Ideas on how to restructure wild meat

My friend Bill Witt called a few days ago. We discussed our vegetable gardens, upcoming camping trips and outdoor cooking.

"I'm going to start giving away the rest of the venison from last year, because I have so much left," he said.

"Oh, don't do it," I said, then explained my way of dealing with extra wild game. In my house not one scrap of wild game is considered extra. Even what most hunters throw away as waste, the bloodshot pieces and other snippets not fit for human consumption, is ground for the cats.

Bill suffers from the same condition with the other members of his family as I do; a lack of people who enjoy eating deer and elk. Difficult to believe, but it is true.

Of course sharing with friends and hunting partners is a standard practice, but they also know I'm on the stingy side with the meat in my freezer. So I still have plenty of meat to eat.

The slow cooker is my friend. There are times when my wife, Garnet, walks into the kitchen at 8 a.m. to find a slow cooker on high with some form of wild game cooking.

"It's the first part of August and you are cooking with a slow cooker?" she might ask. "I'm trying to keep it cool in here and you have a slow cooker going?"

The time was ripe for a top-notch and first-rate flippant comment at this point, but I knew better. Making such a remark might make my life more difficult.

"I'm restructuring some wild game to use this coming hunting season," I said.

"OK, I'll bite," she said. "How do you restructure meat?"

"Well, I'm reorganizing, rearranging, restructuring or changing the meat in some fashion," "Use any word you want to describe the act."

She looked at me with a continuing questioned look and I explained with additional detail, as also explained to Bill.

Using my FoodSaver machine allows the meat to be stored for a longer time than just using a re-sealable bag or wrapping in freezer paper. While the general guidelines call for storing meat for only six months to a year, the FoodSaver allows meat to be stored for years.

The food preservation people say freezer food has a shelf life, just as items stored in a refrigerator. So, what happens when foods linger in a freezer for years at a time?

A University of Rochester Medical Center Health Encyclopedia site answers the question this way: "Fortunately, they remain safe to eat, but they lose vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, and don't taste as good as food that has been frozen for shorter periods."

But this statement is compromised when the same site states: "Foods require a temperature of zero degrees F or below to retain their flavor, texture, and nutrients."

They are essentially saying deer and elk meat can be stored for years, as long as the freezer temperature remains at zero degrees or below. Of course, a freezer thermometer is required to make sure the proper temperature is maintained.

Striving to prepare the oldest meat first is my goal, but sometimes this principal is mixed up a bit. I have reached to the back of my freezer and found a 3-year-old or older venison roast. The FoodSaver bag was sealed perfectly and the roast appeared as it did when the bag was sealed.

Recipes for reconstructing my wild game are rather simple. Example: Take two pounds of ground elk and brown in a skillet. Drain and place in a slow cooker. Add beef broth and wine in whatever proportions you desire.

Add onions, carrots, celery and potatoes in your desired size and amount. Set on high for four hours, but if you forget and let it go for eight hours or overnight, the stew or soup will be just fine. Just make sure the liquid level is maintained.

Let this mixture cool and then place in hard plastic containers with meal-size portions in mind. Freeze the containers. Run warm water over the frozen containers in order to pop them out of the plastic. Place immediately in a FoodSaver bag and seal, which takes all of the air out, making it eligible for long term freezer storage.

My view is to fill the containers with the amount I will eat in a meal and when a hunting buddy goes along, I grab two containers.

Now for the beauty of using FoodSaver bags to store the stew. When at the hunt site and it is time for a meal, place a pot of water on the camp stove. Place the FoodSaver bag in the water when it is boiling. When the stew is hot, cut a corner of the bag and pour into a bowl.

Hint for cooking the stew: The stew is going to take longer to get piping hot than a hunter would realize, so let it boil for a long time. Cleanup will be easier if using paper plates and plastic spoons.

Also, this dish is delicious served over cooked rice. It is also delicious if rice is placed in the stew during the cooking, with or without potatoes.

A venison roast can be cooked in beef broth and then sliced thin for sandwich meat or chopped fine for the same reason. Again, freeze this cooked meat in meal sized portions.

My slow-cooker stew was cooled and I was adding it to plastic containers when Garnet walked into the room.

"Glad that's over," she said.

I smiled and she knew what was coming next.

"Oh no, you're going to make more, aren't you?"

"Well, there are about five months of hunting season on the horizon," I said. "But you did convince me to use the slow cooker at night, so it's a fish stew tonight, elk roast the next night..."

Garnet shook her head and walked out of the room in the middle of my sentence.