The Very Versatile Any-Meat Soup Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes It’s a soup. And, while I originally made it with wild pig meat, which is how it got its name, over the years it’s become an ‘any meat’ soup. From pheasant and turkey to antelope, elk, whitetail and mule deer, the combination of spices with pearl onions and shiitake mushrooms pairs well with anything I have tried so far.
Creamy Ginger Upland Birds on the Fly Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Here’s a quick dish that will win the hearts of your family. So quick in fact, that you’ll want to have everything cut, diced, and measured before you heat up the fry pan. (Oh, and have the rice, pasta or toast, whichever you choose to pour this luscious, creamy concoction on, ready to go as well.) And don’t worry if you don’t have a grouse or two in the freezer. Pheasant, Hungarian partridge—any pale-meat bird—will work, though they need to be somewhat tender for this quick cooking dish. Aging birds, especially older roosters in the fridge, for 7-10 days works—just draw and rinse the birds first and leave the feathers on to keep them from drying out. If you aren’t into aging whole birds, then an overnight soak in a brine of 2 cups water and 1 tablespoon salt helps. Dicing the meat first helps the brine work fast.
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.
Brisket in Fire Roasted Red Pepper Sauce Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes A lot of my friends are heading out for upland birds. Others are bow hunters, who just can’t resist the siren call of rutting elk. I feel it too, but I have to admit, as a cook, it’s not the bugling that attracts me. It’s the lovely brisket meat that mature elk pack around their rib cage. While deer and antelope are just too small to grow a usable brisket, elk and moose can pack that rib cage padding on. Perhaps not as thick as a mature Angus steer, water and cape buffalo or our own home-grown bison, but large enough for this tasty dish.
Making the Most of Ground Game Meat Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes I love meatloaf, whether it’s hot at the dinner table with baked potatoes and garden vegetables or lying in a hard-crusted roll dripping with cole slaw. And this is such an easy glaze. Molasses adds a nice bite, which is why it’s an essential ingredient in a lot of barbecue sauces. For the venison, any elk, antelope or deer meat works, as long as it’s pretty good tasting to start with. Meatloaf Supreme
A Make-Ahead Chili for Hunting Camp or Sunday Football Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes We were driving around a couple of weeks ago and it soon became obvious that the winter wheat around Townsend would soon be ready to cut. The fields I was seeing were that ripe-yellow color and all the heads I could see were tipping at an angle. The next step will be moisture content, having the wheat dry enough to not mold in storage, but with a few hot, dry days, the cutting will begin.
Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes There are two kinds of cooks. Ones who make just enough food to eat right now, and those who make a big meal one day, then forage on the leftovers for a couple of days. I’m that forager. And one thing I am really craving right now is a tasty elk or deer roast to slice thin over sourdough bread with mayo and salsa with a little lettuce and tomato from the garden. But no way am I lighting the kitchen stove when it’s this hot. Isn’t that why we have barbecues?
Bacon and Birds—with a Side of Pop Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes The best tasting sharptails I ever ate came from a draw in Eastern Montana that was loaded with buffalo berry bushes full of plump, ripe berries. The birds were gorging themselves, their beaks and faces stained purple. Judging from the signs, they’d been at it more than 24 hours. And the berries had had their effect. The meat was sweet and tender. More to the point though, their stomachs were drum-tight and the birds slow to leave the abundance of food. Terrible wing shot that I am, even I got a limit. (That's my DH in the photo. My hubby John is a really good wing shot.)
Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes It will be too hot to make jerky soon, so while we are still having our usual schizophrenic spring-to-summer transition, this is a good time to prep a batch of the tastiest of snacks. Choose a cool day, hopefully with rain, and grab a goose or covey of ducks from the freezer. (You know you’ve been avoiding them.) Hopefully, the ducks are dabblers, good tasting little beasties, but if not, the tabasco, cumin and chili powder in this recipe will help. It’s a ground meat jerky, which is perfect for game animals smaller than an antelope. Go ahead, ask why.
Is it Sunny & Warm? Let’s Fire Up the Grill Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Spring in Montana, as we saw last week, can be a time of extremes. As I write this, last Friday, it was headed into the high 80s, so I was cleaning up the grill and making sure the propane tank had some juice. I’m hoping, as you read this, that you’re considering taking the hubs out, stashing that heavy coat in the back of the closet and hanging out in the garden while a tasty wild game kabob fills the air with the aroma of summer.
Is it Ever Not Chili Season? Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes I would argue that chili is a 24/7/365 Mental Health food. For breakfast, you can always pour it over an English muffin or an omelet loaded with the queso of your choice; at the height of summer, when outdoor cooking is a ‘must’, pour it over a grilled hot dog on a toasted bun—and don’t forget some grated cheese on top of that as well. Need a stalwart dip for a football game or July 4th get-together, why not chili? Make up a tray of hot chili, sliced jalapenos, a jar of queso dip and some corn chips. (A mini-slow cooker would keep that chili nice and hot, with no trouble.)
Taking Advantage of the Last of the Cool Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes The weather is changing on us day by day. That’s what early May is all about. One day you think you’re late getting those peas started in the garden, and the next you’re driving through a snowstorm. You think I’m kidding?
Smokin’ Hot Nutella Chili Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes Never Enough Chili Recipes!
A Quick Dinner for Busy Nights Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes If you get lucky this year and trick a turkey into your range, chow mein is a great way to keep that low-fat wild meat moist while you cook it. And it’s a quick dish for busy week nights. If you got really lucky and scored a big gobbler, I’d take the time to brine it overnight (in 2 cups water and 1 tablespoon each of salt and brown sugar) before cooking. That will tenderize the meat as well as tame any gaminess. As for the MSG in the recipe, it is optional, but if you want the intensity of veggie flavors that your favorite prepared mix or Asian buffet restaurant has, I’d add it, cause that’s what they use to bump up flavor. And feel free to double or triple the recipe.
It Isn’t Barbecue Weather Yet…. Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes I’ve been thinking of secret ingredients lately, and this recipe has one of my favorites. It’s the chicken broth. It may look like a typo, but it’s not. Venison, be it deer, elk, moose or antelope, has always seemed to me to need a bit of sweetening, and chicken broth is just sweet enough to fill that niche. Sometimes I use all chicken, sometimes half and half, as here. It’s all a matter of individual taste. Make the soup this way, and maybe next time with all chicken or even all beef broth.
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.)
Eileen Clarke Rifles and Recipes There are only two things I’ll say about this recipe: first, while it seems like a terrible waste of whiskey, it’s an amazing jerky and I wouldn’t use any delicate Irish whiskey. It needs the punch of an in-your-face Canadian whiskey. Second, despite being cooked for 4-6 hours, very little of the alcohol cooks off. In fact, next to none.
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.
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