Ep. 405: Don't Believe Them

perfect I love it. That title stuck. Dude. Uh, we didn't have you wild Hog at your restaurant there night, But when I took my my wife and daughter to your restaurant in Austin, Texas, died du way, holy ship, was it good man? My wife said it was the best meal. I'm not kidding. Unprompted, she said it was the best meal she had had in years and years, which I shouldn't really point that out because I cooked dinner every night. She I'm sure she made a restaurant meal.

I know that's what mean. Yeah. I didn't think about it now, but it was like a dig. She's making a dig, Emmy. It wasn't building you up, dude, does knocking me down And I didn't even realize it. No. I think there's it's there's it's categories. You know, you've you've got your at home meals, and you've got your dining ups and we we we must have excelled that. I'll take you sell in the dining up. Well, my brother Danny Um, he'll he'll often say that when he

eats at someone's house or whatever, he likes it. He says, because it just doesn't taste like something I made. Well, it's like the whole sandwich role. You know, like if somebody else makes you a sandwich, it's better than if you made yourself a sa So good, we had your nil guy, we had the tartar? Right, what is that exactly? I mean, I know what it is, but like what like tell people what the preparation is. It changes a lot, like like act like you're gonna do it with a

deer or something like that, a deer or whatever. Yeah, well, I mean I think, I mean, it's all pretty much. If you can eat it raw, it's pretty interchangeable. And I prefer the tender loin or a muscle off the leg um if it's a If it's a tartar, then we'll we'll finally dice it and then we'll give it a nice hand chop with a real heavy sharp knife.

And then so each piece of meat is how big, Well, they start off like smaller, you know, probably like a one centimeter dice, and then it gets hand chopped until you get that perfect like not ground but consistency. So you make a little cube, you slice a little cube correct, and then you that's the noise it makes. It's yeah, yeah, that's exactly what ex Yeah, and yeah, just go over it until it's nice and fine, and then sky's limit.

There you get creative and add something, you know, you want to put something maybe a cidc in there, uh, something textural, whether that's a rugula or or an onion or a caper or something like that. Something bright like lemon salt obviously, and he's and heeds a lot of salt. I always feel like it's one of those things like avocados and potatoes that's relying on having the right amount of salt on it. And then what um, I mean

you can go traditional put the egg. I want you to tell me, I mean, I know you weren't there, but want you tell me what I ate the other night? In all honesty, I don't know what the current set is because she might have changed it so that Jeney's the chef at the restaurant and and she, uh if I recall correctly right now, it was there's a piece of grilled bread, okay, arugula yep, and it's okay, and

then a fermented sofrido vinaigrette. Does that sound familiar. We're just gonna We're just gonna nod say yes at this point because this is borderline embarrassing that I don't know what's going on. Well, I only you weren't there, right, Uh, I think, yeah, So what we've got there is those

those same components. You know, you've got uh texture, especially the grilled bread being slightly warm, you know, a little bit of smoke, so you know, a nice texture there, arugula texture, and then the fer minute so frito which sounds kind of, you know, slightly fancy. It's basically just our way of preserving summertime vegetables and so frito form, which would be onion, garlic, tomato, pepper um for using as a cooking base. I mean, it's a very traditional

way to like start a lot of dishes. And since we're reliant on having stuff out of season because we don't know source anything that's not available. What we'll do is we'll make a a liquid out of that, will pure that to a paste and then at salt and then ferment that and so we have a year round and it's correct. Yes, you know what, you didn't take my advice on here we go. I'll tell you. I knew you were gonna tell me when I ate here. Okay,

you're when I ate the restaurant. I think last time I was in there, I got to notice in that in the fine print at the bottom of the menu, right like where someone would normally right ship like parties of six or more, we'll have an automatic gratuity or whatever bullshit in the bottom of menu and super no one ever in a million years would read right you have down there? That I love. The wording is wonderful.

It says almost everything is from around here, correct. We had to change that that caveat almost because it used to be everything. And then there's a couple of ingredients kind of snuck in, like what what's snuck in? We get? We get organic potatoes from Colorado for It's almost like it's just really funny because it always comes out it's

like the restaurant's probably that locally sourced. But for some reason, that one per cent that I'm a little bashful about always rises to the because because because yeah, because well it says like almost everything, it says almost but I would have that in big gass letters at the top of the menu. Right, Well, I think, well, first off, I think subtlety goes a long way. And then the

server's job is to explain that. You know, if you ask about you know, a limit, I pressed, I pressed around it, and when pressing around it, she was saying, like, well, there might be a situation where we'd have something I can't remember what it was. Something would be from New Mexico. Well, we from New Mexico. We get uh pastachios, and uh we do occasionally source one of our sparkling wines from there.

I forget about that. And that's probably to my You said, the reason you guys don't have a cocktail program, it's because it's too difficult to get it all from Texas, right, yes, because it's like the citrus and ship continuous. It would be it wouldn't be impossible, but it would be it would be onerous, you know, it would yeah, it would be tough. It would be easier now that there's more spirits coming out of Texas to which has changed since

we opened eight years ago. That's been drastic. But um, you know, specifically speaking of citrus, you know, and we're down here in South Texas and I got the text, you know, don't come back without seventy pounds of lemons because that's this is where they are. Like if if we want lemons, I have to like put them in my truck and bring them to Austin. And I just hope that everybody appreciate those limits because they could have

gonna go on a ride, you know. But you know, it's you know, almost everything is the I felt like the best way to put that. That's so good man. I'm glad you liked it. I mean to be clear too, we did have Farrell Hog on the menu. Ye're not didn't get it right? I got that big as pork chop. I love our pork chop. Yeah. So the ranch that we do our classes that is actually a domestic pig farm also, so I mean he's got um thousands of acres and part of it is an all outdoor operation

where he's raising these just beautiful, gorgeous domestic pigs. And uh, I think that's that's step one is just having the best possible pork and it is just a gorgeous product. Goes into a brine olive oil, honey um after it comes out of brine, and then we grow it over post oak and then we put salt from Padreal and so far South Texas, like the hyper Saline Bay down there. They they make salt harvest salt. That's where we get some of ourselves, you know, for our for like finishing

steaks and pork chops and so forth. Uh, And then it just gets a sprinkle of that on top and that's it. Oh that's good man, it's a good one. I like a lot. How much would we say, and you guys go through because you cook over would yeah about a quarter to post oake every probably five days

or so. Yeah, that blows my mind. Yeah, we burned a lot in the smoker and then the two girls, you know, those things are going, you know, burning hot for many hours a day because I remember, you know, when I sell wood, might be typical for a family to buy four or five chords to heat their house for the winter, right, Yeah, we're yeah. I mean if you do the math, you know that you know, a log is you know, maybe a dollar or maybe more,

and so you just you're literally burning money. But that uh, it tastes good, you know, and it's it's part of it, you know, just that that heart, the heart of the hearth there, uh you know, and and so much of the things that come out of that kitchen are cooked over that wood. So you know, you were talking about the difference like for cooking woods, talk about your favorite

would well for he's post oak. That's true, yes, well, I mean in Texas too, it's very regional um as far as what the predominant fuel wood or not fuel wood, but um cooking wood would be. And so in Central Texas we have oaks. Um. In South Texas where we're at right now, it's Mesquite. You know, Mesquite is king down here. But I mean what's notable too is that

that changes a lot of cooking techniques. So, like like barbecue in Central Texas is this offset like slow heat where when you move south into Mesquite country, it starts to become it's a hotter wood, and so things are grilled hotter, there's not as much smoking going on down here, and that's because of the wood, you know, So that the slower burn on oak in Central Texas makes barbecue, but the South Texas mesquite fire air, which is hotter

kind of that's that makes vehitous, you know what I mean? And so I find that to be fascinating. But you know, we're we're right on the border between the post Stokes and the mesquites. And you know we have plenty of mesquites in Central Texas as well. But I would give the edge in my preference, uh for grilling to mesquite. I love it it just it burns very hot. It has a very distinct flavor to it um. But mostly

what I enjoy is that that constant heat. Once that thing burns down to coals like a nice cured mesquite log burns to like red hot coals. You've got it for a long time and it puts out a ton of heat for quick cooking and searing for smoking. I don't love it as much. I prefer postoke or pecan. Are you familiar with the measurement like I used to sell wood in this measurement a rick? No? I never heard of them. Have you ever heard of a face cord. Nope, So a cord of wood is four by four by eight.

So that's what Dight used to know. This real well hunterd cubic feet um sixteen inches, so it's it's in Firewood is traditionally caught at sixteen inch lengths. So three logs stacked end to end, it's forty eight inches. The stack goes forty eight inches high and it's eight ft long. And that's a cord of wood. But we used to sell a rick, and that was a face cord, meaning one log wide. So sixteen inches wide, four ft high, eight ft long, a third of a chord, third of

a chord a rick. The third of a chord is a rick. But you never heard that measurement. Now, if you need as much wood as you need, why do you not just have a staff wood chopper, a woodsman, a woods person. Um, that's a that's a great question. But um, that would delve into the kind of the boring topic of modern staffing issues. I'm telling you it's

it's hard enough to find a lot of line cook wi. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man, I think you need to have an ad in the paper that says wanted staff wood chopper, be like dude, here's your job. Here's like a truck. We're gonna put some beef springs on it, We're gonna build some sidewalls. It's gonna be able to carry five thousand pounds. We're gonna put a quarter of wood in there. And your job is I want that sum bits and truck here full three times a week. I don't care how you

do it. I'm gonna get the weirdest messages now from people be like, I heard you're looking for a woodsman. I would like to send in my resume to like, well, listen if you look. Can we say is this fair to say if these if someone's listening and they live in Austin and they have like a great wood supply and they want to sell some wood, is fair to say they be getting ahold of you? Possibly when we try to we try to foster relate a consistent relationship

with with do you want dude just dropping off straight loads? No? Because yeah, we need it when we need it, and uh what what the the goal is to have somebody that's out there bringing you quality would consistently like a staff or right right, I mean it's kind of like the the grass fed grass fed beef producers. Like a lot of times you'll you'll will be contacted by someone who raises grass fed beef and they'll say, hey, we

we can, we would love to supply the restaurant. It's like okay, and it's like, well, we'll have one cow available every five weeks. And it's like, well that doesn't that doesn't help us, Like we can't really do much with that. And then you know, like the thought of like aggregating multiple vendors together to try to make that happen is is it's just not gonna happen. It would be. I might have told my wife a lie. I'm not

just gonna tell everybody lie. Now. When we're sitting there, I was telling my wife, I said, man, sometimes people just show up with with people will show up with produce and ship and he's got and these guys can just buy it and serve it. Yes, that's different. Or my favorite was, Uh, this guy A knocks on the back door and he asks for me. He's got dreadlocks and he's he wants to talk to me and he's got something in his car to show me. And I

was like I could not I'll take it. Yeah, like I gotta see what's in the car, and it turns out it was. It was like a Honda and the whole the whole back area, like the cargo area in the back, just loaded with chantrells. And I was like, I'll take it. I'll take it and tell all your friends that sometimes it does work out. It's the guy that's like, hey, can I drop some some hogs off and you're like, knock, I can't do that. That's a

that's not how we do it here. Yeah. Yeah, uh oh, remember I got I got to talk about a couple of things real quick. Uh. And it's not like a horrible it's a it won't be It will seem like a rough segue to people who weren't privy to our conversation before we started recording, because we're talking about what making a lot of noise last night? Foxes? No owl Nope, coyotes? Well no, that that that that that gets into the problem. Not a problem. Guy rolled in. He's got this question.

He says, he has a potential discussion point that I would love to hear the opinion regarding the pronunciation of the word coyote. How do you say it? Jesse? Uh I'll say coyote, but I mean down here he would be just his app are likely to hear coyote. M This guy says, I grew up in rural area of Kansas, where the word kyote was pronounced in the two syllables form coyote. I would only hear the three syllabl pronunciation of coyote from television or media. You know what, he

already has his answer. He already has his answer, he just doesn't realize it yet. I always made the inference that the three syllable pronunciation was used in urban areas by people who did not hunt trapper otherwise interact with the animal in any way. To be honest, I would internally discredit anyone who used the three syllable pronunciation as a city slicker that only new coyotes from Saturday Morning cartoons. That was me. However, recently I have to question my

previous dogma. As an avid listener to the Meter podcast, I've heard on several occasions both the crew and guests using both the two and three syllable pronunciation. Not me, That was me. I was editorializing when I said, not me. These are people that are much closer to the land than I spend more time outdoors of whom I respect your opinions. He wants to know about how the proper pronunciation. Can I address this? Yeah, but I'm gonna do it too.

If you want to start, that's fine, I'm gonna start. Um, that's the Spanish word, like I said earlier, it's coyote. And I think that just like in Texas, you're going to have these uh mispronunciations of Spanish words. But you're gonna kind of see a segue between the Spanish word and then where we're gonna say coyote, which is where we're pronouncing that e. But then if you looked at it from from an English language standpoint, that e would be silent and make the oh hard oh sounds. So

be a coyote. So I think that, you know, the closer you get to the origin of the word Spanish down here, and I mean, you know, we we go to the rodeo, you know, we we eat a burrito, you know, but all these words are slight americanizations, are you know, English pronunciations of Spanish words. And I think coyote adding the e on there and then further north you get you're probably gonna get more into a linguistic

version that's reflective of of English. Yeah, I have never heard in my life someone who has killed a coyote called a coyote. What about where you've spent a lot of time meeting those folks who have. Now we put this question to Dan Flores, who is the author of what he would call coyote America I would call kyo America UM. And I threw it to him and he's basically either or he's like he says, probably first English speaking people that encountered that word would have been mountain

men trapping around in New Mexico and Taos. I think I'm getting this right about what his history was. They were hearing it from Spanish speakers, they were English speakers. He said, you know, you can see how they would have run off of that in various directions, Um, from coyote, that it would just travel its own little path. But I think the person is right that you do like in media it's always coyote mhm in in like vernacular of people of the land. Seems to me it's always kyote,

like who chases the roadrunner, wile coyote? It's not wild kayot here. Here's it. Can I hit you with the Chatticott question? That's attiquette? Okay? Why did you call it Chatticott because our guy Chester? Yeah. Um, we're interested in pursuing a project where Chester round chatkot Chester round etiquette just for sure to be Chettikott. Okay, here's a guy, as self declared late on set, Hunter recently moved from the Seattle area to Richmond Williamsburg area of Virginia. Big change.

What's that? That's a big change, big change. I run a small farm that's talked about one quarter mile back off a rural road. This is a great question. The property on either side of the driveway is owned by a hunting club. So let's get this. He's got a quarter match. He's got a quarter mile driveway that ends at his farm. But as he's going down zone driveway,

hunt club owns either side. Long story short, he says, if there are turkeys on said driveway, do you feel like they would be fair game for me to shoot? As long as I'm respecting all other rules, including proximity to actual road and buildings, et cetera, I do hunt the actual forty three acre farm property. As I like the act and process of hunting and thoroughly missed going out in the cascades for days chasing out. But there's still a lot to learn. Wouldn't mind an easy harvest

from time to time. There's only one way you're gonna get the right answer to this, I'll tell you. In my mind, like I'm not standing there, and I don't really I can't see the land of land and all that. In my mind, it would just be a matter of like is it illegal or not? Right? It sounds legal to me. And then there's what you call trespass with projectile to so, meaning that the uh rifle, bullet or more likely shotgun, like not a single palette could trespass.

Over the problem different like different states have such different attitudes toward that stuff. And you know, think about it, man, Let's say you're hunting squirrels. Let's say you've got twenty aes and you're hunting squirrels and you take a shot at a squirrel up in a tree. You've just trespassed and you missed them. I mean there's like, of course you projectile just trespassed, like no one you know, well, I mean here, that's what the issue I think would

be but on your road your turkey. Well, what I'm saying, I mean, I would I feel like it's probably okay, but there's only one way you're ever going to really feel comfortable doing it. If you're like, oh, if you want to be like a totally law buying dude, call your game warden. Just be like, I got a question. But then I would advise this, this is not a

hack on game wardens. Um If if you find someone who would indulge you and they tell you know, press them on why they're telling you, know, are they saying it doesn't seem like a good idea or is it actually because that's what that's your decision to make. Are they telling you it doesn't seem like a good idea? Are are they telling you it is illegal? I've had I one time asked the game moren't a question like this, and they turned back to me like, why do you

feel that you would need to ask about it? Like pressing me to see if I somehow felt funny about the situation. It's sure, but I'd be like, that's not what I'm here to talk about. What I'm here to talk about is am I breaking a law? I'm trying to understand. I'm not talking about what it feels like. I'm saying, is it breaking a law to hunt a turkey on this road? Not like, is this really the kind of hunt you want? Yeah, contact the game warden. It's not a cop out. But let me hear you

with another turkey thing. I don't know. I haven't contacted I don't know anybody that has contacted Michigan to find out why in the world they're doing this. Michigan allowed this pass fall. Speaking of turkeys, Michigan allowed the unlimited take of fall turkeys this passphat. You could shoot a turkey, go get another tag, shoot another, and so on until

there were no tags left. Meanwhile, they only allowed one time in the Spring Wow of those guys who killed multiple gobblers this fall legally, not to mention how many hens oh hands as well. Yeah, I think it's like, like, I haven't heard the logic on it. That ship is ridiculous statewide. Yeah, well it's in his in his in his zone in the South. I haven't heard the reasoning. But let me tell you, like, like, there are so many places that you've got good turkey numbers and they

take that ship for granted, and then you don't. There is no if go on all the other ship you can hunt in the fall, right. I would be hard pressed to think of a of an instance where you just have too many turkeys. No, someone might think they do, but it ain't. Hunters I don't understand, Like, you get a tom turkey in the spring, and turkeys are for spring hunting, right, It's like if if if God didn't want you to hunt turkeys in the spring, he wouldn't

have made spring. And to have it be that you're just wailing like you can get one in the spring season, but in the fall you can just pile up hens. It's like you're you're you're, you're taking your you're taking

your situation for granted. I wonder how many hunters like took advantage of that, Like folks who typically pursue in the spring, we're like, well I'll just bag them all, or you know, didn't or kind of respected like the how much is attacked that I know, I mean very cheap for residents, probably eight or ten bucks, you know, I would like, yeah, I mean I having some level of fall hunting like that you could get a turkey in the fall and okay, like i'd like, I really

think I would really think that states would would not regard having good turkey numbers as just a given right after all the reintroduction that were you know, starting a lot of places, but in that area in the Upper Midwest, all those turkey reintroductions that really took off in the nineties, Like, that's not gonna last, right, having it's not gonna last. And if you just take it, if you just shooting shiploads of hands off all, I don't think it's just

not smart. Man. There's not that much to hunt in the spring, So protect the spring hunt. I just increase the tag net with like, let everybody shoot four in the spring. Well too, two is a great number of turkeys. It's great when you get more, but like two is

a great number for turkeys. I think if a steak could sit there and say, man, we were like our residents can across the board get a couple of turkeys a piece in the spring, I would view that as a wonderful turkey policy and protect the spring hunts, go on something different in the fall. Save your savior turkeys for spring. I wonder when they'll have population data, like next year, you know, you know, I'm sure someone will write in, and I look forward to hearing. I look

forward to hearing. What do you know? It's one of the person that wrote and we're not going to cover his letter right now, but his name is Anders Chippendale. I wonder if he's the original. Um uh tells that Tom about writing in. Got distracted when I saw that. Oh, I'm sure someone will write in and explain why they think it's a good idea to kill to let people just waylay tons of hens in the fall. Yeah, and that begs the question, Uh, should we start way land

tons of hens in the spring? Yeah? What's the difference? They're they're laying eggs, that's who lays the eggs. In general, it's like the hand. Doesn't you kill the hand whenever you want. You're still preventing. It's like you're you're removing your reproductive females, like killing it the fall, isn't. I mean, it's like it's a little more round about. You could be like, well, I don't know if you should have been alive in the spring, but like I'm normally all four.

If there's like a species and there's a human desire to harvest it and it's a sustainable species. It's kind of like, let people harvest the resource if it's sustainable. But I don't think places should be doing this. Well, I guess the insinuation would be that that if if there's an overabundance of them, they have to have some sort of negative impact. No, I mean, that's just what I'm asking. What could possibly be the negative impact of too many turkeys on the ground? What are they eating?

It's not crop depredation, I mean maybe slightly, but they scratch around, I'm just playing my house. They chase my dog. Well, I mean here in Texas, the major criticism I hear about turkeys is they'll eat all the corn at a feeder. They'll come in and hoover it all up. Um. And that's about as bad as they get as like impactful as as an abundance of turkeys can be here to my recollection, I can't remember if anybody ever saying anything otherwise.

And then that instance doesn't even exist in most other states. And so what could it possibly have been for them to decide that other than like we're going to provide our hunters with something more there? I mean, what could the impact be to make them make that choice. I don't know. I'm sure we'll find out. If I was doing a good job, I would have found out before I brought it up. But here's my thing. I'm like,

I'm ainty percent sure. I'm sure that when I hear the rationalization for it, I'll say, uh, I'll say that's not a good idea. Saved it for spring. Have they ever done this before? Well, a lot of places have. You know, a lot of states have fall turkey hunts, and when states turkey numbers look like they're going down, it's kind of the first thing you do, is you It's like, when turkey numbers are great, one of the first things that seems states do is they start killing

them in the fall. When turkey numbers start going down, they tend to not want to kill him in the fall. But the idea of having that an individual could just keep renewing and renewing and renewing until they consume up a certain pool of tags you're gonna create like fall turkey killing specialists m HM. And the potential waste that would come from that. People that might just enjoy the hunting of them and the breasting of the mouth and hands.

I mean because then you also you're yield is what it would be on a tomb instead of just like even even worse. But then the impact of you're killing a dozen at a time every time you take out a hand, and that's just for the next season. Uh, you know, potential turkeys. That's it's stunning. That's stunning to me. Another thing that happens like, uh, in some states, in Montana, in the fall, you can kill him with a rifle. Yeah, kill him here with the rifle. He kill him with

a rifle in the spring. Here one while you can kill with the rifle in the spring. I know a guy that they hunt him sculpt in the they hunt spring turkeys. They hunt spring turkeys with the a r on a bipod, which isn't isn't that kind of blown to smither rings you can precis I mean, the thing is trying to precision shoot him in the head. I certainly shot turkeys. I'm sorry, but I've I've shot him with a rifle, and because at that time I valued turkey meat more than the spring hunt. But now I

am fully on board with the spring hut. Yeah. I want to I want to be extra careful here and explain it where I'm at on this. It's like hate the game, not the player, Okay, And I don't even hate like I don't. I'm not saying I hate the game. If I thought that you could just always have shiploads turkeys, I'd be like, yeah, untam and spring home in the

fall or whatever. Right. To make my point clear, I think that people are making them a steak of of thinking that they're in a static situation with turkey numbers. But then you go look at what's happening in Arkansas, what's happening in the Missouri, what's happening to some other places that where it's like those the good old days of the nineties, the good old days of the early

two thousand's ain't here anymore. The turkey numbers, and then everybody's sitting around lamenting the loss of turkeys, questioning the lost of turkeys. What happened to the turkeys? It's the meat. It's like mid midsized predators. It's avian influenza. It's killing shiploads in the fall. It just isn't. I think you're like, I'm trying to think about what you'd say. It's not cutting off your nose. Despite your face, you're dicking yourself over.

You're dicking yourself of over. Proved me wrong. In the future, I'll be like I told you, talk about how you cook those ducks, Jesse, talk about your ducks and how you make them. Those are so good, a wonderful ducks that came out great. Jesse's gonna tell you. Jesse's gonna tell you how to make the best. And don't be all wishy washy like with the with the tartar. What's watching like? Get in there like you're talking to a five year old. Okay, like you're talking to a five

year old. O ten year old, you're talking to a ten year old. Here's how to cook your ducks. Here's how I cook the ducks. The other day we shot, uh, we were we were really knocking down some hen spoon ees. Uh for some reason, not even a single drake in the bunch. It was. I think we had five or six. I wasn't part of this, but one wigeon. No, yeah, well it doesn't really matter. Uh. We plucked them and we dry plucked him. I think you better get into

talk about the northern shoveler. The northern shoveler is duck often maligned duck. Let me back up, and uh, we did a we did a private class years ago and what we we We aligned it on this weekend where turkey it was fall uh season, quail, dove, and duck were all in season, and we kind of did this almost scavenger hunt for the clients where they would just go out and you know, on a certain day would be like today is duck day. You guys go out and shoot some ducks, and then we would do a

little class and then we would cook them. We did a blind tasting between a model duck, which is I would say pretty close to a mallard as far as flavor. Uh they're smaller, probably less fat, and then also a spooney a shoveler, and we blind taste them. We brined them and then grilled them medium rare sliced and put them on a plate labeled to A and B and between probably about the ten people that tried them, the universally preferred the shoveler over the model duck, and both

for good. But I think that you know, it's one of those things and I could probably talk for hours about all the things that are maligned or where you've been told they're not good. You know, wild pigs being one of them. Everything on the every wild game item with a couple exceptions, someone's gonna tell you how it's no good, right. And a shoveler, but that said, I've had them before where they were pretty strong. Uh so we we dry plucked them um instead of I want

to stay a couple more things about um. Spoon bills and northern shovelers. It's we're taught. It's two words for the same thing. But they have like a bit I mean they're bill look is shaped like a spoon, goes out narrow and has this wide sort of thing on it. And if you ever watch them feeding, they sit on the surface and they basically sieve out. They sieve stuff off the surface of the ponds and there they catch a lot of larvae, insect larva, other invertebrates. And a

general thing this is like speaking very generally. A general thing is that things that eat a lot of ant ducks and waterfowl eat a lot of animal matter. They don't taste as good as ones to eat a lot of plant matter. With the pinnacle of like universal acceptability being Ducks that are feeding on grain would be if you ask people, like, what's a great duck? Would be like a mallard feeding on barley, A goose feeding on

mallard feeding on corn, right, like lots of fat, mild flavor. Um, a mallard in an estuary in saltheast Alaska feeding on invertebrates. I'll stand there at night. It tastes like the locknest monster if you could get a steak off him. Uh. And spooneys have that that that like animal matter. Ducky can have that animal matter taste, which is how would you describe it mud, mud, muck musty Um. I mean, I obviously I'm gonna avoid the gaming because it's just

a ridiculous term for describing game. Um. Well, you know what's funny is we used to describe like any like of that kind of muddy flavor, maybe like a big bore. We used to describe it as spooney. Yeah, so you're using the spoonbills because sometimes they can be pretty strong. And I want to I want to be really clear that I don't think that my preparation conquered that I think that these also happened to be on the good

I think they were good spoon ees. Um. But you know, I will say that the first duck I cleaned was the legion, and then cleaning it, holding it in my hand, opening up and having the organs in my hands was different than when we clean the spoon ees. They. I was like, that's spoony like that. I could smell them

like they were. They smelled stronger there, guts smelled stronger, everything right, And so I my anticipation of cooking them was like, well this, you know, I'm gonna do it, but I don't know how well it's going to turn out. But I do think that, um, if we're ready to move on to that first step is the the pre seasoning step, and that's either going to be a A A dry your head yourself. No, you don't talk about you didn't explain how you cleaned them. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah,

we dry plucked him. I brought some wax down, but I feel like, for it was six or seven birds, I wasn't going to fire up the waxing pot for that and it would have taken too much time. So we just sat out and dry plucked them and it worked really well. I mean you walk out into a field and plug it. Correct. You know, we we plugged them all the way. It took spend a lot of time, and then we saved all the hearts and livers, clean the gizzards. Uh, they look pretty good. You know, there's

some pin feathers on there. But you know a lot of times I just ignore this, like I'm not super like like fastidious about getting in there and getting those little pin feathers off sometimes or just burn them off. Um. The wax works great, though, if you have the time. If you've ever seen wax stucks, I have, but like you said, it's got to be a pile of them, yeah.

Before It's just there's so much, like there's so much goes into it that sometimes by time you do it and then clean up, you could just done it or like not even you could have done it by the time you get it going, do it clean up like I would. I would have had him done in the third of as the much time. It's like making sausage.

It's better with an organization and a team. So like if you're on your way back from a duck hunt, like we are at some of these at the classes that we're doing like I'll be back at the processing shed. And the guy that took the clients out to duck hunt that morning called me forty five minutes and I turned the burner on and I'm waiting there with three

pairs of bird shears. When they show up and they just start going into the into the wax, and I think that's obviously that's very efficient, and you're just using paraffin a specific blend. My friend Jonathan from Black Duck Revival, he turned me onto this, uh this specific blend wax. I cannot remember the brand of it right now. I would I would, well, I think it's TROUB t R

a U B supply. I think that's the one he recommended, but I'd have to go back and look and see what he specifically recommended, because that was the best duck wax and it was a blend of paraffin and another

type of wax. Not familiar with the waxes. Uh So we plucked them, we uh let them cool um in the refrigerator, uncovered, got them a little dry, and then I have to them by taking the breastbones out, you know, come down on either side of the breastbone, crack through it with a heavy knife, so then you've got a half duck. I know a lot of times you like to cut the breast off and the leg. Give a little feedback about that. Yeah, just still having the rib

bones on there. Yeah, yeah, unsightly, I'll take that. The reason I do that is I need that structure otherwise they're going to fall apart during the process that I'm gonna talk about next. So I need those I need those rib bones in there to keep them. I mean, they could be removed after cooking. But um, if it was just the boneless breast attached to the bone in leg quarter, which is your preference, I do believe they

would have fallen apart. Are the potential for falling apart could have been there, So next up would be I disagree. If there's a good layer of fat and skin, it holds everything together. If it's if the skin is real thin, then I agree with what you're saying. Well, you're just taking these when you're when you're cooking like that, you're typically just taking them from raw straight to the grill or the broiler. You know. I'm saying, if you've got a good heavy hide on it, you can slow cook it.

You can do like what you were talking about and wind up with and intact peace. If it's got a good heavy hide on it, that that that's neither hear nor there. So next up would be the preseasoning. And I feel like this is probably where you're massaging some of that that more intense labor out of these ducks, and that's going to either be in a brine or a dry cure, which is these days known as a euphemistically known as a dry brine, which I think is

pretty funny, um, because the brine is a liquid. Oh well, you know where where I use that term, We'll be like, let's say you're doing fish and you just pack it and salt and sugar. In a couple of minutes or a couple of hours, you have a liquid brine because it's existing. Well, that's known as I mean, technically that's

a cure. No, I'm with you, but I think that that's why I think of it, because in the end when you dig them out of there, when all that more, when you dig them out of there, it is a liquid certainly, but yeah, you're you're right, that's a funny term. Dry Brian. I just felt like it ephemistically became about a few years back. And remember the first few times

I heard it, I'm like, dry dry brine. That sounds almost exactly like dry water pre seasoning, yeah, or or dry rub or a cure like it's there's we already had all of that these terms for it. But either way, I chose uh the I chose the dry brine technique for these yes, um and uh just you know, going through the cabinet, uh, and I found some of our coffee cure that we sell at the restaurant here, and I used that. I was like, I mean, why not?

So I hit him with a little bit of that, which has got some coffee, salt, sugar, few spices in there, um season on both sides and let them sit for about four hours, which for that size duck I thought was appropriate. And then they went into uh pork fat like rendered lard over very low heat. I melted the lard and put them in there to make essentially this is a cold feet. The whole process is called feet, where you're adding salt kind of lightly curing it and

then slowly and gently cooking it in fat. I want people to understand what he's saying. He just said slowly and gently cooking it in fat and covered in fat, so a copious amount of fat. So I'm afraid people are gonna be like, here it and they're gonna be like, oh that sounds it's not. And then you can reuse the fat as well. So even from a cost perspective, it's not as as bad as as as you might think. It's not like and if you're well yeah, And also people are still on a thing that like fat's bad,

it's gonna do something bad to him. It's not. It's not. It's not absorbing. So I mean traditionally a confi was a preservative, so you would you would use more salt, and you would salt it for longer, so it was the salt was preserving it. And then you would create

this indelible layer of cooled fat on top. So even the word larder is a cool place where lard would be congealed, you make an anaerobic environment in fat exactly, so it's salted boss full of your larder was full of meat, packed and large, correct, and if it was cool enough, just where the large would congeal and set, which probably would happen, and I'd say that maybe the fifty degree mark, you know, it just is cool enough to where it was becomes a solid. Uh, then you're

protecting that meat under there. So it's a it's a very old preservation from oxygen. And it's also an incredibly useful technique for cooking game because it it's a very slow, gentle heat that adds in a little bit of fat. But then once you achieve that tenderness. So let me go back and say I came up short on large two. I brought a quarter of rendered larde with me, and for those ten halves of ducks, I guess it was five by my math um, I was barely able to

get them covered. So I threw a couple of sticks of butter in there because I had to, and that's and it worked. Of course. I just have a question of out the salt in there? Is there any kind of in this cooking process, like uh, pulling out the mucky flavor um? Or is it that the slow cook is having with the salt, the coffee, the sugar, the spices permeating the fat and the flesh of the bird. So is it kind of a going in versus pulling out if we're if we're eliminating or reducing the mucky flavor.

That is an excellent question. I think that I don't. I will be real honest and say I don't know how the magic really works. But what I what I do know is the whole spice trade hundreds of years ago was based on covering up the flavor of rancid or spoiled meats pre refrigeration. And so you know, you've got people traveling to China mainly to bring back these things that are going to help their food taste a little bit, not necessarily because they were refining their palates.

So the clothes and the cinnamon and the star Annis and all these things, I always say, uh. In the context of Ferrell hogs, I've always said it this way, is like the gaminess of a ferreal hog when you put it into a brine and we use a we use a star Annis brine, like very specifically salt sugar Bay and star Annis in water for Ferrell hogs, although that said it works great for ducks as well. But the star Annis would be like if if the pig if a big bore, kind of stinky and a little

bit musky and gaming was a piece of plywood. That the star annis is a fine, great sandpaper that comes in and just rubs it down a little bit, and there's something about that flavor where it rounds it, it meets that gaminess and massages it to where it's it's

way more palatable for some reason. Kind of it somewhere on if you were like looking at a chart in the spectrum of flavors, the annis or the cloth of the cinnamon inhabits the same spectral area I think as these muddy flavors, and so it's really helpful in that way. As a side note, have you heard of like the Chinese I don't know if it's really technical term, but my friend Um, who's a Chinese chef, mentioned to me this like Chinese meat washing technique, which which does use

actually all of or most of these spices. So Um, I had old elk in the freezer from a friend. Maybe it was like three years old, and I'm not really sure how well the process it was to begin with, but I didn't want to waste it, and she told me that I should uh in a pot ginger cloves star a niece um cinnamon kind of I guess brown brown the meat and then add water and bring it to a slow boil, uh, and then dump everything out.

You know that the blood if it hasn't bled well, that like foamy kind of bubbly comes to the top. Instead of skimming it, dump everything out and then do that process again. And you can do that process as many times as you want, and that the impurities are I guess sucked out and you're and you're just dumping that out. You're not really using the flavor of that broth to start with. And then you braize and you add and you add, you know, and I'm telling you

it didn't taste it tasted fresh. You would not have known because that meat, it had a funk to it when it was defrosted, you know. Um. And she'll she'll do that with a lot of um meat that she feels even you know, meat from the grocery store, like if it just hasn't bled out enough. And with wild game, um often cases, you know, the blood is still in there. If you feel dress cut apart and then kind of package or freeze instantly, maybe it hasn't dried out, it

hasn't hung for long enough. There's the blood is still in the flesh. So I'd like to hear of a remedy for when you got when you left fish and your freezer a little too long, like a fatty fish and it gets that kind of skanky. Oh, I just eat it because I'm like the fat going ransomd It happens on feral hogs as well, Like as they sit in the freezer for too long, the fat starts to They could be way stronger. You can make a sausage and then he like a year later, it's totally changed

in the freezer. It's it's the fat. Yeah, here's a red alert for people that have had bad bear meat bear meat. You if you want to freeze bear meat, you gotta get all the fat off the bear meat. The fat comes off the bear meat. Do you want to make lard? Render it now? Because the lard's good putting your freezer in can or whatever, But don't freeze that ship with fat on it, because the fat spoils right right, same with pigs in the freezer. But I want to get back to these darks some people. I

want people to really understand this. Jesse has taken his spooners, he's plucked him, cut him in a half improperly cut them in half properly, caught him in half. Oay, ripped bones sticking out of bones, just jabbing out everywhere. Put a coffee kere on them. Yeah, it could have been anything. It could have been. You know what I would a component I would really want to have in there would be a little bit of sugar into the cure. Are the dry brind, a little bit of sweetness in there

um and then some sort of spice. But in this case, I just saw the coffee care up there, and I'm like, coffee duck, Sure it was from your restaurant? It out? Yeah, Then he put in the fridge four hours, four hours in the fridge. Then he took it out. Did not rinse it correct now, not with without going off on a tangent too far, But traditionally can fee would be

a heavier salting, like a very heavy salting. And so when it comes out of the cure and it's about to go into the fat, oftentimes you're gonna want to rinse the excess for a short term cure, for a non preserving cure. For caling fee season two quote unquote taste like season it like you would if you were about to throw it on the grill. Yeah, so you just you're a buying the amount of seasoning that you

actually want. Now, if you're going to go for something where you want to come back to it in four months, I would go a little bit heavier, cure it very well, and then possibly remove some of that excess salt once it has absorbed into the meat. But in this case, we were going straight into the pot, So I just seasoned it to taste and then put it in the melted lard and butter. And if you're if you're intimidated about its whole large thing, I'm talking to listeners, not you.

I was just doing this as a little research project. Uh, listening intently, but while while listening, I did a research project. Um you know. I mean if you don't, if you can't find it, or you're kind of intimidated by the whole thing. I mean, I just I went to Amazon and typed in, Yeah, you can buy the ship on Amazon pork lard, but beef lard, pork lard. It's like it's not hard to find. People often ask about I see you guys sell it at your restaurant, which we

sure do. It's probably if you're an Austin. Just go buy from that's right. Yeah, we sell tallow and lard. Uh. I would say large and duck fat pretty interchangeable for making a con fee with duck. Uh, we're using large because that's what we got. So right now, forty two ounces of um forty two ounces a hog lard bucks. There's another place where it's USDA organic pork lard fourteen ounces for twenty three bucks. I'll say we're gonna beat those prices down there at die d and twenty four

or six Manor Road in Austin, Texas. You can go down there and get a I don't remember what the volume is now, but it's gonna be cheaper than that way goo beef tallow forty two ounces, so two and a half pounds, third box. But that's, you know, way a good beef towel. Let's go on. Okay, so then uh in a low hat with one more deal, one more deal, let's beef towel. Let me know if this beat your price is jesse, Yeah, twenty four pounds, twenty four pounds of beef towel nine bucks. I don't. I

can't do that math. I'm so sorry. Well, let's take it through, think it through. Let's say it was twenty five pounds for a hundred bucks. I got that at about four bucks a pound. That's cheap. Lets you say it's not as good as yours, it's definitely not as good as so head down to Jesse's restaurant and by is large right? Well, you can often find large two in Mexican and Central American. Uh, specialty, not even specialty, but like grocery stores. Why haven't you got into that

the little man take no? Well, yes, So personally I would advise that you avoid shelf stable large at all costs because it's hydrogenated. Yeah, and it's it's as bad as shortening as for you um, and get the freshly rendered stuff that's at the at the at the meat market, which will typically be room tempt sitting on top of

the counter. But I will say also that the rendering process is really important with large, and a lot of times I find that the lard there might be a little hard cooked, and the more brown that you when you cook it, the more you actually fry it, and the more color that comes out of it, the stronger the pork flavor is. And so when we're rendering lard where our goal is neutrality. We really wanted to be as mildly flavored as possible, and so we're not taking

it to a deep golden brown. We're taking it very gently until it's would always tell people it's like a straw color. It looks like a light beer. It's got tiny bubbles in it, and it looks like you poured a Miller light into a glass. It should be kind of that color with the tiny bubbles, and they're indicating that all the moisture is cooked out. I want to point out that a lot of these products I'm looking

at a non hydrogen hydrogenated. Yeah, they'll be refrigerated. So yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say, just do not get shelf stable large. It is hydrogenated, and it is it's quite bad for you, so we are let's do it. It's killing me. It's killing me. I didn't know that you could go on Amazon for nine and buy a nine pound bucket of bacon grease, which would work great. Also, all the people throwing out their bacon grease doing it. These people thrown into a bucket and they sell it

for fifty three bucks. Bacon fat would work, would work equally. Well, it's just a bucket that says bacon up, bacon grease. Uh, that's great man. All right, we're going into the oven now, so ye hold me back up. He's plucked the ducks. Oh my, sluck the ducks. We have them there. They've been seasoned, they've for four hours. Now they're in. They went on Amazon. He bought fat. I bought the fat.

I layered the half ducks into the fat, made sure they're covered, and then put that into a pretty low oven. I put it in a two seventy just so that they very gently cook. So um. You know, if you're gonna slow cook something, typically it's going to be browned and then and slow cooked. So there's gonna be like two distinct phases, like the crisping phase and then the slow cooking phase. And you can do that in either order.

You can slow cook and then brown, or you can brown and slow cook, which is typically a braize, or you can cook something until it's tender and then put it on a grill or put it under a broiler or something like that at the end after it's under And that's what we're doing here. So we cooked those ducks until they were tender but not falling apart. But I wanted them to be intact, intact, you know, And

that's why I left those rib bones on there. And I want to point out this is a tricky part for people cooking, right is slow cooking can like when you're doing this, it can feel like, oh, it doesn't really matter. I can let it go for a bazillion years. There is a long window of doneness, but it's not an infinite window of doneness. That's so well put. This is how I guess it's okay. I always feel bad about going off on a tangent, but I talked to

you Ela this tenure. I do it. I do it kind of a challenge for my employees every month, and it's it's I send them what I call him a mission. And then this year there are this month being well, this is December at the time of the recording, My my, my project for them all this is all the back of the house employees at the restaurant was to come up with three uh the like food ghosts, so past, present, future and so it's like a memory, something they're excited

about now and a goal for the future. Um and

I kicked it off by telling them my stories. And I'm not going to go into depth here, but what you just said it's very appropriate because my my current focus and what I'm really trying to do is in slow cooking, nail the texture of something that's been slow cooked with the attention that I would give a steak, you know what I mean, Like, I want to have it come out perfectly where it's not shredding and falling apart, but it's quote unquote fork tender where you where it's

just right. I screw this up all very easy because of what you just said. But the thing is is when it goes too far U especially a braise or a stew or something like that, and it's just like, well that's okay, you know, but if it's not far enough, obviously it's tough. So absolutely we cooked these ducks. Um. I would say about four hours and four hours of two and it would be intact enough. You can grab the end of a drumstick and hoist the duck out

lightly with gently tenderly where you would you would. Okay, hoists might not be the hoist, No, it's definitely implies like pulling out with the truck or something. Yes, um I think you, well, just going in with a knife and if it goes through with with no resistance, wiggling that that leg and seeing that it's starting to be it's it's tender, but it's not falling apart. But knowing also that there's still a little bit of a cooking process.

Um I. In this case, I cooled the ducks in the fat, which I think really helps them because it gives them kind of a kind of coast out of that heat, and the fat congealed all around them, and I put them in the refrigerator and let them sit overnight. Now you could pull them out immediately and go onto this next process, but my preference and what timing wise, I wasn't serving it that day. I was serving it

the next day. I just threw the pot. I let it cool down a little bit and through it in the refrigerator where it covered them and congealed and fat. The next day, come back and very gently because you don't want to fry them, you know, it very gently melted the fat and remove the ducks and let them kind of drain most of their fat off. And then let's address the fat. Because we've gone extensively into rendered fat prices and it's not cheap, right, and so we

don't want to discard this fat. And so here's what you do with that? And oh, I will say, I'm making note something that I've never done before. I took two heads of garlic, cut them in half, and threw them in the fat and essentially made like garlic corn feet along with it. And that was awesome. I mean you could just smell just like this beautiful, like really slow cooked garlic infusing into them as well. And so

now my fat is infused with that garlic. So I strained the fat out, uh, not boiling hot, but you know, let it cool off a little bit where it's still liquid, and I strained it into Um. I don't know how to put this a container that one could easily scoop the congealed fat out of, So don't put it in a mason jar that has a a neck on it.

Put it in something that's either straight sided or cong facts. Yeah, that that you can have beaker, But the other way, like the lip is wider than the base, correct, and so and then I put that in the refrigerator. So what you're gonna have now is your your fat's gonna your pure fat because I strained it. Your pure fat is gonna rise to the surface and congeal. And then at the bottom you are going to have a bit of this kind of seasoned gelatinous liquid that has come

off of the ducks. Um. And then at some point after it's been totally cooled, you're gonna want to go in and scoop the whole thing out and scrape the gelatinous liquid off the bottom, and that will at that point that fat is good for years. And then you can take that little bit of liquid that it's like a highly concentrated gelatinous stock. It's highly seasoned also, and you can use that in small amounts in a sup or something like that. You could you could add that

into something. There would be probably from this project, we probably would yield about half a cup of this gelatinous liquid at the bottom. That's gonna be like kind of concentrated cured duck flavor. You know what. H I have a little witch's hat with those filters that you can pour it through. Yes, to pull a bunch of the ship out of this, you still get the layer. Yeah,

You're gonna have it no matter what. UM. And then that that fat is going to be good to go for several more rounds if you treat it the same way every time. Um, and then so that that that initial investment will be diffused by being able to re use it. Okay, so now you got your ducks. Your duck havels have been put for four hours submerged in pork lard degrees. The listener has pulled his ducks out and he's finding here's you're finding that they're intact. You

can gently lift the half of the dog. It's not falling apart. It's not like how my mother used to cook squirrels in a crock pot and cream of mushroom soup, where when she was done there was a layer of bones in the bottom and and everything else floating on top. They're intact, and here we are, here we are. I put them on a little sheet tray er baking sheet, and then I started a very gentle mesquite fire, because I don't want to grill them over really high heat.

But what I just want to do is just I want to let I'm kind of cool off a little bit, and then I just want to cook them skin side down on a grill. Oh and only on the skin side. I'm never gonna flip them to that cut side ever, never, never, And I just want to gently crisp up the skin and to give them a little bit of smoke um and like the nice, beautiful like charcoal burning wood flavor. Um. So that SSS should take about twenty minutes, Like the

fire is that gentle under him or there's that much space. However, you're going to achieve that just a few coals. You put them down, and they're going to make just a little bit of a sizzling sound, and you want them to kind of gently brown up from there and just get that skin crisp. And I I did a little glaze just because the Brad, the guy that owns this place, he was cleaning out a cabinet and he was like, there's some pepper jelly and I was like, perfect good.

So a little bit of something sweet, uh, just like brushed that on the skin after the fact and does it upper jelly? Pepper jelly? And it could be anything. It could be a mix of vinegar and honey, which is classically my favorite, like literally just a fifty mix of any vinegar and honey. Um. I mean, it could be rice, wine, veneer of balsamic apple, cider, white, white vinegar, it doesn't really matter. Sherry vinegar very good. Um, something

sweet that together. Uh yeah, glaze, that's a good glaze. That's a good like. I don't have a lot of available things or really just anything sweet and anything like. Oh I'll have God is the juice out of a jar of pickled halapenias and some BlackBerry jam. Okay, I'm not advocating that specifically as saying it's my favorite. But if that's what you got, you're probably gonna make that work.

I mean, it's probably gonna be good. It's sweet and it's sour, you know, just find something, you know, I've got a lime and coconut. You've you've got a lime and uh some molasses. I'm mean again, I'm not advocating that specifically, but that's the that's the general idea. And then a little bit of a glaze on them. Vinegar and honey. Vinegar and honey is beautiful, I mean, and you can embellish that, you know, like garlic. It's very good in there. Um, and then you can put spices

in there. My preferences rush on ducks, birds quail. Yeah, I mean, I think I can't remember which book I have. Oh that's in it's in my in a field. There's a glaze and it's fifty fifty honey and vinegar with a little bit of aniseed and um in garlic, and it's it's a wonderful glaze that sounds so good. It works really well, especially with sherry vinegar for some reason. Um. And that was it. And then we served the ducks and you know, for you know, it's a little like

these are gonna be. And then I cheated tore a little piece off and I was like, I kind of nailed that one. Was good. It was good. You nail everything. Man. Now, I don't, well, that's that's super kind of you. But I don't. Um, you know, there's there's failures out there, but I think that just I like to try to make Spinney's taste good. I like to give him a chance.

You know, I gotta kill him, you know, let's just let's just treat him with with an ideal that they're gonna be great, you know, and now and then it just comes down to tricks. And then when we draw out the cooking process over forty minutes, I hope people aren't intimidated. But it's really not that hard if you if you distilled this down, let me do a quick version.

There you go, Okay, pluck your ducks. Caught him in a half ah, put some seasoning on them, let him sit a few hours, get a big pottle lard, pork lard. Stick the ducks in there, putting in your album for a few hours at two seventy five, four hours at two seventy five, pull them out, smoke him for a while, throw a glaze on. How's that? I love it? That's perfect. Or you can listen everything else we just talk about. Just scroll back and listen to my voice over and over. Yeah. Yeah,

they turned out great, and they would. It would apply to other ducks and you can do the same process. We we use this caned fee and grill process extensively at the restaurant. We do chicken hearts that way. I mean, I've I've stole that from you, so I mean just to look at that for duck hearts. The how useful it is, Like the two main things that we do in that manner at the restaurant would be chicken hearts

and beef ribs. So like a three or four pound full cut beef rib that is cured and then slowly cooked, in this case in beef fat until it's tender and then grilled at the end. And that's our way of achieving tenderness. And then when the order comes in, we can cook the beef rib over the grill and it can get that you're you're you're getting it tender first and then you're coming back later and getting the smoke, the char and the texture. Now that's my favorite venison

rib preparation. But I haven't done it in the lard. It would be quite good. You do it in water. Water. Part of the thing is this, I'll be curious to get your take on this. Part of what I'm trying to do when I do it in water is I'm trying if it's a real fatty deer, that's great, a

lot more meat. I'm trying to get all that dear fat out of the meat right, So I slow cook it right, and then when you set it, when you get it up to set it and let it cool, all that fat it's tallow right, doesn't taste that it's it's super waxy, unpleasant. So I'm trying to get all that waxy fat out of there, and it floats up to the surface of water. A thing I might be afraid of, or maybe it wouldn't matter. As if I took my little deer ribs and imagine you got like

just listeners. Like imagine you got a deer staying in there and he had all its ribs. In the end, I like cut the ribs off. I take a saws on and run them into slip strip cut them into strips. Uh, so that I got chunks of three inch rib because so I'm going against the grain of the ribs with my saws all and I'm just cutting the ribs slab

into three strips. And then I take a few bones, cut it, a few bones cut it, and I got like if you went to a restaurant and ordered pork ribs two or three ribs per peace, the ribs are not three. Maybe the ribs are four or five inches tall. Uh. I cook them till tender in water. Are you seizing the water? No? I season after I'm done. I would because I want all that dear fat to liquefy and go away. Then I do a dry rub, then I

grill them. But here's my question to you. Let's say I had cooked them down, I tend to rise them in pork lard. Uh it would probably uh diffuse carry away the deer fat wax nous. My feeling is yes, it probably would. It would probably serve the same exact purpose as the water, but it would incorporate but it couldn't incorporate some less waxy fat back in that's would then have wax. Your other fat would have waxy fat integrated into it. Is my theory that is also true.

But probably such trace and mountain it doesn't matter. I mean two full full disclosure. I also cooked the venison ribs like this in water. But what I like to do is highly seasoned the water so that I'm getting because my what I've always found is that when you when you cook them, you've got you've got the outside seasoned. Only in the insides tends to be run a little bland. So I will season it with you know, bay leaves and garlic and onion, and they'll be some salt in

the water. Or if you do have time before they go into the water, season them at that point, like so dry brine them and then go into the water, and so that that that there's they're fully seasoned, and then when they come out, you don't have just like that outer layer that's got the nice seasoning on it, but they're season throughout the correct And that's and that's my fifty honey vinegar glaz that's we we we do

this very often. It's make venison venice and ribs like that, exactly like you're saying, you know, park cook um and then based on the grill with that vinegar and honey mixed is uh what I like to base them without my grill Cider, vinegar, mustard, Oh, mustard, Yeah, And I slap him in that. My kids it's so weird. I mean they love it that. They like to have a little dipping bowls of it too. Cider, vinegar and mustard brushed down the ribs you can brush from barbecue sauce.

But it tastes like every damn thing in barbecue sauce. We we we eat no shortage barbecue sauce in my house. It's just like such a like, oh the hell we're gonna do with these leftovers? Well, I'm gonna mash them up, put barbecue sauce and put it on sandwiches. Uh, we made for Thanksgiving this year, we made a big Italian mixed boil. Yeah, bleed to me stone. In the end,

I we just got so sick of the leftovers. In the end, I just wanted up all on barbecue, sauce, on sandwiches, all the shanks and everything, you know what went into it? What did I do? The bl bleetle me sto. I did. Uh A friend of mine and raised his cattle, gave me some beef tongue. Nice. My kid's buddy, Uh, his family raised his chickens. So I had a chicken. And then I realized I needed another chicken, so that I had to buy a chicken. I had a moose brisket. This is like a classic composition right

here at breasket. Had a chicken piglet a wild piglet shoulder from Hawaii, so the whole pig shoulder. I had a couple of antelope shoulders that I corned where I just saw as all the whole antelope leg into three pieces and corned it. I had pronghorn shanks that were just braised. What else they're put in there? And then like Rudabaga's turn ups, white beats taters isn't it. Can we talk about this? Yeah, like for a minute, you don't like it? No, I I really I really enjoyed

this topic. And there's there's a couple time I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you questions now, um and going back to the well, let's let's start here. Um poached or well it says it's it's a mixed boil, and that's what it translates, not boiled. It's poached. Well, yes, you're not.

You're not in the process had a rip and boil. Now, if I had the if I had really devoted my brain to it and had the large enough vessel and really sat and looked at everything and thought it out, I could have been like, Okay, i'm putting we're gonna eat at six, I'm putting that in it nine am. I'm putting that in at ten am. It putting that in at five pm. But I didn't do it that way because I was too lazy to think about it all because I wanted I was going to get there

in a second. But a few things going right, I had a few things going they all got combined in the end. Okay, okay, because the staging was going to be my second question, my first being more not really a question but more of an observation, is that like poached or meats that are slow cooked in water, not widely accepted here like we we really crave, I think, in in this country, in many other countries, uh, the texture of a seer from a grill or or being

fried or put under a broiler. But I love things like that, like a poached chicken or a poached shank or a tongue or something like that. I think there's a lot of value to it. And how how do we go about normalizing that as a preparation because it's really cool. I think it's really to defeed it to your kids when they're young, and if everybody did that in a generation or two, the problem would be over. But what if you're an adult and you're like boiled meat?

Who eats that? I don't even care. It's like I don't care. I used to, I used to years ago care about all this stuff. You know, I don't care. I just don't care. I don't want to hear about it anymore. Don't. We're trying to we're trying to convince people to eat mixed boils. Yeah, I just kind of like, you know, I just don't I don't need to hear about what you don't want to eat. It's just like, don't don't come over. So if you work. Next question, let me heat with a quote from a front of mine.

So my wife for meeting new people, my wife will often uh, if their kids are coming over, my wife will off and be like, just so you know, we have guns in the house. They're locked up, but we have guns in the house, you know. Uh. She just feels this is a curtis because there's some you know whatever. She doesn't apologize about it, She's just letting them know. I think she's been asked enough. Maybe. But a friend of mine is like, uh, if they don't like it,

don't come to my house. And I just a little bit like what I what. I can't even I just can't all the people that don't want to eat all the stuff, I just I can't argue with them anymore. I'm I'm right there. But I do think that educating, educating and opening some minds. But there's still time, and people listen. They listen to what you have to say. They listen. They're interesting in the fact that you had the mixed boil for Thanksgiving. I've talked about three times.

I mean, I think it's I think that's amazing. I love that. My wife was a little miffed, but in the end she conceded that it was better than what you normally eat it Thanksgiving. If you were to kind of get onto my technical question, if you were to stage it, did you cook it in the same broth? In the end? No, I had a few things going on. Go ahead and ask you questions, unless you want me to elaborate. Let's say, hypothetically, you've got a big pot, Well,

you're gonna cook everything. How would you have how would you have staged? What order would you have? I would have woke up in the morning and I would have gotten my uncured raw asked shanks in there. Um, let's say I'm eating. Let's say we're gonna eat at six. I would have uh, I would have gotten my pot because I wouldn't want to sit there and keeping an eye on it. I would have just put it in my oven at a certain town and put my shanks in there. Then I would have gone my corned meats.

Oh you know what else I put in there? I forgot about this. I made a bunch of venison garlic sausages and few a dozen of them in there. I'm sorry the sausages are going in this early. No no, no no, no, I've forgotten my big what all was in there? That was in there? They went in late. I would have done my raw ass uncured shanks. Then later I would have put my corned in my corn and I corned my moose brisket, and I corned some of the uh bone in venison pieces. I would have waited a while.

My tongue was already you know, it's not a raw tongue. My tongue had already been smoked. Because so it's just vac sealed. I made it. I made three saved one for Thanksgiving. It a vac bag. So it's like recipe ready. It just needs to be warmed up like you could have. It's just ready eats as I thought it out. So I would have waited and then at probably like uh four o'clock maybe out to put my tongue in there.

Five o'clock I would have got my harder to like big beats, big white beats, turnips and radishes would have got them. And then to make sure that they were ready. Know what, I'm sorry to Vegas got it at five thirty five. I would have done my chicken and my sausages. And by now the broth is just it's phenomenal. So I'd say, you know, when I was all done the next day, because I strained it off. When it was all done the next day, I jarred it all in my pressure canners. Now I got that ship on my

shelf and cannon jars. So the meats are coming out, they're getting sliced. Yeah, A little bit part of the appeal is it's some caveman looking business. I bought two giant platters on Amazon on with pumpkins and stuff on them, because like, none of turkeys and pumpkins, and because when I'm having any of that stuff, and so I was like it was a little throw to people that were all miffed, certain unnamed family members that were like, where did the turkey duffy? It's right there and on the

corner copes. Look, you'll notice all trade there on the edge of the my giant platters. And I don't know what, you know, where I'm gonna put them until next Thanksgiving? And I made two mountains mountains of boiled assorted meats and root vegetables, in a lot of carrots, uncut carrots. Oh, just whole carrots with the biggest, nastiest carrots you can find. Whole ass carrots. Got it? And then what what is uh? Did you do? Condiments or moostata, which I just bought

a few, went like full on traditional with yeah. Well, I'm twenty percent Italian, two percent North African, and then a whole bunch of Western Europe. I was digging into my Italian. I bought mustarda um, and then we made to a red sauce and a green sauce. It's like a raw green herb sauce. All right, this is phenomenal. And I had a couple of little salt tubs laid out any special salt or just some coach sea salt

like he see salt. Then now, if you really want to know, then I made a horse radish sauce creamy. Yeah he nailed this, Yeah I got. I got my own horse radish patch too. I'll point out so which is frozen and locked under dirt. But I had cured, you know, I had made some of vinegar and all that, and that was for the corned meats phenomenal. Yeah, that answer are your questions? It did? It did? I'm really glad we took a turn down that route. This is

a food episode. Okay, yeah, good anything else you need? No, No, I mean we can, we can move on. But I, like I said, I think that this is this is a topic that really needs normalizing. We had a guest on It's about boiled meat. We had a guest on Seth Cantner. He was raised um outside of cots Abu. He's brought up in a side igloo, living off the land, dirt floor, side iglu sled dogs, feeding them off Cariboo. He's an author. He wrote Shopping for Porcupine. He wrote

Ordinary Wolves. He wrote a Thousand Trails Home about Caribou. Reading his book about Cariboo, like they eat a lot of lot of boiled like that style of cooking which is like very influenced by a new pat culture and stuff. But they eat a lot of just like a moose knees. You butcher your mouse, you get the big chunks off, the big muscle groups off, and then then they take the knee joint and they just boil it and they eat all that tending gelatinous stuff. Yeah, a lot of

boiled meat. You'd have people over and it would just be like the like the pelvis, Okay, so you butcher a caribou, you take that whole pelvis whatever, just any chunks of anything that like, you'd normally be like, hey, it's clean. Like let's say you butcher elk out in the mountains. All the ship that's laying there when you walk away with your backpack full of meat, bonus meat or quarters or whatever. Everything's laying there. They would saw

up and boil and serve that. And you're going there to go to the pot and you grab out a moose knee and you sit down and pick it. Yeah, everything down to the everything down to the bone makes sense. And reading that it's like, man, you know, it's like salt and boiled joints. So they have it very much. So an appreciation for just that boiled meat. Yeah, I think many cultures, do you know, I mean just soups and fuh you know, or you know, and you know,

France has its own version of of that. I mean Italy famously so, but I particularly enjoy it, especially when you play with all the condiments and it's like a choose your own adventure over there, and you've got these like sharp, bright condiment instead of going with this kind of like stodgy, almost unidimensional preparation. It's delicious but still, and then you get the sauces really make it right. Then we started fruit fun yeah, and that jelly inside.

Then we started all that stuff really makes it. He could probably explain it mustard fruit, but there's no mustard in it. There should be mustard seeds and okay, yeah, sorry, yeah, we mustard being like one of the most preservative of the spices. I mean, it lasts almost indefinitely. And som start to uh is an Italian like sweet condiment that's also gotten a bit of spice to it. So picture of marachino cherry, yeah, because it'll have some of those

in it. But you've made a picture that you've made marachino cherries out of Kiwi's cherries, oranges, pair slices, and then it's packed and how do you describe what it's packed in. It's a it's a a jelly or a syrup. It's expensive as ship and it could be made with any fruit. It's kind of it's I would say it's in the Chottney family. And I don't worry. I gotta point out, man, I got no, I don't work at Amazon. Um, I bought mine off Amazon because you get it from Italian.

I mean, if it's like you know with Montana, it's hard to find some stuff. Sure, if you were in New York, you just go down and probably go to like eighteen stores within five blocks and buy. And we started a fruit. But I wouldn't know where to begin. I just ordered and it comes from It's like all made in Italy, and I just buy the jars on Amazon. Yeah, it's probably a better way to do it, but that's

just how I do it. But you could make it would be a fun It would be a project that Canda making jam or jelly anything like that, or a Chattney where you could can it um and you could use whatever fruit it is. I mean, you could make a choke cherry well starta or something like that, or an apple in the start. You know, they're being dumb asses. But my kids do not like it. They do not like it. They like the look of it. Sure, you're

like white claw. A kid can look at a can of white claw across the room and they are in huh, everything about it, the color of the can, the size of the cann It's like they see that and they think I would like that beverage from a hundred yards away. They know they're gonna they like everything about the presentation. You bring a jar and we started in the home and they're fired up, like what could you know? What could be more exciting than what's in that jar? And

they taste and they're just out. It's like they're like someone ruined. Its spicy, But it's a great wild game accompaniment across the board man on duck, Yeah, it's phenomenon. Does it have a kind of vinegar in it as well? Is there a sour element or is there a fruit that's sour that's in it, like like a tang? Is it there? Is there always a tang? Or it's not quite from the fruit and then a copious amount of mustard t A r d A. It will be like FRUITA.

It's an Italian, it will be fruita mastarta. I love to try it one day when you're searching up beefat you search up that, get yourself a jar heading over, prepare to pay for it, right, I mean I think chutt needs to or you know, again a universal condiment and like, uh, there's I put a chuttney recipe in the hog book, and I feel like you can put anything in there, from an apple to a zucchini. It's gonna come out great. It's just it's it's a method

which is always appealing to me. It's just to like put out methods rather than strict recipes. And so but what at the end of the day, what it is, It's that it's it's sweet and it's sour, and like, there's that those two flavors go so far with like enlivening game because it's just that richness. It's the the old e Q on the radio where you've got too much base and you need to bring in a little

bit of trouble. And that's exactly what what those flavors are with that like acidic punch and mustard seed ginger things like that. I want to close with, Uh, I want you to I'll do mine first. I get to do three, but you only you only get to do one. Well, your best, like your best message, like if you could have a message to wild game cooks broadcast into outer space so that all life would hear it? What would it be? I go first and I only got one.

Now I'm gonna go first. I get three. Okay, one is going to Jesse's restaurant too, is get if you like to hunt wild pigs, get Jesse's hog Book. What's it called? The hog Books? New was something real simple. More people company about that book. People, people that are exposed to pigs, and they got all the stupid ship like, you can't eat this guy, you can't eat the bars, you can't you can't eat the sounds. Whatever the hell here at all? Uh? It's available on the meat Eater store.

It's phenomenal book. Thank you. People calling to me all the time about how blown away they are about that book. We won the James Beard Award. Since I saw you last, that book won the James Beard Award. Yes, sir, you shouldn't be no. For the single subject category. The hog Book is the winner. I think that's a win for I'm not trying to be I don't know. I don't know what the word would beat, but when the just getting that recognition for a book about hunting and specifically

about pigs, that's hyper graphic. There's uh we we self published it so we could put whatever pictures we wanted in there. There's a lot of I mean, there's guts, the there's blood, there's there's death, there's dead piglets, all that stuff. I think that, Uh, the recognition from the culinary community about a book like that was really significant to me. And I'm not trying to be said to something like it's a win for us all, but it's

a win for us all. I felt like that was it was very cool to see that I didn't hear. I didn't know. It was pretty cool. I got to go to Chicago too and hear my name. It was cool. That's great. My daughter said that my nose was sweating. Um. So here's my final tip. So let's go to your restaurant, get your hog book. Here's my final tip. Uh, I've said this before. You're either cooking it too long or you're not cooking it long enough. You nailed it. You

nailed it, you nailed it. I'll mind mine is don't leave what they say. I don't believe what they say because when they are telling you talking that a gaff top catfish is not edible, or that an ad dad is not edible or edible or you can't eat a pig over pick your weight, whatever it is, I can't eat him. And from February August or whatever. Don't believe him. Don't believe him. You can't eat a shoveler, you can't. You know, boiled meat is not good. Just don't believe him.

That's that's uh, that's my advice. Thank you, Yeah, thank you. Lions sons of bitches that they are all you know what, and they've never tried it, they just heard it. It's just that generational misinformation. I think we we got to remember to call the cream. You gotta remember to call the episode. Don't believe them. I love it. We came up with a good titles and we kind of forget them. It's best to just record that. Just were workshopping and

just put it right. We do record it, and it was something different we want to call this episode, and then we're like, na think then it gets a different name and the listen really confused. This one, by God, is going to be don't believe them and check my work by go and look at what it's called. All right, thank you very much, Jesse Griffin, Yeah, thank you. Die in Austin, Texas, yes, sir d A I d U. Yeah, he should have named something different. It should now Yeah,

it's way too late, had ships sailed. Yeah, my daughter, I'm not even gonna tell you know when she was reading it. Yeah, I was like, it's die do, die do. That's that's an Italian coming out. Yeah. You you genetically knew how to pronounce it, all right, Thanks a lot, man, Thank you,