Hey guys.
Thank god I aint got a moustache, or rumours would be circulating.
A thought crossed my mind as I read the two above posts. Could you guys have the early symptoms of Nitrate or Nitrite poisoning.
As for the Venison I harvest. I grind the front end, I keep the back straps for a special meal, usually cream & pepper sauce, served pink in the middle.
I would break the back legs into there muscle groups and dice the meat to have as stew and to make steak pies.
Scottish steak pies have Pork sausages in them cut up into about an inch in length. if you can get good sausages, you sometimes want to eat the sausages and leave the meat.
Now I have a different approach. I do all my own butchering, I was taking too much time on the back legs, I decided to keep them whole. To cook a leg, years ago I would of roasted the leg in the oven wrapped in tinfoil.
I am not a fan of oven cooked meat, nice when it comes out the oven, like leather the next day. I like to get as many meals as possible from a piece of meat (who said Scotsmen are tight).
I prefer to put the whole leg (minus the hock) into a very large stock pot. I have enough water to just cover the leg by about a 1/2", I bring the pot to the boil, I then add salt and pepper, that is the only ingredient that goes into the pot other than the venison. Once the pot has come to the boil, I simmer the leg for at least 2-3 hours.
I can tell when the meat is ready by pushing a skewer well into the leg meat and pulling up, if the leg comes off the bottom of the pot, I keep it cooking. Once I am happy with the meat being cooked, I just tun of the cooker and let the meat sit in the pot till it has cooled down to where I can break down the muscle groups and get rid of bones, veins and Lymph nodes.
The meat is then either used that day for a meal or more often it is frozen in zip lock bags and when ever the wife wants to have like a roast beef type meal, she takes the venison out of the freezer and I slice it once defrosted. She will then lay the sliced meat in an oven dish covering the meat with a gravy that she has made from some of the stock that was frozen at the same time as the meat.
The meat melts in your mouth. I have not tasted venison ever as good as doing it this way.
If you happen to have made too much, next day the meat is a succulent as the day before.
Everyone that has shared a meal with us done this way, says it is the nicest meat they have ever eaten.
Like I have read on this site, sausage recipes are best kept simple. The above way to cook a deer leg is as simple as they come. Another benefit of this method is that the stock that is left in the pot can be drank like a beef tea or made into a broth soup. It is delicious.
I do the exact same way if I am cooking Lamb or Mutton.
Ian