Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Tough venison

it seems that the buck i shot this year is very tough. i steaked out the roasts and they are chewy as hell. they taste fine and not at all gamey, just tough. i think i will be doing chicken fried steak and probably some sort of swiss steak but other than that i am kind of out of ideas.

any thoughts on how to prepare or cook a tough old buck?

Use a tenderizing hammer on it and it should be great.I'm just starting to get into ageing my deer meat and it does make a huge difference.I put the quarters,backstraps and tenderloins,ribs and neck meat each in a separate bag,not closed off,just to keep the meat from being directly on the ice.I use large ice chest with a good layer of crushed or block ice on the bottom,the bagged meat spread out on top of the ice and then another good layer of crushed or block ice on top of that.I prop up one end,keep the drain open and replenish the ice on top daily.I use plastic bottles filled with water then frozen to be used for my daily icing.Just put them back in the freezer and replace them with another set that is frozen.It will make your ice last a long time.The meat your going to grind really doesn't need to be aged,so I worked that up rather quickly and put it in the freezer,but I like to hold the backstraps and hindquarters at least 7 days.The longest I've held it was 13 days.I have found it to make a tremendous difference in how tender the meat is.The main thing is keep it iced down really well at all times.

Crock pot is your friend !

Cube it & make stews.

+1 on the tenderizing hammer.

You may want to look up using "baking soda".

Supposed to work on beef.

Saw it on one of those Saturday cooking shows in the past.
They included a technical explanation of why it worked.
The one with Julia and Bridgett.

Yes tenderizing hammer cut them thick then beat them out thin. It will tenderize them.

Uhh....you are trying to turn roasts into steaks.....and complaining about the toughness?


Yeah. They gonna be tougher than chops.

Cook medium rare or less. I find that many game roasts are much more tender than comparable roasts in domestic animals, but if you get a tough one, you may be chewing.

Low and slow probably best.

Sometimes high acid marinades help.

You could also defrost and leave in a cold fridge for 2-3 weeks. Wet aging will definitely tenderize most meats.

https://anovaculinary.com/what-is-sous-vide/

Seriously - look it up

Planning on a batch of this soon: West Texas Venison

Deer are pepperoni \sausage \ kielbasa fodder. Backstraps, the whole 9 yards.. Elk is steaks etc.

If you're going to hammer the meat, you ought to just grind it into burger. If you want steaks, use a jaccard.

JACCARD

Aging cures almost all evils...

Can it or grind it.

i realize that. i have done this a lot. i'm not big on deer roasts. this is the toughest deer i remember eating. i expect some roasts to be less tough than others due to the muscle group they came from. for some reason this is all tough.

Ninja Foodi (pressure cooker) will get the job done! Just got one a few weeks ago, works great and will definitely tenderize that venison!

I believe the concensus is...

😂😂😂

I guess the remedy would be to cube them then.

The only parts of a deer I cook with dry heat are the back straps and tenderloins. I cut steaks from the roasts from the hams but I cube those ( used to beat them with cubing mallet ). I either do country fried steaks or country style steak from those.