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Deer are regularly hunted across the United States, but some people pay exorbitant prices for imported deer meat:
Wintertime is a special time of year at Cafe Berlin, located just a few blocks from the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. This is when they roll out their menu of wild game, such as deer, wild boar, and quail. Regular customers have come to expect it. "They ask, weeks in advance, 'When does the wild game menu start? When does it start?'" says James Watson, one of the restaurant's chefs. And the star of that menu is venison. The restaurant serves venison ribs, venison loin, even venison tartar. It's food that takes your mind back to old European castles, where you can imagine eating like aristocracy.
You won't see venison in ordinary supermarkets. At Wagshall's, a specialty food shop in Washington, I found venison loin selling for $40 a pound. This venison comes from farms, usually from a species of very large deer called red deer. Much of it is imported from New Zealand.
Yet there's a very different side to this luxury meat. Less than two hours drive from Washington, Daniel Crigler has a whole freezer full of venison that he got for free. Crigler's home in central Virginia is surrounded by woodlands full of white-tail deer. For Crigler, they are venison on the hoof. And he loves hunting. "I love the outdoors. I love being out. But I also like to eat the meat," he says, chuckling. It's pretty much the only red meat he eats. And as he shows off the frozen cuts of venison in his freezer, this crusty man reveals his inner epicurean. "That's a whole loin, right there," he says. "What I like to do with that is split it open, fill it full of blue cheese, wrap it up in tin foil and put it on the grill for about an hour and a half."
And here's the odd thing about this meat, so scarce and expensive in big cities; so abundant if you're a hunter in Madison County, Virginia. Hunters like Crigler kill millions of deer every year in America, but the meat from those animals can't be sold: It hasn't been officially approved by meat inspectors. Also, the government doesn't want hunters to make money from poaching. Yet hunters are allowed to give it away, and many do. As a result, venison occupies a paradoxical place in the world of food. It's a luxury food that turns up in notably non-luxurious places.
Related: Arby's is Selling Venison Sandwiches in Six Deer-Hunting States
Deer in Multiple U.S. States Test Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease, Leading to Restrictions
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:24AM (15 children)
There are too many. They have no natural predators there. they were introduced around 1900.
They kill 50 people each year because they're to dumb to stay off the roads.
The meat tastes like very lean beef
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:32AM
Moose vs newfies, hm...
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:21AM (8 children)
Yes, because an invasive species killed the predators. That species was humans. We did it without much (some would argue, "any") thought for follow-on consequences. And now the natural balance is upset.
It's not like you'd expect them to understand roads, is it? I mean, come on. Those deaths are entirely our own responsibility.
It most certainly does not taste like beef — lean or otherwise — to me. I mean, it's lean meat, but it's not like lean beef. Lean beef has a completely different flavor. Not great — no lean meat is very good — the fat content is a large component of the overall taste. Note a remark in this thread where someone said they like to fry it in butter... add fat to improve flavor, pretty much a given for most people's tastes.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 04 2018, @02:39PM (7 children)
Moose is tough. Really fibrous. Closer to bear meat in that respect than beef. I would choke it down in a stew that had been cooking for a very long time, but not as a steak or other cut of meat. The upside is that if you can stomach the stuff there's a whole lot of it per animal. They are big.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday January 05 2018, @04:23PM (6 children)
The answer to that might be sous vide [amazon.com] cooking.
We do it with beefsteaks, and the results are outstanding. Relatively tough steaks come out tender and delicious; afterwards we subject them to a (very) quick browning in a frying pan with some various sauce components to out taste, and the result is as good as anything I've ever tasted. The process really makes the meat tender.
The downside is you have to think ahead - sous vide takes hours - the upside is there's no turning or worrying and the process produces very consistent results even with quite a large variance in total time - as long as you've been cooking for enough (or IOW, a minumum) time.
You can get any degree of doneness you like with 100% predictability. It's the only way we cook steaks any longer. Anyway, I find it very worthy. You might as well.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday January 05 2018, @04:50PM (5 children)
We got a sous vide for Christmas and I'm still trying to figure out how to use it for best results. I've tried chicken, pork chops, and pork tenders (can't have beef anymore) and it turns out tender, but seems dry. I've tried browning it at the end, and not, and the former is definitely better but still a bit dry. Any tips or tricks to know about?
I have been using ziplock bags because we don't have a vacuum-sealer and online people say ziplocks are fine. I've tried salting the meat in the bag, and not. I've also tried doing the cooking time exactly, and doing it longer.
I've read some people raving about how amazing the results are with sous vide, but we haven't achieved that yet. Or, maybe it's a measure of how badly most people cook?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday January 05 2018, @05:21PM (2 children)
My lady (the cook) is not up and about yet, but when she graces me with her presence, I'll post a specific reply about any process tips.
Curious - what's the issue?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday January 05 2018, @07:26PM (1 child)
Steak is my favorite. One day, out of the blue, I woke in agonizing pain after eating a steak for dinner the night before. I went into my doctor, who diagnosed gout. Sure enough, thereafter every time I ate beef in whatever form, the crippling pain returned. Lamb and buffalo, thankfully, don't cause it, but lamb is expensive and buffalo is difficult to get in New York.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:11AM
That's very unfortunate... our sympathies (Deb's here too ATM)
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday January 05 2018, @06:26PM (1 child)
Okay, she says:
She also cooks mushrooms this way. She puts them, Worcestershire (powder, not sauce, from Amazon... vacuum sealers will suck liquid right out of the bag, so everything needs to be either frozen or dry) at 185ºf for about an hour. They come out crazy good.
No matter how well we've vacuum sealed mushrooms, as they cook, they release air, so they want to float, so you have to really weigh them down.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday January 05 2018, @07:28PM
Thanks!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday January 04 2018, @12:40PM (3 children)
For those that haven't seen a moose, they heavy and just tall enough that if a car hits them it will break their legs and cause the body to fall onto the driver. It might not break all of their legs though, so if you're not killed by being crushed, you're then killed by a huge flailing animal kicking in all directions and eventually finding the windscreen with one of its hoofs.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:56PM (2 children)
For some reason, this post made me think of Trump.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:35PM (1 child)
I don't think it is to the flailing and kicking its hoofs part yet.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday January 05 2018, @04:25PM
I'm sure Trump has the best hoofs. Not tiny ones, either. Definitely not tiny. You're going to be so proud of his hoofs. And that stuff Bannon is saying about his hoofs... total nonsense.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 04 2018, @02:36PM
People I talked to in Gros Morne National Park on the west coast of Newfoundland last summer said they'd love to eat moose but the Canadian EPA is always prowling, waiting to pounce on hunters. They told me a story of a ranger who'd set up a two day stake-out in a random field to catch moose hunters. Well, he did wind up catching one, a friend-of-a-friend from his same small fishing village of 50 people.
I'd say that Newfoundland doesn't have a moose problem, it has a government problem.
Washington DC delenda est.