, like it might be five and that deer is going to freeze all the way through. But then if I want to leave it hanging for a while, then a week later and it warms up to thirty eight or forty two, well now it’s gonna thaw. But then it’s gonna drop back down to ten. I’m freezing, I’m thawing, I’m moving around. Is that Is that okay to do that for a while, to keep it hanging or would you say if it’s not gonna be consistent, you should you should deal with it some other way.
01:01:44
Speaker 4: I think that you know, you’re you’re forced into that. You know, like there’s not much that the that I can offer because that’s the situation you’re in. You know, our situation down here is so different. You’re like, you have to hang it. I’m like, we we can’t do that. We can. We can hang things overnight sometimes, you know, but I mean, it’s it’s rare for the temperatures here to be uh, for to go four days you know where the temperatures aren’t going to get over forty pretty rare.
01:02:17
Speaker 5: Yeh.
01:02:18
Speaker 4: So I’m trying to craft like a really blanket answer to that. I think again, you know, Lloyd bliping back to the very start of the conversation as far as like stress and how much we put on ourselves. You know, if when you’re dealing with it, that’s usually the best thing. You know. It’s just like if it’s going to freeze solid, you’re going to experience a lot of the cellular structure of all those muscles. It’s going to burst a little bit, and you’re gonna have some moisture loss, and you’re going to freeze and thaw and maybe freeze and thaw again. Is it optimal? No, But we’re this is a real world situation. So I would say it’s fine. And it’s working for you as well. So there’s a real key point there. It’s like you still like eating deer. You’re you’re eating deer safely and it’s not affecting your your venison consumption experience. Therefore, I would it is not broke, don’t don’t change it. So walletill here that we have to store things in coolers almost universe unless you have a walk in I don’t, and so I have to store things in coolers. And so I’m in a totally different situation of keeping things cold until butchery day. And you know, people was like, well, how how far until butchery day? And I’m like, well again, you know, you got a job. You know you might not be able to butcher for a week, or you might be forced into butcher in the next day, and like, well what’s best? And I’m like, listen again, will stress yourself out. You got to do what you got to do. If you have to butcher, you dear twenty four hours after your skin and gut it. None. By that, I mean cut it into all the cuts that’s going to that are gonna be packaged. You got to do it. But to loot back, I mean I think the core tenet here is cold and dry. You’re definitely maintaining that. Yeah, cold to an extreme? Yes, Okay, wow? God is that airflow? And I think that airflow is key for us. It’s it’s this battle of keeping things dry and an iced cooler where we’re dealing with not only compensation and things like that. I use food great bags to wrap deer and then keep them in one hundred and sixty core cooler packed is as much ice as I possibly can get, and that’s how I achieve success with the Can we move on?
01:04:35
Speaker 3: Yeah?
01:04:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, particularly you’re grilling cuts trying to get a little age on them. You know, if you are processing, you know, within twenty four to forty eight hours of that animal dyeing and it’s going right into the freezer and then coming out and going on the grill as soon as it’s thought gonna be good, you know. But what’s really good as if you can put a little bit of let’s call it dry age, refrigerated age onto venison cuts, particularly grilling cuts, so your backstraps, any of your leg steaks, tenderlines, things like that. If you can get well tender one is not so much you’re said there, but a little bit of age on there, it can be exceptional. And what it does just really gets the more tender and I think that you’ll it’s really like peak experience with with vedicin is when you have a backstrap or if you’re if you’re not worried about CWD and you can cut like bone in steaks like a big porterhouse where you’ve got some tenderline and the backstrap on one steak. I’ve aged up to four weeks. I’ve eaten medicon that you know, I joke about this is I don’t know if the guy forgot about it or if he purposely aged it for six months, a whole leg in a refrigerator, refrigerator, oxidized and black on the outside. I trimmed all that off, and then what we had were these describably tender leg steaks that were not They were not cheesy, they were not like strongly flavored gaming. None of those worked beautiful, absolutely in the tenderness of i’d say tendeel on their backstrap. So if you can get a little bit of age on it and by put it on a plate and your refrigerator for two days before you grill it and just kind of pat it dry, that’s that’s a start, you know, That’s that’s you know, key, you know, and.
01:06:34
Speaker 3: I think you’re a deal.
01:06:37
Speaker 4: Hmm. I really enjoyed the U twenty eight day age venison, and I did it in my refrigerator again. I you know, I live in a little rental house and I don’t have I’ve got I do have a freezer, and I have a home refrigerator, so I just had a plate with a little rack on it that I you know, had a couple back straps and all my porterhouses cut and I just age those for as long as I could. It just kind of experimental and twenty.
01:07:08
Speaker 3: So there’s there’s nothing that can go wrong with that.
01:07:12
Speaker 4: I can go wrong. But you know, somebody had a friend text me yesterday and he said, mere, this happened so much. Can I eat this? It’s it’s a hog, you know, there’s a little bit of some a little bit of green happening. And I’m like, how does it smell? He’s like, smells fine, It’s fine. I’m gonna really regret that if I if I could afford ley have a lawyer like what do you call? You know, hoone call or whatever, and he would be like, dude, don’t don’t say that. But you will really know in almost all food cases when you should not eat it, your brain is like no, no, non oxidation, and that black out exterior that that will happen from just aging casually in a refrigerator. Once you get that off and you look at the inside of it, and you’d be like, looks great. In fact, you smile it and you’re like, I really want to eat this, you know. I think you’ll know. But I would say, you know, the twenty eight might be a little extreme. Maybe seven days, maybe four days, you know, just to get a little dry on it and start that process of aging, and then you’ll really notice like some different I just think the flavor is so much better, and then the textures gets a lot better too.
01:08:33
Speaker 2: I’ve heard some people say something similar about being able to get a little bit of age in the freezer and mention that man like a backstrap that’s been the freezer for three years. You know, as long as you don’t have some freezer, as long as you trim off the freezer burm, that can maybe be better too.
01:08:49
Speaker 3: Is there anything to that.
01:08:51
Speaker 4: I can’t speak to that I could see that happening? Again, I don’t even I wouldn’t even be to define what the scientific process of that happening. But there is basically a degradation happening. So with dry agent, you’ve got these enzymes that are naturally present in the meat kind of working on itself. You stop that clock when you go into the freezer. So something different would be happening, and I couldn’t find what that would be. To kind of circle back to the freezing comment I made earlier, It might have something to do with the molecular but the cell breakdown of as those freezing causes things to expand. As those things break over time, you might just have the protein structures breaking down a little bit more. That’s a guess. I can see it anyway, when you have successes like that. And I love the challenge of it too, because some people say you can’t eat meat that’s been present more than so when it’s like, oh, hey, you haven’t had you haven’t eaten venison until you’ve eaten three year old freezer burn venison. And I’m like, I’m like, that’s cool. I mean, that’s why I was doing this.
01:10:00
Speaker 2: You know.
01:10:00
Speaker 4: It’s like and you’re always leving things and challenging, and you know you shouldn’t take everything that I say to be in the gospel either. You know. It’s like, these are my experiences, and I do love hearing success around it because what again back to my core pillar of enjoyment. What it means is people are interested and excited about eating game and if they’re busting out that three year old backstrap and being like that was really good. I’m like, cheers, man, we’re winning here. You’re enjoying it. You’re still enjoying it. You’re in the game.
01:10:31
Speaker 3: Yeah all right.
01:10:32
Speaker 2: So so last venison, tenant, last last suggestion? Do you have any final one?
01:10:42
Speaker 4: Yeah? Cut it like you want, you know. I I butcher my own dear. I teach classes on it. You know, butcher is a real is a real thing. People sometimes like they’ll be like, oh, you must, you know, do all these crazy cuts, and I’m like, no, not really. You know. I was talking to friend the other day and he was just like, yeah, that’s just that’s grind pile. And I’m like, why do we Why do we say it like that? You know, why you spice? We want the grind pile like it’s that is not I mean to me. I mean, I love breakfast sausage, particularly made with venison. I love burgers, like cheese burgers, particularly with venison. And I think that you know, we’ve attached some you know, within the subculture, a little bit of embarrassment around the grind pile or what it is that we enjoy, or if you have kids, like are they going to be most inclined to eat you know, a quick pasta sauce made with some ground venison or pants sausage. And the answer is probably yes. Or if are you able to kind of sarititiously replace beef with then in this form or that form and get people to eat game, which is just a win win, then that’s what you should do. And so like a lot of times, I’m breaking down a deer and it is backstraps. We eat a lot of cutlets. So the I round top around bottom round gets sliced down and pounded because I love that and my daughter loves that and that’s what she really wants to eat the most. And that’s how I win in this situation. And I don’t feel bad about it. You know. Yeah, the grind pile when I’m on my back porch cutting up a dough is it’s going to be large and yeah, so yeah, I don’t think you’re gonna put that little bit of stink on grind pile, you know, on their prase. I’m like, oh no, I own it. It’s cool, it’s fine, you know, if you want to grind the whole deer, I don’t care if you’re going to eat the whole deer. That’s cool, you know. So you know, again that’s kind of falls into the enjoyment category. But you know, cut for yourself. You know, cut it and portion it and sizes that work for you. That’s also important. You know. It’s like if you if you’re dining alone, then portionate and single servings. If you’re feeding eight people, then portion it, you know, subsequently like that, and so that’ll make your life a lot easier. So when you’re cutting your own deer, do it for yourself and don’t be like, oh, I have to cut a bunch of steaks off this because I saw on Instagram, you know, this whole array of steaks, and you know, but I really, you know, I just like breakfast sausage and make thirty pounds of breakfast sausage. It’s cool, you know, it’s good.
01:13:39
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, the grind pile gets a lot of action. To my family with a five year old and a seven year old boy, there is a lot of ground and we eat the back out of it.
01:13:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it’s good.
01:13:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, So Jesse, Uh, there’s so much that you have to share. I mean, you’ve you’ve shared a lot just in an hour. But I know, you’ve got a lot more great books. I own two of them. I probably need to get the third one.
01:14:04
Speaker 3: I don’t.
01:14:04
Speaker 2: I don’t get many hog hunting opportunities, but one of these days I will. And then don’t have a good reason to dig into the Hogbook, but you do amazing work. Folks need to need to see it if they are not already, where can they go to connect with you to pick up a copy of any of your books or see anything else you’re working on.
01:14:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the Turkey Book and the Hogbook, you know, lead self published and distribute. You can get them through meat Eater, so that they are probably the only other online outlet to get the Hogbook and the Turkey Book. And then the rest of the Hogbook and the Turkey Book are also available on our website, which is the Wildbooks dot com. And I also have a subscription platform that it’s pretty heavy on hog butchery. It’s got a little bit of turkey and blue crab and dove as well content on there. So it’s a subscription but it’s got hours of video on there, and we’re about to add a bunch more of hog butchery, so we will have the entirety of basically a companion to the Hogbook, so four different hog butchery situations plus recipes and essays and things like that on there, and that’s called the Pedernal Projects. So it’s the p E D E r n a Lproject dot com. You can also get there through my Instagram page and so forth. But it’s a subscription and it allows people to watch the videos that are kind of run parallel to that in the Hog Book and in the restaurants here in Austin to di do it. We serve a lot of paral hog. We serve some odd ad and some nil guy antelope and then things like that, as well as all kind of delicious vegetables and other meats. Yeah, if you’re ever in Austin, you got to come do that because when you come to Texas to hunt pigs, you’re gonna want to come to Austin and do that. So, but you definitely need to come help us with that problem. We do not the state of Texas does not charge non resident hunters for any type of license to come hunting. You need no documentation whatsoever. Opportunity, Yeah, and the limit is all of them. So whenever you’re ready, get down here and help us out. They are absolutely delicious and available.
01:16:26
Speaker 2: So yeah, well you need to make that happen. Jesse, and I just want to thank you again.
01:16:31
Speaker 3: Really really enjoyed our chat. I have appreciated all of your work over the years.
01:16:35
Speaker 2: I have learned a lot in the past now again today, So thank.
01:16:38
Speaker 3: You and keep with the good work.
01:16:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it too.
01:16:44
Speaker 2: All right, and that’s a wrap. Thanks for being here. Best of luck with your upcoming hunts as we kind of round.
01:16:51
Speaker 3: Out this year.
01:16:51
Speaker 2: Best of luck with the upcoming big feast that I’m sure you’re preparing now after this chat, hopefully you’re emboldened to try some new things, to step out, step up, and elevate your wild game cooking this holiday season.
01:17:06
Speaker 3: Enjoy it.
01:17:07
Speaker 2: Like Jesse said, the key thing is to enjoy this process, to have fun with it.
01:17:11
Speaker 3: That’s been the theme all year.
01:17:13
Speaker 2: I guess we’ve talked about that for years now as I’ve been recentering much of my focus on that, and it makes sense that the same thing should be the case in the kitchen.
01:17:22
Speaker 3: So enjoy it.
01:17:24
Speaker 2: Enjoy the holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year’s and until next time, stay wired to hunt.
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