Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Aging meat after it has been frozen?

Very interesting! I relate gameyness with the scent from the hide specifically the scent from the tarsal gland. My wife is extremely sensitive to “gameyness” and didn’t want anything to do with venison when we were dating. She grew up on the Canadian border and I don’t think they traditionally take care of venison the way it should be. I was patient with her but I usually put up between 120 -175 lbs. of venison a year and had no intentions of giving it away. I view venison as health food, no chemicals and much healthier proteins than feedlot slaughtered animals. I’m a type 2 diabetic. In the beginning she didn’t even want to be in the same house when I was cooking it, now she is very happy when I bring home some deer and will even help butcher.
My routine when preparing venison is to gut the deer within an hour of of killing it. Skin it as soon as possible from the head down, staying away from the tarsal glands. After 2-3 days of hanging without freezing I quarter and cut steaks. My theory is this accomplishes 3 things - removing the hide ASAP reduces “gameyness”, hanging deer for at least 2 days improves tenderness and reduces bloodyness. Hanging longer than 3 days leaves too much bark on the animal for my liking.
Just my opinion but I like the results. Anyone got a good venison heart recipe?

Have a freezer full of Bison that we had to race to get cooled down so it was in the freezer locker within 3 hrs. of shooting it. Most has been very good but had some assorted mystery cuts that were on the tuff side. Some were shanks so not sure anything but long slow wet cooking would fix those.

Thanks for pointing out humidity is not an issue if still wrapped, had a mental issue of it unwrapped and dry ageing. I think I will do a test on some steaks one thawed and a week in the refrigerator and the other cooked immediately after thawing. May not tell me much as the other steaks were fine with no aging.

Here is one of my favorites. Have used Venison, Buffalo & Beef and eaten Llama and Alpaca heart, all good.

I havent noticed any gamey taste coming from antelope, elk or deer I have shot once butchered. No smell either.
Last year I shot a mule deer back during the peak of the rut. The carcass did have an bit of an odor so I put the entire skinned carcass in a large cooler and filled it with ice and the drain open. Let it sit like that for 10 days and then butchered. It had no gamey taste at all, didnt smell and actually had better flavor than a white tail doe I shot earlier in the season.

Care to elaborate?

MInd you, I did not stay at a Holiday INN last night. I was just a bit jockey at a frozen cheeseburger plant. As I understand it, freezing produces a physical force. Take a Mason jar, fill it with water and put it in the freezer. The ice causes the jar to shatter from the expansion. Inside the muscle cells of a mass of venison, the same thing is happening. All I know is that we would buy meat (pork, beef, and chicken) both fresh and frozen in by the ton. The frozen stuff would be thawed (they called it tempering) and then thrown in grinders and extruded into patties, braised, steam cooked and flash frozen. After 20 minutes in a spiral freezer, a burger patty came out as a hockey puck. I'd frequently be called into sample stuff, or if the line broke down, we'd have an instant party between the steam oven and the freezer.

There was a marked difference between fresh and frozen meat, and some of the products we made were not tasty until after they'd been through the flash freezer. Remember, we were making all the meat patties for Burger King, Arby's, all the Sam's Club patties, and several lines of vending machine food along with institutional products. As I was leaving, they were close to perfecting a process that would make a vending machine cheeseburger edible after 45 days. I don't know if y'all eat at MacDonald's but our 1/4 pounder tasted better out of a vending machine. I still like them.

When I asked about it, the scientists in the lab could quote me chapter and verse on how it all worked. When I asked about venison, I was told that aging would not help it at all, but freezing for a while would. The reason behind this was the low fat content in the muscle fibers.

BTW: on the subject of gaminess, I have some advice. Cincinnati is a big chili town. We love Cincinnati Chili. If you have a deer that is gamey, I'd recommend making a batch of Goldstar Chili with it in a crock pot and letting it slow cook for 4 hours. After an hour or so, the kitchen will fill up with gamey smell, but after 3 hours or so it will dissipate. Cincinnati Chili is made commercially with the toughest cuts of beef. Gold Star uses headmeat and CIncinnati gobbles up most of the head meat east of the Mississippi. If you like a bit more beefy flavor, toss in 1 tablespoons of beef fat per pound of venison. Serve over sphaghetti with fresh chopped onion and shredded cheddar cheese. That is what we call a 3-way around here. Gold Star packets can be had at Kroger or on Amazon. My favorite is a bowl of chili without the noodles, onion and cheddar.

The other piece of advice is if you want a tangy barbecue-like taste, take your gamey venison roasts and steaks and dump them in a crockpot with a bottle of cheap Russian Dressing. Cook on low until the meat can be pulled. Serve it like you would pulled pork.

shaman,

Freezing does help in the way you describe, but only flash-freezing (very quick freezing). Putting meat in a typical home freezer does not break the meat fibers down in the same way.

The "scientists in the lab" were FOS about aging wild meat not doing any good--apparently because they believe the lack of fat content has something to do with it. It does not, because wild animals have the same enzymes in their meat as beef cattle, primarily lactase, common to mammals because it helps break down lactose, the sugar in milk. Lactase is the primary enzyme in meat aging, which breaks down the tough collagen.

There's plenty of stuff on "meat science" out there for hunters who want to do some research--including info specifically on wild game. The University of Wyoming has a great meat science department, and lots of their info is on the Internet. I started researching all this back in college, when U. of Wyoming's stuff was printed in various journals of the U. of Montana's library. It's far easier to find today.

I agree that the speed does have quite a bit to do with it. A lot of our competitors packed freshly cooked patties and then threw them in the warehouse. Meat is a good insulator. The center of the carton would stay unfrozen for some time-- even to the point of spoilage. We flash-froze patties individully and then packed them. On the other hand, I know my processor, as a for instance, packages the meat after about 3 days in the cooler, and it all goes in a big freezer on trays that allow the air to circulate. They freeze up rather fast-- not as fast as a spiral flash freezer that pops them out at -20F in 20 minutes, but fairly quick, and a lot quicker than a home freezer.

Bottom line: I've got tender flavorful steaks and roasts, and I notice a subtle but noticeable improvement if I hold off until the NFL playoffs. To my palate, the best taste come in February and March, and that's when we do our big venison meals. This is also when I take the leftovers from previous seasons and make my jerky.

I have two of those books. I gave them to the guy that does all our sausages. He got very good at the whole thing but died this last spring of Leukemia.

The rest of the gang has agreed that all our sausage will come from one meat base......a 50-50 mix of ground venison and pork. It uncomplicates things a lot as we normally make 300 pounds at a sitting.

From that we vary spice mixes and casings to get hot dogs, polish, italian, ring baloney. and kielbasa. At my age (74) I really look for uncomplicating things if I can.....we don't do creedmores either!

We get sausage done by the processor-- no particular reason.

What I frequently do is either by the cheapest grade of Hot sausage from Krogers or buy a box of bacon ends, and mix it with the grind as I'm cooking. The ground venison recipe/sausage recipe that gets the most smiles in our house is what we call "Who Hash"

Take a chub of ground venison, a chub of hot breakfast sausage and can of beef hash. Mix thoroughly in a skillet and throw it in the oven @ 400F. Stir a couple of times and pull out the excess grease. Spice to taste with Creole Seasoning. Use the grease and some crumbles to make sausage gravy. When it's done, I pull it out and throw shredded cheese on top and cover the skillet. Call the tribe to the table. Slap a load of the Who Hash on the plate and top with gravy. Watch 3+lbs of "The Who" disappear leaving nothing but smiles and empty plates.

Why do we call it Who Hash? When the kids were little, we'd play a game, guessing which deer the venison had come from. My guys got really good at guessing.

Is that Zero-Six-A? No, I think it's Zero-Six-B. You're full of it! Dad snuck in some of Zero-Seven-A.

My sons will still spend the night and stay for Sunday breakfast if I promise them Who Hash. Even Granddaughter #1 loves it.

Thank You very much.

Jerry

Jerry,

You're welcome!

But Eileen also includes the latest such info--in a condensed and more readable form--in her cookbooks. SLICE OF THE WILD, her field-to-table book for big game, has a section on such stuff--and the variations we've experienced different species (and ages within a species) in 35+ years we've been living off big game.

MD

Yes I'm aware and I've been "cold wx" or "wet aging" wild game since 1981 or so. In 1986 I killed my first deer with Mzldr, a good 8 pt buck, late in the eve. I gutted him and washed him out asap and left him HANG with the hide ON.
That night everything FROZE solid, warming up in the day then RE freezing at night.

I left him for 5 days & nights freezing at night...thawing the next afternoon...refreezing etc.
I had 3 friends who said, " You're gonna lose that meat ". When I butchered him I took one of those friends ENUFF fresh deer meat for their supper.

HE converted his whole deer camp to REFRIGERATORS instead of freezers ! I also had the camp I was in changing as well.


There are several 'ole wives tales' per processing game, Goats, Deer, etc.

When I was a kid my Dad butchered a Goat every year and said.... Don't let water get on it ! He carried that over to deer as well. I found out that 'water' does NOT ruin deer meat. With our Wx here most of the time our temp is not cold enuff for
deer to hang for days....SO 'WET' aging has worked for me since 1981.

Ice/water/drain/Ice/water = KEEP cold NOT frozen.

IF it freezes thaw it and age it.....EATs ummmmGood !

I've had commercial butchers tell me, "you don't know how many times the meat you buy in a store has been frozen and thawed ! "

Another 'tale' I've disproved is "Get the hide OFF". IF the temp is above 32* and less than 50* the hide makes NO diff.
Actually the HIDE ON keeps the meat from DRYING and turning DARK.

NOW if the temp is above 50, YES SKIN it and get it cooled and keep it cooled.

Remember * wash out insides AFTER gutting * gets the body temp lowered immediately.

NOTE : I'm aware that on a big game hunt at distance from home dictates different methods. NO problem.

Everyone does NOT do the same thing, understood. These things work for me.

Jerry

Yeah, we hang game with the hide on if at all possible, for the very reason you describe. Even if days are farily warm, we often leave the hide on animals killed in the afternoon/evening, because we know the temperature will be considerably cooler during the night. But that's late October through November in mountainous Montana.

Eileen once killed a good-sized buck mule deer on the 15th of November, on a cool but not cold day in the Missouri Breaks. We gutted it, leaving the hide on, then hung it up in our barn when we got home the next day, planning to let it age at least a week. But halfway through the week a cold front came through and froze the deer solid. We decided to let it hang until the weather warmed up enough to thaw the deer--which turned out to be the next March. Some people were convinced the meat would be "ruined," though they couldn't exactly say why. It was really good.

But we also experiment considerably to see what happens with different methods. Once killed a deer (seem to remember a whitetail doe) and skinned half and left the hide on the other half. (Of course it was coolish temps.) After letting it hang a few days, I processed it, tried cooking the same cuts from each half, and could detect no difference in flavor.

Many years ago I decided to watch the "old timers" and do what they did rather than what they said. They had a lot of experience behind them ya know!

So I watched carefully and lo and behold they all did one thing the same. Whenever they shot a buck it was field dressed and then hung from a tree outside by the road that went by their house and always with the hide on! They were all dairy farmers and they had plenty of places to hang deer out back where the deer wouldn't get so much road dust on them.....but NOOOOOOOO.....the deer had to be hung where drivers-by could get a good view.

One more thing.......the bigger the horns, the longer they hung it. AHAAAAA....it was then that I knew why they aged the deer meat!

If, today, I was wanting steaks, chops, roasts etc from a venison, I'd build a walk in cooler (temp controlled to 38 degrees) and let the deer hang for ten days hide off. Then break out the knives and saws and go to it.

Several individuals locally have done exactly that.

M D

Thumbs Up !

Jerry

Freezing and thawing generate a lot of fluid loss. When repeated, one is going to end up with some very dry meat. My preference is for juicy steaks.

Who has mentioned repeatedly freezing and thawing, aside from one post mentioning how many times beef can get frozen before the retail cuts are sold?

Plus, it's my experience with game that cooking technique has the most effect on whether meat is "juicy" or not.

Isn’t there some general rule about not cutting steaks/roasts from the animal until the muscles have had time to relax, again, from rigor mortis?