Oh Deer

My relationship with deer has always been a loving one. It probably began like many of you with Bambi running through the thicket with Thumper. In the 90's - I fell in love with Deary Lou, one of Hello Kitty's buds. And in my 30's, Ive discovered a love for searching for vintage Japanese Deer statues on Ebay. Truth be told, I didn't see myself eating deer anytime soon. In fact, a year ago and I probably wouldn't have even eaten it. Call it Venison if you will but its still Bambi to me.

Fast forward to modern day Mindy - the girl striking out to grow her own veggies, cook something interesting with them, can them, share them, take photos of them, ... blog about them. It just didnt seem right to turn down the offer of "a huge hunk of deer from Kansas" - a coworker offered me. Im trying to be self sufficient, right?

Last week, my freezer looked more like an exotic game ranch - Yak, Bison, Porkbelly, Crab, Shrimp, Whole Chicken and "HHOD" - aka: Huge Hunk of Deer. There was no more room! Something had to be done. It was time to get my jerky on.

The first "different" thing I noticed was when defrosting the "HHOD" - it bled. Like, a lot. For 2 days. I guess I should point out here that the people who gave us the meat most likely cut it up on their kitchen table, stuffed into ziplock bags, and marked it DEER. Absolutely nothing wrong with that - its just when its processed by a ... processor, there is a lot less blood and fur for that matter.

You may know that I have issues touching raw meat so, my husband was kind enough to jump in to be my butcher. Once the "HHOD" was defrosted and rinsed - we were amazed by the sheer amount of it all!

I found this great recipe for deer jerky that had over 50 - 5 star reviews.

Ingredients

* 1 pound boneless venison roast
* 4 tablespoons soy sauce
* 4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
* 2 tablespoons liquid smoke flavoring
* 1 tablespoon ketchup
* 1/4 teaspoon pepper
* 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
* 1/4 teaspoon onion salt
* 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Slice meat into long strips, 1 inch wide and 1/8 inch thick. In a large releasable plastic bag, combine soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, liquid smoke, ketchup, pepper, garlic powder, onion salt and salt. Place meat in, and close bag. Refrigerate overnight. Knead occasionally, to evenly distribute marinade.

2. Preheat oven to 160 degrees F (70 degrees C). Place a pan on the bottom of oven to catch drips, or line with aluminum foil.
3. Place meat strips on a rack so that they do not touch each other, and dehydrate for 6 to 8 hours in the oven, or until desired consistency is achieved.

** We used our Food Dehydrator instead of the oven method. I dried mine for 14 hours - it was a bit overdry so if I made it again, I would do 12 hours.

I really enjoyed how the jerky came out!

There was so much left over from our "HHOD" - that I tossed the rest of the meat with olive oil, seasoned it and baked it with celery, carrots and onion. I then chopped that up and we used the rest for a lean tasty dog food for the week. We had two very happy and well fed pups!