Published: March 13, 2009 10:28 pm      

More deer stew, please

They, whoever they are, say that we learn from our mistakes or at least we are supposed to.

I think sometimes they are correct.

This past week I learned from a mistake. It was a good learning experience.

One evening I took a bag of deer meat from the freezer. I thought I was grabbing a bag of venison that was pre-cut in cubes for making stew. Instead, I had retrieved a bag that had been pre-cut into thin slices for making jerky.

I put it in the refrigerator to thaw overnight.

Next day, I get the carrots, potatoes, onions and celery cut and grab the meat bag so that I can brown it before placing everything in the slow cooker.

There are a lot of ways to make venison stew, but often I simply buy a bag of McCormick’s Beef Stew Mix, read the directions and go from there. However, because I don’t like stew to be overcrowded with meat, I usually cut that ingredient down from the suggested amount.

Anyhoo, it wasn’t until I opened the meat bag that I discovered I was primed for one kind of cooking, but had the ingredients for another.

So, I simply used the jerky meat to make stew and what a revelation.

After all the deer I have hung on meat poles and sizzled in frying pans you would think I might be smarter. But I guess we all get in habits.

What I discovered that these thin slices of meat made the best deer stew ever. Before browning them, I cut the long strips into pieces. For comparison, I’d say they were the general size of a half-dollar coin, though slightly thicker.

After six hours in the slow cooker on high speed and a taste test, it dawned on me that the thin meat had totally absorbed the stew mix flavor, something that doesn’t happen when the meat is cubed at about a half to three-quarters of an inch. As you might suspect, it also made the meat more tender; melt-in-your-mouth tender, in fact.

As those of us who have applied incisors and molars to the hind quarters of bucks know, deer meat is more dense than moo meat; less fat too.

From now on, my deer stew meat will be sliced thin. I’m thinking, as well, that baked steak will be cut more thinly than in the past; say three-eighths of an inch instead of three-quarters.

I’m sure many of you out there already knew these things. However, I am easily thrilled and just had to share this little revelation from our kitchen. As I have written before, the care of the venison and the cooking of it is as important to me as the bagging of it. If you bagged enough of it, you can extend your deer hunting season fun all the way to the next hunt via your crock pot and your taste buds.

Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.