The Magic Of Secret Ingredients
 | Author:
Eileen Clarke, Rifles and Recipes
Author: Rifles and Recipes |
The Magic of Secret Ingredients
Eileen Clarke
Rifles and Recipes
Way back in the 1980s, Meredith Stephens ran one of the best small-town bars I ever saw. She was what my grandmother would have called a pistol: bootlegging movies off her satellite dish and renting them for a buck a day; duct-taping a Daily Trivia Question on the back bar mirror, and keeping a ‘Don’t Say *%$’ Jar just below it (everyone said it, including Meredith, but the quarters she collected paid for a yearly 4th of July party she threw for the whole town) or creating recipes with secret ingredients that have lived on long after her. (This was the only secret she ever revealed and I still wonder if she told all.)
On browning for better flavor: About ½ pound of chopped up meat in a pre-heated medium to medium-hot 10-inch skillet, with hot oil, will give you more flavor. That means doing about 3 batches for this recipe. More than ½ pound at a time leads to evaporating liquids overwhelming the hot pan, resulting in a grayish foam—and mediocre taste. Ideal is no foaming, so you create the Maillard Effect and a caramelized flavor.
Meredith’s Secret Ingredient Stew
Serves 8
Ingredients
2 cups beef broth
2 cups hot water
20 ounce can pineapple chunks, drained and juice saved
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 1/2 pounds venison stew meat, cubed
about 5 tablespoons oil, in all
1 teaspoon smoked Chipotle Tabasco sauce
1 large yellow onion, sliced
1 teaspoon sugar
1 pound potatoes, chopped
1 pound carrots, sliced
Cooking
1. Start a 3-quart slow cooker on high, and add the beef broth, water and the pineapple chunks and cover. (Save the pineapple juice you drained off for deglazing the pan.) In a plastic bag combine the flour, garlic salt, white and cayenne peppers, and shake. Add the venison cubes, seal the bag and shake until the meat surfaces are lightly covered.
2. Starting with 2 tablespoons of the oil, brown the meat in the oil over medium heat in 3-4 batches until golden, adding 1-2 tablespoons of oil as needed with succeeding batches, then add the pineapple juice and Tabasco sauce slowly into the hot skillet. Scrape up the tasty bits from the bottom of the pan, and when the sauce thickens, pour the meat and sauce into the slow cooker.
3. Add 2 tablespoons more oil and the sugar to the pan and start browning the onions on medium-high heat. Once they sizzle, lower the heat to medium. Continue browning the onions until they are quite soft and smell very sweet, about 15 minutes. Add them to the slow cooker, too.
4. Add the potatoes and carrots, stir them into the stew, and cover. When the pot comes to a slow simmer, reduce the heat to low. Continue cooking 8 hours. Serve hot with lots of attitude.
From Eileen’s wild game cookbook, Slice of the Wild: 100 Venison recipes, with lots of secret and not-so-secret ingredients, as well as 40 pages of bullet to fork care and over 40 side dishes that go perfectly with wild meat and have their own covey of secret ingredients. (For more about secret ingredients, check out Slice of the Wild @ https://www.riflesandrecipes.com/406-521-0273. For the blog: https://www.riflesandrecipes.com/blog
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Image 1 Caption: Meredith’s Secret Ingredient Stew
Eileen Clarke Photo
