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.
Warming the Kitchen - Jerky Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Winter is a wonderful time to make jerky for several reasons. For one thing, hunting season is all but done. Second, if you’re going to turn the oven on and leave it on a while, winter’s better than summer. Duh. Finally, homemade jerky is a great snack while you relax in the recliner with your feet up watching the best football teams fight it out. (Personally, I’d love to see KC threepeat.)
A Quick Lunch for a Busy Day Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes My husband John used to be the lunch cook at our house, mostly because he was waking up and eating breakfast at 4 to 5 am and by 9:30 was hungry again, while I was just finishing my second cup of coffee and about half an hour into my morning’s work. That meant that I was frequently torn away from my computer by the tantalizing aroma of one of John’s delicious tossed-together concoctions--like this. His lunch cooking was always fast and easy to make, but never simple in flavors, which is why this recipe ended up in the Upland Game Bird Cookery book I wrote for Ducks Unlimited. That book includes all the upland birds from pheasant and forest grouse to sharptails and sage grouse to turkeys.
Christmas Season Sausage Rollups Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Just a Little Special Something for the Holidays
Pan-roasted Steaks with Mushroom Sauce
Easy Venison Stir Fry with Sweet Potato Fries Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Need an easy, one pan meal with a sauce you can also use for wild game meats of all kinds? I’d start with this one. And feel free to switch out the fries for super-grain brown rice if you’d prefer, but cooked in an air fryer, those sweet potatoes are pretty healthy. They’re also a vibrant contrast to the spicy stir fry sauce. As for the meat, I’ve made this with venison as well as wild pig and would bet it would also work for pale-meated upland birds like pheasant and forest grouse.
Mental Health Food Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes That’s what casseroles are. But the most common enchilada casseroles have too much tortilla---just empty calories--for me. I want protein in hunting season, to keep me going for three or more hours--longer than white flour tortillas and sugar do. I need meat. And melted cheese. I carry candy bars in the field, but they’re for quick, short-term exertion, like driving home with a whitetail in the back of my truck. Once I’m home after a frigid morning’s hunt, I’m stacking protein to be ready for tomorrow.
Homemade Jerky- Just One More Reason to Fill the Freezer Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Before we start on this jerky recipe, there are two important things to talk about. The first is the cayenne pepper. I used fresh cayenne. Cayenne loses potency over time, and with exposure to heat and light. So if you want the same results, use fresh.
Erwin’s Sazon Stew Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Erwin’s Sazon Stew Yields: About 1 quart
Grill Season Will Soon be Gone with the Wind Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Teriyaki is a very effective tenderizing marinade when you want to quick-cook meats. And the wasabi—Japanese horseradish--is a bonus. Wasabi is sold in both powder and paste forms. The paste is ready to use; the powder must be mixed with water and is traditionally rolled into a ball for serving. Depending on ambient humidity, you may need to adjust the water-to-powder ratio. But if you can roll it into a ball easily, the wasabi is ready to eat. (Wash hands carefully after handling it. You’ll regret getting any in your eyes.)
Duck, Duck, Goose Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes
Cooking the Wily Sharptail Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes I have to admit I’m not a big sage or sharptail grouse fan, but my husband and I do love the openness of prairie hunting, so have taken our fair share over the years. And every one of our Labradors can count a sage or sharptail grouse as their first ever wild bird. It’s much easier to keep an eye on the pup in open country, and easier to chase them down on the flats. Plus, it gives them—and us--several more weeks of hunting. Everyone’s happy. That changes when we get to the kitchen. While husband John and our furry friends are perfectly happy to eat sage birds as is, I insist on flavor modification.
Tasty Bits and Kitchen Tricks Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes This is one of those ‘favorite week-night recipes’ that looks like more work than it is. The onion is in chunks and, while a head of garlic is a lot to skin and slice, it’s easier to do with a mallet. More on that in a sec. Let’s talk Parmesan. We like Parmesan in wedges, not pre-grated, but we don’t grate it either. Instead, we stand the cheese up on a cutting board and take thin slices with a chef’s knife. Faster, easier, and yet it looks fancy on a plate.
Hot Night? Cool Meal. Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes This is one of my favorite dinners, perfect for a hot summer night. Since kabob chunks tend to vary in size, it’s best to group larger chunks on one skewer, smaller ones on another so they all end up safely cooked at the same time. Then test for doneness by slicing into the end piece. As for a side dish, this Tex-Mex Potato Salad that follows makes a great companion.
Pheasant on the Grill Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Kumquats. As a food name, it doesn’t inspire confidence. But the flavor? It’s a cross between a tangerine and a tree-ripened Arizona orange: very sweet, very fresh, very tangy. And you can chop the rind to get that intense citrus flavor that zesting provides, without tedious zesting. If you can’t find kumquats, use the zest of a tangerine, with a teaspoon of its freshly squeezed juice.
Power Up the Grill— It’s Fish Tonight! Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes We’re in that schizoid time of year when one Friday to the next you don’t know if you’ll be simmering hot soup or roasting in the backyard. Like my last recipe post: When I wrote it up the temperatures were in the 50’s and snow was predicted above 6,000 feet. ‘Preheat the oven to 400F,’ I said. Should’ve added ‘An Airfryer will only take one to minutes longer’.
Pork Pesto Sausage: Two Recipes, Lots of Options Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes I was in the middle of testing a new sausage recipe and, given the scarcity of wild turkey and pig meat in our freezer, I started with commercial meat. (That's the routine. I don't use wild meat until the recipe is pretty close to perfect.) Well, this time the first try was spectacular, so I decided to share that with our non-hunting friends and neighbors while adding further details for the wild turkey and pig versions.
We’re Making Wild Meat Jerky: To Brine or not to Brine? Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Two methods, one seasoning mix. I was curious to see how much the water in a brine diluted flavor, so mixed one spice combo and used it both as a dry rub and a mini-brine. Both versions were very good, though the brined meat was more tender and had plenty of flavor, the heat was less in-your-face than in the dry rub version. Husband John preferred the up-front heat of the dry rub, but I preferred the subtler richness of the brine. Both of us liked the increased tenderness of the brined meat.
Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes A few years ago, Darrik Carraway, who was manager of Whittaker Guns in Kentucky back then, invited us for a turkey hunt. Not wanting to come empty-handed, I made up a fairly large batch of sausage. I had no idea what we’d do with it, but Darrik’s dad, Doug, was an avid barbecuer. He’d shot a turkey that morning, and as soon as he heard the word ‘sausage’ had a plan: cubed and brined turkey breast, sausage, on skewers, cooked on his Traeger grill. Doug was a genius. There were no leftovers!
Chinese Waldorf Salad Eileen Clarke - Rifles and Recipes Going for a long, hot walk for some birds come September first? We stash 12-16 ounce pop bottles, ½ to 3/4 filled with water, upright in the freezer. Heading out to hunt, top them off with cold water and slide 2 to 4 of them in the bird vest. As we walk and hunt, they’ll keep us--and our birds--cooler. Really hot? Fill the bottles, leaving an inch or so for expansion, and freeze. The ice lasts longer.
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