 Coming up on The Sporting Chef... Today on the show, I'm going to take this blustery day opportunity to head down river and see a few old friends. Also on the show today, we have Stacy, Susie, Melissa, Cedub and Buddy. But for now... What do you get when you find the best fishing game chefs? Cookbook authors? Award winners? Fish mongers? Outdoor experts? And put them on the fastest half hour on outdoor television. Hosted by one of America's best known wild game chefs, Scott Lacy, The Sporting Chef. Brought to you by Camp Chef, the way to cook outdoors. Whenever I travel, I let people know that I'm from Northern California, not the one you usually see on TV. There's a big difference between the sun-drenched movie star country down south and my California that surrounds the state capital of Sacramento. Let's take a drive down the river and I'm headed for the town of Locke in a place called Al the Wops. Well, as it turns out, I found a friendly bar stool here at Al the Wops. And while I get settled in, I want you to check out Susie Jimenez. Nobody knows how to spice it up better than Susie. When using spices, here is the number one thing that you must do in the kitchen. Get a cast iron skillet, throw your whole seat in there. Now you're going to put this over medium heat, but what you're trying to do is toast the natural flavor to come out so that you can get a nice toasty, aromatic feeling, and I say feeling because you're really going to feel it when you eat it, and flavor into your dishes. I'm using my hands, I wouldn't suggest that, but you can also use the handle and just do this. You're going to see when you finally toasted it because you're going to turn it around, and then you're going to start seeing the seeds actually jump. You'll want to do this with fennel seed, coriander, cumin, dill seed, anything that's whole seeded like this. You obviously don't want to get dill weed and stick it in there because it'll just burn. So put it in a coffee grinder. You still want it to be a little coarse when you use it so that you still get a nice texture to it. So now they're toasted and they're beautifully done. Now they're toasted at Al the Wops. It's a rainy Friday afternoon, so they tend to get a large crowd here. What they're known for is big juicy burgers and steaks. Today Maggie the Chef is going to make me a bison burger, so I'm heading to the kitchen now to see Maggie. Back here where it all happens, I've got Maggie who's got bison burgers. Now Maggie, you don't normally serve bison burgers, right? You're doing great. I see you have the high mountain steak rub and I would say that you use this all the time, but I'm pretty sure that you know that I brought that high mountain steak rub right there. Maybe next time. Now Maggie, how do you like to cook your burgers? What temperature? Medium well. Medium well? Okay, now I like my burgers rare to medium rare. So I'm okay if there's some blood in there too. I like them nice and juicy. One of the things that people do with they don't add fat to them. So they're a little on the lean side. I'm going to get out of Maggie's way for a minute and we'll talk burger because he's got work to do, right? Yeah. It's not just me, is it? News. I have it on good authority that my burger is ready. My bison burger is ready that Maggie cooked, but when you come down to Al-Dawab, don't expect to get a bison burger. So when you walk in and say, hey, I want one of those bison burgers that lay down, you're going to have to bring your own. The food here is great. It's one of those burgers that you kind of have to you want to save up calories for because it is so, so good. What? Good? For me? Yeah. Thanks. You guys have any vodka here, buddy chance? Yeah, okay. I'll take whatever's on sale. Alright, so, behold the bison burger. The Texas toast. It's a fair amount of bacon there. Let's cut inside. See what our doneness looks like? Looks perfect from here. That's the way a burger should look. I like my burger to have some flavor. Let's give this one a try. What? For me? Yeah, for you. You'll notice I don't eat my own food on my show, but I got no problem eating Maggie's bison burger here at Al the Wops in Locke, California just a short cut from Sacramento San Francisco or any of those other places that I'd rather not be in. Next up, I'm going to head down to Juicides about a mile or so from here. Now, the owner of Juicides, Mark Marias was on the Dead Meat show with me a few years back. We went Koot Hunting and Mark made Koot Kachatory. What? You haven't had that? Coming up next on the Sporting Chef. Welcome back to the Sporting Chef. Today, I'm traveling down the Sacramento Delta. We've been to Al the Wops next stop, Juicides, and I see by the parking lot, I recognize a few vehicles in here, and there's an excellent chance that I'll have a few friends in here to say hello to. You know, it's a little blustery outside. So here at Juicides, one of my favorite places of all time, forever and ever, I see a couple of guys at the bar, but they're a little shy. I don't know if I can get them out of their shell. While I'm getting acclimated here, I want you to check out Stacey Harris. She has a tip for those of us who eat eggs. Probably everybody at some time or another has wondered if their eggs are good. I know I came from a small family and we would buy eggs at the grocery store and they would stay in there for so long and I didn't know if they were going to be good or not. And now, I raise my own chickens, get my own eggs, and there's even a bigger possibility that the eggs are not fresh. So, I'm going to show you a quick tip on how to know if your eggs are fresh. Get a big bowl of water, place the eggs gently down in it. Up, if they float, they're bad. This one is going to be bad. Okay, you can put this one in. It looks like it's a good egg. Have you ever heard the expression it's a good egg? That's what it means. And this one is on its way to being old, but it isn't. It's kind of leaning up just a little bit and eventually it would continue to go up, up, up and you would be like, ah, that's questionable. And then when it floats you know you've got a bad egg. There you go. If your egg floats don't eat it. So, here in the Juicy's Kitchen I'm about to get out of the way and let Chef Sammy do his work. I see that he has some duck breast here that have been marinated and they've been brined and they're skin on. So we've got that good flavor from the duck skin. And this looks like an assortment of ducks. I see mallards, I see Pintail and soon I will see Sammy. So here we've got some mallard Pintail. They've been brined in a high mountain brine and went ahead and breasted them out. We're marinating them in soy ginger sauce, fresh garlic and parsley and probably only marinating them I would say no more than a couple hours because poultry brines really quick and you don't want to get over sweet and over salty. So after an hour and a half I would say I'm going to go ahead and put them on this really high heat flat top here because what I want to do is I want to render out some of that duck fat and get that skin really nice and crispy and you always go skin down first because you want to protect that breast meat and then we're going to go straight to the charver over. So then we're just going to let those crisp up even more. Alright so now for to accompany the duck we're going to do a simple brown rice quinoa cabbage mixed salad and we're going to have here's just a pre-made quinoa and brown rice mix we're going to go ahead and toss in these coleslaw mix which is cabbage carrots shredded purple cabbage then like to add a little bit of own spice to the serrano chili not too much just enough to let you know it's there. Nothing goes better with Asian flair than a little bit of spice. Then the homemade Asian dressing which is rice wine vinegar soy sauce, teriyaki, brown sugar pineapple juice some chow mein rice noodles and then we're going to give that a toss around and then this will be kind of just a nice set here. Okay so after we take the duck breast off the charver we're going to pop in a pan put them in a 500 degree oven for about 5 minutes or so. So now for our duck marinated reduction sauce fresh garlic so let that get nice and toasty you don't want the garlic to brown too much because it'll turn bitter it's about right. I'm going to hit it with a little sherry wine and we're going to let that reduce a little bit add some simple beef stock a little bit of our duck marinade a tablespoon or two of butter that butter is a natural thickener that's going to be a perfect reduction nice glaze right over our finished duck broth our nice duck breast here out of hot oven and also what I like to do to add to this sauce is see how we got these pan juices that is a natural aju wow look at that look how beautiful that is nice medium rare sherry butter pan wine reduction sauce right here it's good wow remember I want your honest opinion are you okay with medium rare? yes that's not steak that's really good and people say they don't like duck you would think a wild duck would taste kind of gamey if it does if it does chef Sammy at juicies didn't cook it right all right coming up next we've got Melissa Bachman that has a tip for you turkey hunters who don't smell so good when springtime hits well I cannot wait to get out turkey honey I absolutely love it but I've also learned little tricks along the way that can make a huge difference now one of those tricks it's spring down before you go out turkey hunting now you might think why on earth do I need to use scent killer gold to spray down before I go turkey hunting well it's simple and I've had it happen to me if you're out turkey hunting and you have deer out in the field at the same time you've got turkeys come in which happens quite often well as soon as that wind changes you can bust those deer out and I can promise you when those deer bust out there go your turkeys so try to save yourself a little heartache this year and spray down before you go turkey hunting that way you won't have to worry about busting out deer and all your focus can be on killing those big goblers so far I've had bison and duck and some great tips from Susie, Stacy and Melissa next up I'm going to run over to Michael, David, Winery and see what Chef Juan Centos is cooking up for me and I suppose I'll need something to wash it down hey what, familiar? okay so I made it to Michael, David, Winery just down highway 5 in Lodi, California if you look at all this produce here Michael, David, Winery they weren't Michael, David, Winery for a long time it was all about growing incredible vegetables they were known for their tomatoes and now if you think about Michael, David think about wine especially that 7 deadly zins that you can get anywhere in the United States but before I see Chef Juan Centos in the kitchen I want you to check out C-Dub who's got a great idea on what to do with your elk bones one of my dad's old sayings when we butcher the pig was you use everything but the squeal there's a purpose for every part of that pig and I've kind of had that philosophy my whole life and what I do and we we're lucky enough to put a couple elk in the freezer this year and so when I'm boning it out I save my long bones and then I take them outside and I just buzz these through my table saw these bones when you put them in your vacuum seal bags those sharp edges can cut your bag and you lose your back and so I take and I just roll them up in butcher paper we have our bones all wrapped in our old butcher paper and we're going to close our lid lock it down and it's pulling the air out as we speak here's our elk bones that we just vacuum packed wrapped in butcher paper so they don't puncture the bag and great for bone broth or just for soup stock and just use that last a little bit of the elk because sometimes they're kind of hard to come by another little tip when it comes to home processing this old butcher paper is the cheapest counter space you can get if you're out here butchering like I do right here I can put that butcher paper down you know I can put different cuts of meat on it as I'm breaking an animal down and just wiping up the counter so just another little tip from how to process your own game today we're going to cook some venison stir fry just throw some olive oil to the meat we're going to season it with salt and pepper and some herbs we're going to throw some vegetables we have potatoes, zucchini rainbow carrots and mushrooms we're going to cook this meat on the rare side because it's real lean a bit tough with the covernate wine garlic butter and flour too some of Chef Juan's venison you know what it's cooked perfectly the sauce doesn't overpower the venison Chef Juan we've had him on the show before he cooked duck last time didn't do me wrong with the venison get to Michael David Winery in Lodi California he's got Buddy T. who's in Uruguay showing them how he cooks chicken wings we've got a bunch of wings and you can see they leave some of the back attached to them that might be a new idea for your favorite wing place did find me some hot sauce down here grill those wings off I didn't know what the deal was about bringing seasoning in here so I'll put that high amount of seasoning in this herbal bill bottle got it in here but I don't think it would have been any problem whenever you're cooking that chicken put you some back in there with it there's good meat up there toward the front of that chicken whenever I get back to Texas that's one thing I ain't going to miss is them screaming parakeets you know it's been an exceptionally great day for me and I hope you guys enjoyed the ride come on back and I'll show you why I'll have someone else drive me home welcome back to the Sporting Chef I'm Scott Layseth and thank you for joining me on my own little nostalgic ride down the Sacramento Delta I'm at Michael David Winery now where I think they might have made a big mistake leaving me back here unsupervised with all this great wine can you believe it all of this has got Michael David wine in it now you'll know Michael David most of you for their 7 Deadly Zins but they've got a whole lot more than 7 Deadly Zins the Petite Petite 6 Cent Cera all of the earthquake wines they're solid every single one of them you know a lot of the wineries you go yeah I like that I don't like that every single Michael David wine there's not a dog in the hunt they're all delicious if you come here in the summertime or in the warmer weather months they have a great outdoor area they've got great food here with Chef Juan Santos you can I think I'll have to check with them on this but I think you can bring your own little picnic basket have your little bottle of wine that you buy in the wine area itself take the kids great water feature and of course they have this really cool on the outside these are three of the tanks they have the freak show label on the outside which I don't know how they do that it's very cool special thanks today to everyone else that helped on the show starting with all the folks at El the Wops and Juicies and here at Michael David Stacy Harris Susie Jimenez Melissa Bachman C-dub and Buddy who used to be here every week I'm Scott Lace at the Sporting Chef don't forget to check us out on youtube SportingChef.com my outdoor TV and we'll see you next time