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Rare Venison Is The BEST WAY
- Thread starter Ratrzcer1991
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Hooked On Quack
REV`REND DR LUV
GoodOleBoy55
Senior Member
I like my ground or sausage like I would the beef/pork counterparts. I agree, back strap or heart medium rare is awesome. Cube deer long enough to brown up. Anything else mostly goes into crockpot till falling apart.
LEON MANLEY
Banned
Turn the lights down low and you will enjoy your meal more.
Eat food for taste, not appearance.
johnnyk2000
Senior Member
I am with the no blood on the plate crowd...small crowd... just a it of pink in it for me. Daddy used to always eat his like jerky and that was a it to dry for me but if I wanted to eat I needed a glass of something close by. Just a little salt and pepper and a hot grill.... saw a fella but about 30 oz. Of A1 on his 10 oz piece of back strap and I about slapped him.
There are only two ways that venison tastes good. Medium rare tastes great, and is tender and juicy. Slow cooked until the temp is over 200* internal and it's falling apart, (like a roast or smoked like a butt,) is also delicious and tender. Anywhere between those is horrible, dry, and chewy. I think that's why a lot of folks say they don't like deer meat, they don't know how to cook it.
Wild pig and bear always needs to be cooked to over 160*. It would probably taste better medium-rare, but it isn't worth the disease and parasites. Ask Steven Rinella about medium rare bear steaks and trichinosis.
Wild pig and bear always needs to be cooked to over 160*. It would probably taste better medium-rare, but it isn't worth the disease and parasites. Ask Steven Rinella about medium rare bear steaks and trichinosis.
gma1320
I like a Useles Billy Thread
It sure was good though. YumBackstraps in a crock pot, Nooooooooo
ryanh487
Senior Member
The red stuff in a rare steak isn't blood. It's just protein and water.
chrislibby88
Senior Member
I pull back straps and tenderloins around 130/140 and let it rest. Usually very pink and juicy in the middle. Melts in your mouth.
Cooked some medium-rare deer steaks tonight. Seared on the outside, red on the inside. Delicious.
Big7
The Oracle
Yeah.. No problem cooking anything to MY taste. Since in an above post said something about getting sick for undercooked venison, what it the temp to make it safe.
I've been doing it the same way for a very long time. No problems.
I sure don't need to get sick now. I'm not sure I'd recover from something dangerous since I've been "worked on " so much last year. I'll check CDC or something before I cook this year.
I've been doing it the same way for a very long time. No problems.
I sure don't need to get sick now. I'm not sure I'd recover from something dangerous since I've been "worked on " so much last year. I'll check CDC or something before I cook this year.
Echo
Gone But Not Forgotten
Well, that's not completely accurate Tom but I did lose a significant amount of vision in my right eye due to toxoplasmosis and it remains that way to this day and will not ever return to normal.
This situation began several seasons back when I returned from a successful hunt on Wassaw Island with a couple of deer in the cooler. As I was processing the meat I decided to keep out a couple of loins and backstrap to cook on the grill that night. Like most everybody I know I liked these cuts on the rare side, however on this particular occasion they were even more rare than I intended when I brought them in to the dinner table. I ate them anyway.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and I became very ill while driving home from another otherwise good hunt at Di-Lane WMA. Doctor back in Savannah said I had the flu. I continued to hunt that season despite not feeling 100%. Finally when I returned from another camp and hunt right before New Years I was cleaning my rifle when I noticed something odd. When I looked through the scope there was a dark spot in one corner. Thinking I had missed something on the lens I wiped it again. The spot was still there.
Twenty fours hours later I'm in the ER on New Years Day unable to read any letters on the eye chart with my right eye or see much of anything with it really. No doctor at the hospital had any idea what was wrong with me and I was sent home with drops for glaucoma. Two days later I'm at the Georgia Eye Institute and the retina specialist there had a good idea of what had happened to me and a large battery of tests later confirmed ocular toxoplasmosis. The doctor explained to me that usually an otherwise healthy person like myself would likely not notice any symptoms from toxo or just have the flu like symptoms that I had experienced earlier but that if the parasite did effect such an individual like myself in a more serious way, it would usually strike the eye. It was just an extraordinarily bad case of terrible luck.
Obviously one of my first questions was, "How did this happen?" That's when the subject of hunting and venison came up and I thought back to the exceptionally rare backstrap I had consumed many weeks earlier. My doctor said that we would never know for sure but that it seemed likely that the microscopic parasite that had invaded my eye and wreaked so much havoc had likely come from my venison consumption.
The long term affect was that I would be left with a permanent blind spot in my right eye where the parasite had left a scar that would never go away.
This is not a story that I particularly enjoy retelling and I certainly don't want to interfere with anyone's enjoyment of their venison but I do hope it may save at least one person from going through what I did. Just freeze the meat first or cook more thoroughly and there should not ever be a problem.
I don't have an exact count of how many bucks and gobblers lived to see another day during my transition to being a lefthanded only shooter but I will say that it was a substantial number.
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NGAHILLBILLY
Member
There's actually a name for it cooked well done it's called jerky
Freeze it before you cook it.
BeerThirty
Senior Member
Agree, medium-rare is the way to go. However, your picture looks more like what I would consider medium, maybe medium-well.
BeerThirty
Senior Member
Just FYI that freezing meat does not kill everything. It should kill the toxoplasmosis but freezing generally just renders bacteria dormant. This is a very common misconception that I used to believe until I got into the meat biz and started working with people way smarter than me..
Well, I'm no pathologist, but every single thing I have read about toxoplasmosis says that freezing for 48 hours will kill it. I am unaware of any other diseases or parasite problems common to deer meat except for the possibility of toxoplasmosis. Wild pork and bear, I always cook to at least 160*.
C.Killmaster
Georgia Deer Biologist
Brucellosis in pigs and trichinosis in both pigs and bears and any other carnivore/omnivore. Freezing first also helps out here in addition to cooking to an internal temp of 160+.
Charlie, do you know how much of a leprosy risk is actually present in armadillos in the southeast, or what percentage of them carry it? I have never been able to find anything definite.
C.Killmaster
Georgia Deer Biologist
Some studies show the percentage that have it in Texas and Louisiana to be pretty high, so it's reasonable that armadillos around here may have it. Take a look at the map on the following page, you also have to take into account that 2/3rds of leprosy cases in the US are acquired from outside the country.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1010536
Leprosy is now a treatable disease, but it takes 1 to 2 YEARS of antibiotics. Best to wear gloves if you handle any dillos.
https://www.cdc.gov/leprosy/treatment/index.html
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