Title: "Gamey" Tasting Game, How To Fix- Part 3
Categories: Game Venison Info
Yield: 1 Servings

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Don't forget to tie off the bung and find and *carefully* find and remove the bladder, or your meat will be unsanitary and smell funny. I once clumsily dropped a deer bladder I had just carefully removed, and it burst on my tennis shoes. The results were really unpleasant. Dispose of the bladder carefully and don't let go of the tube on the other end until you have a wastes bucket to dump it it.

Likewise, cut off the bung (the intestine leading up from the rectum) about eight inches from the bottom and tie it off carefully, after squeezing its contents to clear the area of your cut. Tie off both ends with a standard square knot. Without letting the cut ends touch flesh, dump the stomach and attached guts into the waste bucket and push the tied-off bung end through the rectum. Yes, I know this is gross. Do it anyways. Wear latex gloves and discard them when you are done touching these less than sanitary parts of the carcass. Take your knife and cut out the deer's entire rectum, with some flesh around it, including the tied-off bung. Carefully discard this unclean bit, without letting it touch the meat. Wash your hands. Wash any meat which has come in contact with this yuckiness very thoroughly, and cut out any discolored or suspect pieces. Discard the guts and waste away from your butchering area.

You can then fish around and grab a tough bundle of flesh up past the heart that is attaching the rest of the more solid innards to the carcass. Cut it as high up inside as you can reach, and pull. The whole mess will come down, so have another clean sack ready. This mess, except the green bubble attached to the liver, is good eating - don't waste it. Wash it well and save it on ice. Remove the nasty green gallbladder from the liver carefully and pitch it along with stomach and intestines.

You may wish to be extremely anal retentive about using all of your kill, and try to get something out of the deer's less pleasant parts. I used to be. Two experiences washing out deer stomach and intestines and using them in haggis and sausage was enough to convince me to never mind. They take hours to wash free of ick and they don't taste all that wonderful anyhow. The only use for deer gall that I know of is authentically medieval ink, which you make by mixing in pounded oak ashes. Not in my food processor, thanks.

Take a hose to the inside of the carcass at this point, or if you are field butchering away from a water source, wipe down with a damp cloth thoroughly. Dry the meat with a clean towel before proceeding. If the day is hot, throw some ice in the carcass instead and skip the dry towel - the moisture content of the meat might suffer, but the temperature is more important.

At this point, you have a whole mess of tasty and hopefully clean-smelling meat ready for your processing. You can hang at this stage if you like (I don't, especially with a doe whose hindquarters are covered in nice yellow fat - mmmm!), but you can also proceed to dismember into neat freezer packages.

I seperate the meat into: shanks for long braising (venison osso bucco is delish!), two shoulders, two hams which I usually bone out, a whole saddle roast (that's the butt end minus the bare bone you have left after the legs are gone), a crown tenderloin roast with the backbone split in half and about 6" of the ribs still on, two slabs of ribs for immediate BBQ slathered in homemade sauce, the neck for stewing and the flank for scrap. You can further reduce the saddle or the crown tenderloin roast into chops; it depends on how many folks you want to invite over to eat.

Now, all of this is *damn* fine eating and the only parts I would turn into burger or sausage would be the flank, the neck and the shoulders of a lean deer. (A fat deer makes a nice shoulder roast!). The innards are nothing to waste, either. Stuffed deer heart with breadcrumbs and onions and bacon is marvellous, and if you're a medieval cook like I am, haggis is always in the works when I get hold of a nice chunk of internals that includes spleen and liver and lungs. Boiled deer tongue is not unlike beef tongue if you are fond of such things, and you can also use the jowl and palate meat in slivers in any French recipes calling for ox palate. Warning: skinning a deer head really and truly sucks, so less than die-hard medieval recreation enthusiasts may choose to skip this step.

One small warning: the kidneys of a deer can range from flavorful to pungent and disagreeable; you can either discard or soak in milk overnight to reduce ammoniacal odor and taste. The kidneys of a rutting buck aren't even worth discussing; no marinade can save them. There is only one recipe worth thinking about for buck kidneys in my opinion, and it is this: bake the kidneys of a buck underneath a brick in the oven for 8 hours. When finished, discard the kidneys and eat the brick, which will taste better.

Even the bones of a deer can provide some amazingly good eating. Cut the bones into fairly small chunks (1-2") or have the butcher do it for you, roast them until lightly browned and boil down with the scrap meat for 4-6 hours for venison demiglace, which stores forever in the freezer and adds amazing flavor to all kinds of dishes.

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