No Plan For Dinner? How About Antler Soup!
Author: Eileen Clarke, Rifles and Recipes
No Plan for Dinner? How About Antler Soup!
Eileen Clarke
Rifles and Recipes
I make this soup often, but it’s never the same. At our house, we call it antler soup, a variation of the European folk tale of Stone Soup. But Gold Rush mining camps called it American Goulash and cowboys in the old west made Sonofabitch Stew (often with calf innards). The principle’s the same in each: hungry people adding bits of this and pieces of that, to make a nourishing meal. It’s no different in our house. Antler soup is what’s in the kitchen, perhaps already chopped up in a sandwich baggie, or something not enough for two for dinner. And, presto! It becomes a wonderful meal, a little something of everything and nothing wasted. And yes, chicken base is correct. It’s sweeter and fits this soup perfectly.
So let’s get down to specifics. While we can’t grow sweet potatoes in Montana, our local store carries them. The orange-fleshed ones are my favorites, but my hubby mistakenly bought a pale one recently and I’d been avoiding it. Chop, chop, in it went, but wasn’t enough, so I pulled some carrots and potatoes maturing in the garden. Plop, plop. Don’t have tarragon? Oregano works too.
A-Cup-A-Cup-A-Cup-A-Antler Soup
Makes about 4 quarts/16 cups
Ingredients
1½ pounds venison in bite-sized chunks
6 cups water
2 cups chopped sweet potato
2 cups chopped potatoes
2 cups chopped carrots
2-4 tablespoons oil, in all
4 cups chopped yellow onions
2 tablespoons BTB Roast Chicken Base (reduced sodium)
½ cup dried leaf tarragon (or oregano)
1 teaspoon ground rosemary
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons coarse ground black pepper
2 tablespoons honey
Cooking
1. Dry the meat with paper towels and set aside. In a 5-quart Dutch oven, start the water over high heat and add the veggies. In a large skillet, heat the first tablespoon of oil over medium heat. Brown the meat chunks on at least two sides in batches so you don’t overcrowd the pan. (6-8 ounces in each batch.) Add more oil as needed. Transfer each batch to a bowl, then lower the heat to medium-low and sauté the onion, adding more oil as necessary. When the onions are translucent and starting to brown on the edges, return the meat to the skillet and stir the chicken soup base, tarragon, rosemary, salt and pepper into the meat and onions, then pour all that into the Dutch oven. Add some water to the skillet, scrape up the caramelized bits and add that to the Dutch oven with the rest of the water.
2. Raise the heat. When the pot starts bubbling, lower the heat to simmer. Cover and simmer 30-40 minutes until the carrots are tender. Stir in the honey and serve.
From Eileen Clarke’s The Wild Bowl—100 wild game soups, stews and chilies. Save $5 on The Wild Bowl or any of her other wild game cookbooks, enter 43News (in the coupon box) at her website https://www.riflesandrecipes.com 406-521-0273.
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Photo Credit: Eileen Clarke
