 Coming up on the Sporting Chef. Today on the show, I'm gonna give you some ideas on what to do with your deer. And also on the show, we've got Stacey Harris, John McGannon, Kyle Crawford, Susie Jimenez, C-dub, and Buddy. That's a lot of people. Sporting Chef show, today I'm gonna start off with something I call a venestrone soup. It's menestrone that you've probably had before, obviously, but it's made with venison. And the venison that I'm using here, this deer was harvested in the central coast of California. It's dineback vineyards with Adam Weatherby. If you don't age your deer, to me you're making a big mistake. And I talk to people all the time. There's a lot of discussion about whether to age, how long to age, what it does, but really aging tenderizes the meat. Okay, so the first thing I wanna do is I wanna season the meat. I'm gonna add a little bit of olive oil to it. Let me just give this a little stir. I'm gonna season it with some high-mountain venison rub. And I use the venison rub liberally because it's not overly salted, like many of the products on the market. Over here I have a pot that I'm going to cook the venestrone soup in. I'm gonna start by browning the meat. Now that the meat's browned, I'm gonna add onion, celery, carrot. And I'm gonna let that sweat a little bit. I want the onions to be a little translucent. Then I'm gonna add the rest of this stuff. And while I do that, I want you to check out Stacey Harris. Today I'm gonna show you how to make an awesome beef venison cofta sandwich. It sounds kind of out there, but it's really pretty easy. Okay, so the first thing I'm gonna do, I'm doing this over an open fire. So this is a great way to have your family cook when you're on a camping trip or to invite people to the backyard if you have a big enough one or you can have a nice fire. First I wanted to tell you that I've got my peppers in here and I'm roasting them because I'm gonna make an awesome marinated pepper. I don't know, relish to go on the Indian sandwich. So the first thing you're gonna do, you're gonna take a little bit of oil and oil up your pan. And you see that's nice and hot. It looks like we're gonna get a great brown on our beef and venison. And the next thing, I've got beef and venison. I ground fresh today in my Western meat grinder. If you don't have one, you need one. They are amazing. Okay, so I've got some parsley and some mint that I'm putting right in there. And mint is always great and is a must in this recipe. And then I've got some cumin, salt, pepper, a little bit of cayenne, cause I just love cayenne, and some onions. I minced the onions and then I drained them so that they wouldn't have a lot of liquid in them. Now I'm mixing this up really well. So I got some little popsicle sticks here and I'm gonna take some of my venison beef mixture, shape it around the stick and I'm gonna place it right over here in my hot pan. Listen to that sizzle. And you know, beef and venison, you can eat rare. So don't forget that when you're making these, although they're gonna be great anyway. While the cofta is in the pan cooking, smelling great, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about what we're gonna do with the peppers. As soon as they're charred, I'm gonna put them in a bowl and put something on top of it, just so inside the bowl it steams. I'm gonna take off the skin of the red pepper and then I'm gonna turn it into pieces, remove the seeds, and I'm gonna mix it with a little bit of vinegar, dill, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and that's it. And this is gonna be one of the best things that you can put in your math. I'm gonna remove these right over here and I'm gonna heat up a piece of this awesome Indian bread. As soon as it gets heated, I'm gonna plate it up. Ooh, that looks good. Gonna put some of these great looking marinated peppers. One of my kafta balls, kafta balls, and a little bit of yogurt. Just look at that. I bet you wanna have something out, don't you? Back to the venestrone soup. Over here I've got the venestrone soup. The meat is brown, the vegetables have been sweated. Now I'm gonna add beef broth. Here's some canned diced tomato. Here's some fresh garlic, a couple of bay leaves, a bunch of my favorite red wine. And the whole idea here is I wanna bring this to a boil because I want the venison to be tender. So I'm gonna keep working on my venestrone soup. I'm going to give it some kind of little tweak at some point because I want it to taste my own. If you wanted to put a little jalapeno in yours, well that's your choice. You know, just because the recipe says deer, that doesn't mean you can't use it with other antler critters. Much, much more ahead on The Sporting Chef. Welcome back to The Sporting Chef. Today I'm cooking deer. This is our deer show. Among many deer shows, I have the venestrone soup that is simmering back in the Sporting Chef kitchen. I'm gonna show you what to do with the really easy part to cook, the venison tenderloin. Look at this wonderful tender piece of meat. Hence the name tenderloin. And why is it tender? Because it's inside, it doesn't do a whole lot of work. It's on the inside of that spine on either side. It's a flat piece of meat. Now a lot of people mistakenly refer to the backstrap or the loin as the tenderloin, but that loin is on the outside. The tenderloin's on the bottom and it is the most tender piece pretty much on any hunk of meat tenderloin. So I'm gonna make a port wine sauce. Port wine can be a little bit sweet depending on the port wine you use. So you don't wanna use a whole lot. You just wanna put just a little drizzle over the meat. First thing I wanna do is season the tenderloin. I've chosen the High Mountain Moose Seasoning. In case you don't have a moose in your freezer, this works great on any kind of red meat on pork. I actually use it on chicken and as well on venison. So with the port wine sauce, we have a fair amount of port wine and we wanna reduce that port wine that's gonna concentrate the flavors. I've also added some chopped shallot, some black pepper, some sea salt and once that's reduced, oh yeah, some fresh rosemary and once that's reduced, I'm gonna add some heavy cream. Now this is crema mexicana. There's a bunch of different kinds of cream that you'll find. This is probably in your grocery store. Next up, John McGannan, who is a big dry aging freak in more ways than one. And you know, I like to dry age my deer also. Finally, John and I have something we can agree on and here's John now. All right, here we are with some of my favorite meat in the world, dry age venison. This one happened to come from Colorado. I had a great hunt. So I'm gonna show you here that we're gonna take some of this beautiful Colorado mule deer, top round and we're gonna cut it into medallions and this has also been dry aged for about two and a half weeks. So we're gonna use the Wild Eats Juniperberry and peppercorn rub, which was developed by this guy that I know, meat and it is designed to accent the flavor of these wonderful pieces of meat and not cover it up. There's all really low in salt. Okay, just a touch of Himalayan sea salt. As I said, these are all really low in salt and our pan is nice and heated up. A little bit of olive oil and that's what we want. We want it to sing to us, sing little medallions. We're gonna turn it over and then we're gonna pop it in the oven and get ready to make our sauce. All right, here we go. Basically, we're in there for at about 400 degrees for two minutes. All right, so our hot pan, a little bit of garlic. I have some some diced shallots. So let that saute up nicely. I have some roasted mushrooms that we have previously roasted and stored for just such an occasion. So these are some beautiful cremini mushrooms that we got at the peak of their season and we saved them in the food saver. So now we're gonna deglaze this pan. All right, now we're ready to go with the heavy duties and there's a little pull it off so you don't have a stupid fire. I have a little bit of wild game brown stock that I made previously and to make it a blanket, which means white, we're gonna add a little cream. All right, and now we're gonna let that all simmer down to about half of what its volume is and that'll all reduce. All right, I think we've reduced it about where we want it. All right, I'm gonna throw a little bit of sexy salt in there, a little bit of black pepper and I have a little chives just for color. All right, I put together a little potato pancake here. With this, you wanna put the sauce on the bottom. All right, and then just for presentation, we're gonna cut these medallions. I'll show you how nice and sexy they are. All right, there you have it. Some dry aged venison medallions, seasoned with juniper berry peppercorn, quick seared black iron skillet, roasted mushrooms, bourbon, cream, a little bit of wild game stock. John's pretty smart, right? Not as smart as he thinks he is cause he still doesn't wanna brine those ducks, I know. Beating the dead horse. All right, so I've got this port wine sauce over here that's been reducing it. Actually kinda got a nice flame going during the John's segment there and I just wanna make sure that I don't reduce it so much that it burns. Got a hot grill going over here and to that I'm going to add this venison tenderloin that has been rubbed with the High Mountain Moose Seasoning and here we go. What I want you to do now is check out Kyle Crawford. Now Kyle is our resident knife sharpening type expert. It's very likely that you're struggling to get an edge on a knife. Chances are you're using a wet stone because that's how your father taught you how to do it. It's a challenge and is a learned skill. You've gotta get the angle right. You gotta sweep and follow the curve of the blade. It can be a real challenge and you've invested good money in this sharpening stone, but now there's something better. The Worksharp Combo Knife Sharpener priced at 50 bucks is fast and really easy to use. Angle guides position the knife against the flexible abrasive belt. A few passes will quickly resharpen the edge to get it right back to like new results. And when it's time to maintain, we have angle guided ceramic hone. Place the edge on the guide and just a few swipes across that fine grit ceramic rod and your knife is sharp as new. No more struggling on a wet stone and fast easy results for every knife you own. 50 bucks. You spent more than that on your stones. You can't go wrong. The grill is hot and so is Suzy Jimenez and her Venison Shank Tacos. Less hot, but equally entertaining. Sea Dub and Buddy are up next to Stay Seated. Welcome back to The Sporting Chef's Show. I'm cooking deer and of course we have all of our friends cooking other stuff. Did the low and slow, the venison, the soup, the venestrone soup, that's gonna take a little while. The fast and hot was a venison tenderloin and now I'm gonna give you something to do with your ground meat. This is ground venison that's mixed with about 20, 25% ground beef. I'm going to make meatballs and a meatball sandwich. There is chopped red onion, garlic, a little horseradish, some shredded Parmesan cheese, some panko, some bread crumbs to help hold the whole thing together. And I'm gonna season it, of course, with some venison rub. So I'm gonna keep making meatballs. And while I do this, I want you to check out Suzy Jimenez. The Energizer Bunny got nothing on Suzy. Today she's out at the Hillen brand farmhouse in Brewery, Newcastle, California, Suzy. One of the biggest things that a lot of people do is get rid of their shanks. These venison shanks are precious meat, okay? You guys pull out your western slow cooker, put a bay leaf in there, some garlic, some onions, your shanks, cover it with water and season it with a little bit of salt and garlic pepper from High Mountain Seasonings. You guys plug that sucker in at low, go to work and after you get home after a six, eight hour day, you're gonna come home to some amazing braised shank. Like you can see how much it just pulls right off the bone. And we're just gonna make a simple thing like tacos. So don't think that you always have to, you know, overextend yourself and make this crazy dinner. Sometimes tacos are just the way to go. Once you get a good amount of it off of there, put it on some warm corn tortillas and pack it good, guys. Look at that, that's a taco, right? For all of you guys who are wondering what the shank is, it's right below the knee to this part right here. See, it's a sexy part of a woman too. Oh, Chef Scott, you would love this. You know, you gotta sometimes describe it in ways that you would understand this, right? And that's the way you would understand it by staring at my leg, right? So look it, I finished topping these tacos and I put a really good amount of meat on there. So now we're gonna go traditional toppings. We're gonna go sweet, yellow onion, cilantro, to add a nice little floral flavor to it. Situated with a couple of limes and then I'm just gonna top it off with a nice spicy tomato sauce. You guys have seen some of my recipes already, you guys can get that tomato sauce, the tomatillo sauce, any of those sauces will work perfect. We'll see you guys next time. Until then, keep on slow cooking with Western. And while Susie was out at Hill and Brand, I've browned the meatballs, I added some red sauce, just some basic marinara sauce and a whole bunch of Michael David Seven Deadly Zins. I gotta put a little provolone cheese on here that I wanna melt on top of my sandwich. I'm making a meatball sandwich. Of course, you can do whatever you want if you're making your own meatballs. This bread is gonna be a little crispy. I've got some butter on the bread. I wanna make sure that it's a little bit crispy so that it doesn't become really, really soggy when I add the meatballs and all that other good stuff in there. I've got the venestrone soup that you'll see shortly. But first, I want you to check out C-Dub, our resident cast iron pro. It's still winter here in the Rockies. And so we're doing a quick venestrone soup outside and we're gonna heat up some bread. Once our oil heats up, we'll saute our garlic and our onions and we'll start with the garlic. And we've got the onions just about where we want them. And so I'm gonna start with just one, a single can of chicken broth. So we've got our liquid in there. We don't wanna run out of pot space. So we've got some diced tomatoes, red kidney beans. We have some garbanzo beans. We're gonna add our sausage. And let's let that come to a boil and then we're gonna add our shells and we'll top that off with a little bit of kale. Never wanna forget the seasoning. We have some Italian seasoning, a little bit of salt and some red pepper flakes. We'll stir our kale in and our shells. These recipes are in our fourth and fifth books. Our venestrone soup is ready to serve. The pasta is al dente just the way we want it and just a little bit of fresh parmesan cheese on the top. And there's your lunch, got on a cold Idaho afternoon. And now here's Buddy. And today Buddy's got dear two, here he is. I've been brining some axis, had it in the brine for about two days. The longer you leave it in there, the better off you are. I just used some Cajun seasoning, about a tablespoon to the quarter of water. Put a little bit of butter. This is that camp chef's kid. I'm gonna put that on there. Just a little bit, because there ain't much cooking going on here. You don't even have to really flip it over if you don't want to. Now what I'm putting this here in is, that's some of that. I don't know, it's like a eel sauce or something. And I put some of this wasabi stuff, but it's like in a cream sauce, so it's not, it's not so take your breath away. You could use chopsticks, but down here in Texas, what we do is we got these big toothpicks that they call skewers some places. Try it, get each of your friends to make them up a little bowl. I know they're gonna enjoy it. You know, there's more than one way to cook a deer, besides wrapping it in jalapeno, bacon and cream cheese, but then that's pretty good, too. Stick around, there's more to come on The Sporting Show. So, while we were taking a break, I took the meatballs, the provolone cheese is melted on top. There's the meatball sandwich, and we've already got somebody that's got dibs on this one, so I don't get it. I don't get to eat it. The Vinastrone soup, after the meat had gotten tender, I added garbanzo beans and kidney beans, and then I added some penne pasta. You can add any kind of pasta you want. I'm also gonna add a little Parmesan cheese on top. And of course, there's that beautiful tenderloin with the pork wine sauce. If you go to SportingChef.com, we've got hundreds of recipes on how to cook your fish and game. You can also go to MyOutdoorTV, MOTV.com and watch many, many thousands of hours of outdoor programming, including The Sporting Chef Show and The Dead Meat Show. Special thanks today to Susie Jimenez, Stacy Harris, John McDonan, Kyle Crawford, C-Dub, and Buddy, and of course our sponsors, who we love so much and keep us here every week so that we can invade your house. I'm Scott Lacep, The Sporting Chef, and we will see you next time.