Keep The Home Fires Burning
 | Author:
Eileen Clarke - Rifles and Recipes
Author: Rifles and Recipes |
Keep The Home Fires Burning
Eileen Clarke
Rifles and Recipes
Adding apple cider vinegar to a soup may sound strange, but it actually does two important things for the cook. First, deglazing the pan with the vinegar not only adds a richer, sweeter flavor but speeds up the effect of moist heat on tough meat. The beer also helps. I used an inexpensive convenience store lager here, but you can also use a higher quality micro-brew. Another pale beer perhaps or, for a change of pace, some brown ales and stouts give the dish a deeper flavor. Taste the microbrew first though: if it’s tart in the glass, it will be tart in the soup. One of the reasons I only used Guiness Stout once. A deeper, sweeter ale is my preference. The alcohol in the beer also tenderizes the meat, so feel free to use a tougher cut: elk, moose, deer, antelope, whatever you have in the freezer.
Want your soup thicker? Forget the corn starch. Half an hour or so before you want the first serving, check how thick the soup is. To thicken it up, just grate ¼ to ½ cup of a potato, then stir it into the broth and close the lid.
All Day Beer Stew
Serves 6-8
Ingredients
12-ounce can of beer
1 cup beef broth
2 pounds venison, cubed and dried with paper towels
4-5 tablespoons oil, in all
1 large yellow onion, sliced
1 gala (or other sweet apple), chopped
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
2 pounds red potatoes, chopped
2 cups red cabbage, chopped
2 teaspoons dried leaf thyme
1 teaspoon bacon bits
1 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
Cooking
1. Start the slow cooker on high. Pour in the beer and bouillon. Cover and let it warm up.
2. In a large skillet, brown the steak chunks in 3-4 batches, starting with 2 tablespoons of the oil on medium-high heat. Add more oil as needed. Transfer the meat to the slow cooker as it browns.
3. Add another tablespoon of oil, and brown the onions and apple chunks until soft, about 5-7 minutes. Add them to the pot, too. Deglaze the pan: pour the apple cider vinegar into the still hot pan, scraping the browned bits up into the liquid, and let the vinegar simmer enough to reduce to about 1/4 cup. Pour all the pan drippings into the pot.
4. Add the rest of the ingredients to the slow cooker and let it continue cooking on high until it reaches 140°F or higher temperature. Then reduce the heat to low, cover and cook 8 hours. (Check it after an hour to see that it’s still above 140°F.) As with all stews, soups and pot roasts, if you can let it go a second day, it will be even better.
From Eileen’s wild game cookbook, Slice of the Wild which has 100 venison recipes, over 40 side dishes, and 40 pages of bullet-to-butchering-to-fork tips. And it’s on sale now at https://www.riflesandrecipes.com/406-521-0273.
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PhotoCredit: Eileen Clark
Image 1 Caption: Eileen with Muley
Photo Credits: Eileen Clark
