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Venison is the generic term for meat from a large group of related grazing
animals. It includes caribou, reindeer, deer, moose and elk. For all
practical purposes it also includes musk oxen, antelope and buffalo
[bison]. The recipes are generally interchangeable. Musk oxen and buffalo
cuts tend to be more tender as these animals are more sedentary by nature.

You can do anything with venison that you would beef. Just remember that it
is drier- less fat, so steaks should be marinaded/tenderized/pounded and
cooked just to medium, not over-done.

It is important to realize that wild meat can vary in quality and
toughness, whereas commercial beef is a pretty uniform product. Venison
factors are:

~1- Age and sex of animal. Meat can be as tender and mild as veal in a
young doe. (And you always get steer meat in a store never bull. Castration
does make a difference.)

~2-Clean kill. If a deer is stalked while it is peacefully grazing and
dropped dead in its tracks, it will taste far better than an animal that
has been chased by hounds, then gut shot, then it runs a few more miles
before collapsing. The blood is full of adrenaline and the acidic
by-products of exercise and exertion and the flesh is tainted by the torn
up organs.

~3- Aging and butchering. When I was a kid growing up in Eastern Ontario,
we went deer hunting in the fall, when it was cool and deer were hung to
age and tenderize, then butchered at a local abattoir that handled beef and
pork professionally. We received nicely wrapped, properly cut and trimmed
frozen packages. It was generally pretty good. Up here caribou is shot all
year long and traditionally butchered immediately [before it spoils in the
summer or freezes solid in the winter] And some hunters are more skilled at
butchering than others… I have been made “gifts” of quarters of caribou
that have been field frozen with the fur on and wrapped in green garbage
bags and stored in somebody’s back yard for a month or two! I have also
received superb sausages made by a man who apprenticed as a sausage-maker
in Germany.

If you know where your meat came from, you will know whether it should
tenderized or just cooked.

If your steaks are coming from a commercial game farm, they will be from a
young animal, carefully slaughtered and aged. I would treat them the same
as any prime beef T-bone. Probably charcoal BBQ’d or gas grilled to just
medium rare and sprinkled with a little salt and pepper AFTER it has been
cooked… nothing fancy, no marinades and no strong BBQ sauces. That way
you will be able to truly taste the venison.

For wild meat you may want to marinade first, if it’s tough.

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