Venison Neck Roast Recipe

If you butcher your own deer like I do, consider this method for dealing with the neck.  Most commercial butchers will simply cut away enough meat from the neck and throw it into the burger pile.  This results in a fair amount of waste and you lose some very long fiber muscle meat that is excellent for "pulled" types of recipes.  

Today I decided to try a cornbread casserole for dinner, so that was a good excuse to grab a frozen neck and make some room in the freezer.  To see that recipe check it out here:

When I harvest a deer, after skinning, I will cut off the head and then remove the neck from the body with a meat saw or cordless sawzall.  Then I will simply vacuum seal the whole roast into a bag after I remove the windpipe.  If you only have a narrow slow cooker like I have (I've been looking for a larger one) you either need to cut the roast in half again before or after freezing.  Some folks stress about chronic wasting disease and cutting the spine and cord, but my thoughts are that if there was a huge risk there it would be known.  To date, there have been no reported cases of CWD infection in people.  I try to be careful not reusing the knives and saw on other meat until they are cleaned well though.  This time I destroyed some neck meat during the "acquisition phase" of the meat which resulted in a smaller roast that fit perfectly. 

 

Ingredients:

4 cups of chicken broth

2 celery sticks

1/2 small onion chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

 

 

The beauty of the slow cooker here is you do not need to plan ahead and thaw the roast.  I just placed the frozen roast on top of some frozen celery, some coarsely chopped onion, added 4 cups of chicken broth along with salt and pepper.  Then you can forget about it for 5 or 6 hours while it cooks. 

Normally I would use some of my canned bone broth for extra flavor, but here I am simply cooking the meat for additional recipes, so I will save my bone broth for those if needed.  

 

 

After the cooking time and the meat is fall off the bone, remove the roast to cool.

 

Take two forks and shred the meat when it has cooled enough to handle, but not cold or it will not pull apart as easily.

Strain and filter that broth for later use.  I used a funnel and a paper towel to filter and poured it into a mason jar to store in the refrigerator until needed.

Now you have some nice long fiber pulled venison.  This is delicious as is in a sandwich, with  BBQ sauce, in tacos, or used in other savory recipes such as shredded cornbread casserole I will post up in the future.

Canning Wild Pheasant Legs - Canned Pheasant in Wine Recipe

 Recently a friend of mine invited me on a pheasant hunting trip.  I decided I would use my great grandfather's LC Smith 16 gauge No. 2 grade double barrel shotgun.  The trip was a great success and I bagged 3 birds with the 118 year old shotgun.  I've now successfully hunted birds with my father's, grandfather's, and great grandfather's double guns, but that is a whole other story. 

 

I decided to can some of these birds, especially the tough legs.  I've previously just used the crock pot to slow cook them, but I have been doing a fair bit of canning wild game recently with great success so I figured I would try.  I found scant few resources and recipes online, but I figured it should not be that different from other game meat canning. 

I was careful to try to remove all lead shot and feathers from the meat.  I decided with a raw pack method and warmed the meat in hot water before placing the legs directly into the hot jars along with 1/2 teaspoon salt in each pint jar.  I added a little hot water to each jar due to the airspace the legs left and the lean nature of the meat, though I found out afterward it was unnecessary.  

I used a wide mouth mason for a little extra room for adding the legs.

I also cubed up the breast meat and added those similarly to small mouthed pint jars.

 

 

 

I did not add any water to the breast pieces as they should cook down and provide enough liquid via this method.  I placed the banded jars into the pressure cooker as I went.  I sealed the canner lid and after letting the headspace vent for 10 minutes, placed my weight and canned the meat at 15 pounds pressure for 75 minutes.  

 

After the canner cooled I removed the jars and placed them on a wire rack to cool.

Not wanting to waste the breast bones and little bits of meat left after I filleted the breasts, I put them into a stock pot and covered them with water.  I added some diced onion, carrots, salt and pepper, and simmered the pheasant stock in a covered pot for several hours.

Once finished I poured the stock into quart mason jars and let cool.  This will go to the refrigerator to add to future dishes I planned to make, or anything else that could use a little stock flavor.  

Here are all the products from the pheasants cooling, stock, legs, and breast. If I had more stock I could also have pressure canned that, but it will not last long so once cooled I just refrigerated.

 

 

 

My favorite Pheasant Recipe using the meat and stock produced above.

 

 Pheasant in Wine:

 Canned pheasant pieces

1 carrot

1 onion

1/2 celery Stalk

3 cups pheasant stock (or chicken)

1 cup white wine

4 tbsp. butter or bacon fat

3 tsp. basil

1 1/2 tsp. cornstarch

1 cup uncooked Jasmine rice 

Salt and Pepper to taste

 

First drain the canned pheasant meat (save the liquid for the stock addition). Remove the bones and hard cartilage from the legs. Set the meat aside. Here you can see I used both dark leg meat and a jar of white breast meat I had canned.

 

 

Dice the carrot, onion, and celery stick finely.  Saute this in the pan with the butter or bacon fat at medium heat for about 10 minutes stirring often until the onions are tender and translucent.   

 

Place the canned pheasant into the pan and add the wine.  After a few minutes of stirring add the pheasant stock and basil and simmer covered for about 5 minutes. 

 

Cook the rice in 2 cups of additional chicken/pheasant stock in a small separate pan.  I like to boil the 2 cups of stock and them add the rice and cover.  Turn off the burner and stir once or twice until all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is done.

 

 

Remove the lid to the pheasant pan and add the cornstarch and continue to simmer for a few minutes to thicken the liquid.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Once the rice is done, spoon meat and gravy mixture over the rice and serve.

This was a hit with my family, so I will continue to can future pheasant, especially the legs.