Africa Hunting Cooking : Your favourite venison dish

[steve white]

I love cooking wild game too. These are pan seared Sambar venison backstrap steaks (rested in dry aged beef fat), sunny side up fried eggs, thrice fried goose fat potato chips & Chimichurri sauce. I absolutely love Bearnaise sauce too, but have never been successful in making it at home. The sauce always keep breaking. But my daughter-in-law makes an amazing one.

Want to know the secret to a good steak ? Always use cast iron skillets. Stainless steel pans are for amateurs and non-stick teflon lined pans are for soy boys !

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On my African Safaris, I always subsist predominantly on game meat.

My favorite dish of all time, would actually have to be a bowl of guinea fowl potjie with some warm toasted loaves of garlic bread and a cold African Castle Lager taken right out of the ice box.

I’m also a fan of impala liver. Either made into a pate and eaten over buttered toast or simply broiled over the brai with a little coarse salt.

Eland fillets are great, cooked like any beef fillet mignon recipe. As are the chops from sable, impala & gemsbok. Cape buffalo fillets are absolutely amazing, as is Cape buffalo tail…. but only if prepared by a very competent camp cook (the secret is to soak in lots of red wine).

The underbelly of hippopotamus is excellent when ground up and employed as a ragout sauce for pastas.

Elephant meat is coarse & quite tough. But their tail fat is quite delicious. It may be spread upon bread like butter. And also employed in any recipe which calls for sheep’s tail.

I know that it sounds peculiar, but in my humble field experiences… the finest African wild game steaks actually come from giraffe. The marbling is absolutely unrivaled.

I could go & on about my favorite wild game dishes. But that would make this post quite long & monotonous. If I had to name two African game meats which I will never touch again,,. it will have to be waterbuck and spurwing goose ! Absolutely beastly for the palate.

Hunter-Habib, you make me hungry every single time you post about food! I don't know if anyone enjoys game at its best as much as you.

 

[steve white]

13 moose recipe--from a Canadian hunter I met:
Coat backstop cutlets with mustard, then dust in corn starch, and fry. Remove.
Cut up an onion and sauté' it in the oil.
Drain oil and put back the cutlets, covering with the onions and cans of Rotelle tomatoes. You choose how spicy, labeled on the cans.
Simmer until tomatoes are cooked and serve!

#2 Saute venison cutlets in a little oil and butter, then add heavy cream and Lingonberries. In Scandanavia they add a few spruce berries, I think.

 

[baxterb]

I love the tough bits. Braise a shoulder for 3-4 hours and let all that connective tissue melt down and it’s a taste to behold.

Specific dishes / Hank Shaw’s chillindron is fantastic and a favorite.

 

[steve white]

I might suggest Hank Shaw's book, "Buck, Buck, Moose" You'll get a LOT of truly great recipes out of it!

 

[Flbt]

Deer pan sausage
Cooked drain chop onions garlic mushrooms your favorite crackers smashed seasoning and your favorite cheese
I like a provolone or sharp cheddar
Mix
Stuff in a bell pepper or in a tomato throw in the air fryer

Very simple deer meat and potatoe stew

Deer meat added into a cheese and potato soup

Back strap simply fryed with mash potatoes and corn

 

[Hunt anything]

I made pastrami out of some old deer roasts and sandhill crane breast that got lost in the back of the freezer. The crane was from 2022and the deer from 2023.
Followed a brine off of the internet, rubbed with black pepper, and a few other spices and smoked for 1 1/2 hrs at 225 then steamed for another hour. Sliced thin and made great Reuben sandwiches, soft rye bread, thousand island dressing, Swiss cheese and some sour kraut my daughter brought home from Germany.

 

[Surgeon1]

Elk Tenderloin or back strap fixed many ways. The rest of a couple elk go in burger and Sausage
(Italian, breakfast & Summer)
In Africa rare Eland or Sable tenderloins on the grill! It's as good of eating as there is anywhere!
In fact, I really haven't had a meal I didn't think was top notch in multiple camps! Likely the few times I've been served grass fed beef were the worst! I live on Western Nebraska & Kansas cornfed beef and
Elk, along with Alaska & Costa Rica fish.
It has amazed me how good the venison in Africa is, I don't eat any Mule or White Tail Deer.

 

[Trogon]

Other than the nice cuts like backstraps and tenderloins, my whitetails get ground for chili, taco meat, etc. I consider Venison good, not great. The antelope I've tried on SA trips has usually been very good to fantastic on the braii.
Two favorites for ground deer have been Goetta (a breakfast "meat" made from ground beef or deer, ground pork or pork sausage and pinhead oatmeal with onion and spices). German inspired from immigrants using cheap pork cuts over the decades and truly very central to southwest Ohio and northern Kentucky. Cincinnati was Porkopolis at one time. After cooling, cut into slices to fry in butter or bacon grease. Great with 2 or 3 over easy fried eggs!
The other is Cincinnati Chili, which is a Greek immigrant inspired base of spices cooked with ground beef or deer, spices and served over spaghetti several ways:
3-way is spaghetti, chili and good fine shredded cheddar
4-way includes the above plus either finely chopped white onion or red beans
5-way includes both the onion and beans. Chili is also great on coney dogs and buns with spicy brown mustard, onions and cheese.

 

[CBH Australia]

Elk Tenderloin or back strap fixed many ways. The rest of a couple elk go in burger and Sausage
(Italian, breakfast & Summer)
In Africa rare Eland or Sable tenderloins on the grill! It's as good of eating as there is anywhere!
In fact, I really haven't had a meal I didn't think was top notch in multiple camps! Likely the few times I've been served grass fed beef were the worst! I live on Western Nebraska & Kansas cornfed beef and
Elk, along with Alaska & Costa Rica fish.
It has amazed me how good the venison in Africa is, I don't eat any Mule or White Tail Deer.

Other than being spoiled for choice is there a reason you don’t eat Mule Deer and White tail deer?

 

[Green Chile]

zebra or eland steaks...buffalo oxtail!

 

[Surgeon1]

Other than being spoiled for choice is there a reason you don’t eat Mule Deer and White tail deer?

Yes, just don’t like the taste. One of the few game animals I’ve eaten from all over the world that I just don’t like. With the debate on CWD and its influx into the areas in the US that I hunt I choose not only to not eat them but also not hunt them!

 

[Hunt anything]

Yes, just don’t like the taste. One of the few game animals I’ve eaten from all over the world that I just don’t like. With the debate on CWD and its influx into the areas in the US that I hunt I choose not only to not eat them but also not hunt them!

Have you ever had Colombian blacktail? It was much better to me than whitetail or mule deer. Of course that may be because I had spent 4 or 5 days humping up and down the Yolla Bolla mountain range in California and was too worn out not to like it.