Monday, April 28, 2008

Venison Backstrap

I'm not near the foodie that JW or OG are and I tend toward the simple more meat and potato recipes. Please indulge me as I periodically give my more simplistic fare a place to air out on the net. Here's a decent recipe for venison backstrap or any large piece of wild game such moose, elk, mule deer, deer, etc.

Soak the backstrap or loin (analagous to beef tenderloin) in buttermilk overnight. This further removes the blood left in the meat which will decrease the gaminess of the meat. Follow by placing in a marinade of 2/3 allegro seasoning and 1/3 coke. Alllow to marinate for no longer than 4-5 hours as you don't want to overwhelm the natural flavor of the meat. This marinade can be skipped altogether or shortened to reflect the taste you want.

Wrap the tenderloin in bacon and secure with butcher twine or toothpicks and lightly season with salt/pepper. Grill on your Big Green Egg at 550-600 till an internal temp of 125 which will provide a nice medium rare.

Allow the meat to rest for five minutes, cut into 1 inch thick medallions. I usually serve over grilled/roasted corn removed from the cob after cooking and mixed with a diced roasted red pepper along with grilled asparagus with fresh parmesean.

Good eats with a simple, easy prep that shouldn't overwhelm the natural wildness of the meat and provide something a little different for your table. Makes for a good conservation starter as well as the discussion of the hunt itself or of hunting in general always makes for interesting debate.

2 comments:

OG said...

Have you ever done pork or beef like that? I've heard the milk/cream, and I've done pork tenderloin in the dutch oven like that, but not on the grill. How do you keep it from drying out, since it's a very low-fat cut? Is that the purpose of the bacon?

MCG DAWG said...

I've done a lot of pork loins/tenderloins on the BGE but I don't usually use the sear high/cook low method. I typically just fire it up to about 500 and cook to about a 150 internal on the pork. Unlike 10 years ago today's pork is leaner, doesn't require extreme temps to be "done", and trichinosis has basically been eradicated. I usually don't even coat with bacon as drying out hasn't been too big an issue.

There's a TON of pork loin recipes on the BGE sites. I suggest perusing them. My dad messes with pork loin recipes a lot on his egg, I'll ask him his favorite.