Ring the dinner bell: Hunting season brings opportunity to cook with game meat

With moose season closed and local meat processors busy turning out steaks, chops, roasts, and burgers, the home chef is faced with the annual challenge of getting that high-protein, low-fat goodness onto the dinner table.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game website has a wealth of nutritional information on the various game species available to hunters in the state.

“Healthy and nutritious, game meat is typically lower in saturated fat and calories than domestic meat,” a report on Eating Game Meat states. “Alaskan game generally feeds on wild plants, shrubs, and trees that do not contain pesticides or herbicides. When game meat is well cared for, many people prefer it over domestic meat because of its unique flavor, low fat, and lack of additives such as antibiotics or growth hormones.” Count at least a couple of local chefs among devotees of game meat.

Gretchen Hopping, executive chef at The Grape Tap restaurant in Wasilla, grew up in Homer, where her family hunted caribou every year. She had the opportunity from an early age to learn how to butcher and process the animal and get it ready for dinner portions.

“Caribou is nice clean meat, like elk,” Hopping said. “I think it is a better, more tender cut of meat and has better flavor than moose. But that’s just a personal preference.” Whether a hunt yields caribou or moose, what is done with it from there is similar.

When considering how to prepare a specific cut of game meat, anatomy is important. Hopping said the front shoulders and hindquarters are where the most used muscles are. “Those are best turned into roasts,” she said. “They need to be cooked low and slow to bring out the best in the meat.”

Hopping said she likes to season and sear the outside of the roast first to help keep the meat moist, then put it in the oven to finish cooking. Setting the roast on a bed of mirepoix – a mix of chopped celery, carrots, and onions – then adding liquid to the pan prevents the bottom from overcooking and facilitates a more evenly cooked roast.

“I do about 30 to 40 minutes per pound of meat,” she said. “That’s for fork tender. You can pull it apart.”

At the other end of the tenderness scale, the brisket area and loins have less used muscle, so they are more tender. The brisket is great for smoking, Hopping said, and can also be turned into delicious pastrami.

The king of cuts is the steak. And nothing beats the grill for maximizing the flavor of a good moose or caribou steak, she said.

“It’s one of those cuts that you want to have the full flavor of,” Hopping said. “No marinade. Just a little salt and pepper. It’s just delicious on the grill.”

Topping a steak with sauce after plating it is a great way to finish it. The key is to not overpower the meat, or add anything that’s not a good fit, like a cream sauce.

“Bordelaise is a great sauce for a grilled steak,” Hopping said. “Anything that has red wine in it is going to be great for game meat. Same for a cherry sauce.”

Compound butter, made by mixing herbs and other ingredients into softened butter, then chilling it to make it solid again, is also a nice topper for a grilled moose steak. Flavor profiles are limited only by the chef’s imagination, but Hopping has a favorite.

“Garlic, shallots, horseradish, and chives,” she said. “It’s a really nice butter to put on red meat.”

A cardinal rule for game steaks, because of their leanness, is to not overcook them. “You really want to keep your temp to medium or below, otherwise it can become dry and chalky,” she said. “It loses everything. It’s a waste of meat.”

Over at Chop House restaurant at the Lake Lucille Inn, executive chef Edward Rollins echoed Hopping about the perils of overcooking game meat.

“If you like medium or medium well, it can get dry,” he said. A veteran of 55 years in the kitchen – he started at 12 as a dishwasher – Rollins knows a thing or two about preparing game meat. In 2010, while cheffing at the Millennium Hotel in Anchorage, he got to cook the traditional seven-course dinner for the first Iditarod musher to reach the Yukon River. The main course was pan-seared medallions of venison tenderloin with wild mushrooms and blueberries. He deglazed the pan with port wine then flambéed with brandy to create a sauce for the finished meat. More recently, he catered a private party that featured moose steaks seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked on the griddle top of a Blackstone grill in clarified butter and olive oil. “Real basic,” he said. “Moose steaks grill up great.” He finished the steaks with a sauce composed on the grill featuring blackberries and raspberries blended into demi-glace with shallots and mushrooms. “I like to build a sauce around the meat,” Rollins said. “Berries are great with game cuts. They take any gamey edge off the meat and enhance the natural flavor.”

FIND OUT MORE

www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=hunting.eating