Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon, Welcome to the.
Wired to Hunt Podcast. This week on the show, I'm joined by Danielle Pruitt to discuss her top wild game meal ideas for the holidays and the winter season, as well as techniques for cooking better venison. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and the Camo for Conservation Initiative, and today we're talking food. It is edging here towards the end of December, winter is upon us. For most folks
across the country. The holidays are knocking on the door steps. So what better time to take a step back from hunting and start discussing the fruits of our labor, hopefully a whole pile of venison or wild turkey or waterfowl or whatever it is you've been chasing this year. Now's a great time to eat it, share with family and friends,
and really enjoy that stuff. So who better to join us to discuss all that than Danielle Pruitt, Meat Eaters leading food contributor and the author of the brand new Wild and Whole cookbook Seasonal Recipes for the Conscious cook. This is her incredible new cookbook just released this fall, full of great venison ideas as well as other things to cook with wild game, and so we are talking
through all things wild game today. We discuss her best recommendations and ideas for new recipes and meals for the holidays. Some good stuff to cook around Christmas for appetizers, main courses, everything from roast ideas, things to do with your backstraps, things to do with wild turkey, brast legs, goose duck. We discuss a number of winter recipes, so things maybe that aren't just for the holidays, but also something you can cook up in those cold months of the year.
Talk through some techniques, some different things that you can add to your venison repertoire no matter the time of year. If you want to cook your venison or other wild game better, if you want to enjoy more satisfying and impressive meals, our conversation today is for you, and I can't recommend Daniel's cookbook enough The Wild and Whole cookbook can be found wherever you find your books. Definitely check
that out. Definitely give this one a listen. And since this is the last, I think the last podcast we're going to have before Christmas, this will also be me sending you all off towards what's hopefully the very merry Christmas and holiday season. So we're not going to belabor the point anymore. I want to get to the conversation, get you some food ideas, get your cooking and enjoying yourself and hopefully putting some incredible meals on the table
here in just a matter of days. So without further ado my conversation. But Danielle Pruitt, all right with me? Now on the line is Danielle pruit Welcome back to the show.
Danielle, Hey, Mark, how are you.
I'm great. I'm excited to be here chatting. I appreciate you making the time at a busy time of year, so thanks for being here.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean it's it's always busy, though, isn't it.
That is true. I do get that people like, ah, well, you know, is this slow down when the hunting season winds down? And for me, like the travel does. But then that's also a time when a lot of the content creation that the other half of the content, Oh the world kicks off and gets crazy. So yeah, the editing, Yeah, there's no easy slow part of the year, but the
holidays are a little bit unique in that. And you have just kind of finished, maybe not finished, but you've been on a roller coaster over the last couple of years working on a massive project which you got to see come to life this fall, and I'm sure you're still kind of riding that wave right now into the end of the year with the book, The Incredible Cookbook, which is for those watching, Oh you got it, It's beautiful,
wild and whole. Danielle, congratulations first and foremost on bringing that thing into this world.
Thank you. I mean, gosh, it is such a labor of love.
I mean, I feel like everybody says that had a book about a book, because it really is.
But that book.
You know, I never thought that I was going to be able to have the opportunity to write a book.
And then when we had a.
Handful of people come and ask me if I would write a book, and then we got an agent, I realized, oh my gosh, this is real, and so I knew kind of what I I wanted the book to be in the like I had like an end vision, but like the journey to get there was long.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know how the journey to get a book is long in stressful times and all that kind of stuff. I can only imagine that with this kind of book. That's not only since he had to write, but then also the photography and figuring out these recipes and all that. I can't imagine what all that was like.
So yeah, well it's well, there's like the writing of the well there's I mean, I don't know if it's the same for I mean, you've written a book, and I don't know if it's the same for like a novel.
But the proposal process alone.
Is kind of intimidating, and like getting a book deal is intimidating. And then of course the actual process of writing it is for me, was just like the most fun thing I've ever done. Like if I could do anything over and over again, it would be right cook
writing cookbooks. Now everything that happens after it's written is less fun, Like the marketing side of it is like not as fun, but the actual meat and potatoes of the project was really cool this book is it's seasonally based because I wanted people to like have this well, I guess what people were most excited about publish, like the publishers, what they were most excited about was that this was more of a lifestyle based cookbook. And I think most people will be surprised when you go through
it to find that. And so in order to like to capture that, I felt like I needed to share the stories behind where all the food comes from, because that's a really big part of this, especially you know as a hunter, Like that's like a big part to the story. Like that's what we get excited about when we sit at the dinner table to eat a meal, is like this animal had there was something about that hunt, however long you watched that deer or whatever, And so
I wanted to be able to capture that. And so it's organized by the season so that people could like get really excited about whatever is happening at any given point throughout the year, because there's always something outdoors to get really excited about, and so I wanted people to kind of like live in that moment through the recipes.
And that's why the book took so long is because I wrote the book through each season as I was living in it and as I was actually inquire acquiring the ingredients for that, so that the ingredients were inspiring the recipes and not you know, the other the other
way around. Like you know, I feel like sometimes people write a recipe just to kind of write a recipe, and I felt like I needed to find the ingredients first outside to sort of of dictate what I was going to do, which is why the book took so long to write.
That's incredible. So this idea of it being seasonal, I love that idea, and I love that I can kind of filter the book by the time of year and what's right for that time of year kind of kind of aims what you should be going for, which fits perfectly into why I now seem the right time for us to talk because we're shifting into from fall into winter, and then there's also this micro season, which is like the holiday season right smack dad, between fall and winter.
So I guess I wanted to talk practical practically to start, which would be for people tuning in right now, We've got like a week give or take until Christmas and then you had New Years, You've got all these different
family get togethers and all these kinds of things. So when you when you just think about cooking in the holidays and wild game as a part of that, where does your head go, Like, what are the what are the pillars of your thinking when it comes to cooking wild game for this time of year.
That's a good question as far as like how you approach it. I always kind of start with, like, what is it that I'm doing, you know, like how much of it that am I doing with family? And how much am I doing it alone? Travis and I. I mean, up until now, it's just always been the two of us, and so I always cook a meal just for the two of us, and it's kind of fun to sort
of like have a celebratory meal in that way. Now I've got Hank, my five month old, who's thrown in the mix, which we can eat yet he's so close. But and then there's like kind of the other end of the spectrum where you've got you know, like my dad was just in town and that's probably the only time I'm going to be able to see my dad for the holidays, and so thinking about what it is that I want to cook for them. The first thing I do with like other people friends or families, ask
him like what do you want to eat? Because I think people are always intrigued by like what I actually have in the freezer, and so that's really the first thing that's like what.
Do you want to eat?
Like my dad, I asked, is like I've got venison, pheasant.
Duck.
It was like, what do you want to eat me? He said venison. So that's kind of the first thing I think about. And then of course I dig through the freezer and try to figure out what exactly I have to cook.
And then that's like the first step.
So is that how you approach most your meals? Like you you look at what I currently have or do you say so yes, think through like Okay, I want to do this specific thing, and then you've got to go out and go go find it or fill the pantry from the grocery store.
It's a little bit of both. It's a little bit of both, but I would say mostly it's about what I have, And I think that comes from so like I spent probably eight or nine years of eating only wild game, and I had to find ways to make that meat stretch. But I definitely like hunted year round, Like we were hunting rabbits and ducks in the winter and turkeys in the spring, and so like we were
throughout the year. We had different ingredients, and like you run out of things fast, Like I only I'm lucky if I get one turkey a year, or a couple of hogs a year, a couple of handful of ducks or geese a year. And so I kind of just sort of take that inventory and say, like what do I have, because that's kind of the beauty of like, you know, hunting for your own food is that these ingredients are not something you can just go to the store and get whenever you want. There's there is a
finite source of that. And so I kind of that's what I do, is I take inventory and look at what I have, and I always try to make the most of it, you know, things like venison. You know, it's we have two deer in the freezer now, and
I'm hoping maybe to get one more. But you know, that's one thing that like I always have a lot of, but I only have like so many hearts, so many you know, like of each tenderloins you know, there's not a lot of those on a deer unfortunately, but but yeah, that's kind of the way.
I approach it.
Okay, So if I am well, I'm not going to be hypothetical, Well, I'm just gonna explain to my situation. So I've got to plan our menu for our upcoming Christmas evening celebration, and I oftentimes like to incorporate wild game, and well not even or incorporate, I substitute wild game
often in for your more traditional meats. Right, So, for someone listening who's in a similar situation where they want to have a wild game centerpiece to their holiday dinner upcoming, do you have any suggestions for ways to do that, whether it's venison or something else. Do you have a handful of ways that you could kind of substitute in wild game for some classic holiday Yep.
My favorite one and the one that I actually did with my dad, is.
Roast venison.
So like instead of like roast beef or like a prime rib, it's sort of like the closest equivalency that you could do with venison. Albeit there's not a lot of fat to it, so it's a little different in that regard. But basically taking a big roast that's really tender, and there's really only two muscles on a deer that I would suggest for this, but taking like something that's like relatively thick in size, like the surloin tip or the top round or also called the inside round. Those.
Sorry to jump in, but I want to make sure we pick the right ones from what they look like. One of those is the one that looks like a football, right.
Uh huh, that's like on the that would be like the equivalent of a quadricep above the kneecap, above the kneecap.
And then the other ones the kind of one that looks a little bit like a mini backstrap tucked into that conch. Right, No, that's.
The top round or inside round. Well, I mean, I don't know if you would call it a mini backstrap.
It's like a rectangle, right, yeah, yeah.
Maybe we are talking about the same one. I'm pulling up.
This is what I did in my book. I have this little butcher charte, and so that's the hind quarter. This is the inside of that hind quarter, so you can see like the femur and then the muscle that goes up over the hip bone. It's this one right here. It's that big rectangle one. It's got a long line, super tender, so that one and then this surloin tip above the kneecap. Those two are the most tender, like large sized roast, so that you could feed a bunch
of people. And so basically what I do, and like this is like the simplest way to explain it is give it a really hot sea or on the stovetop, stick an oven proof thermometer in it, and throw it in the oven until it reaches one hundred and twenty eight and then take it out.
It's like that's a.
Yeah, I mean, that's like the simple version of explaining it.
So there's a recipe in my book.
Is it the Venison arjous one.
Yeah, So it's.
You know, you start writing this recipe out and like the editors want like the most detailed explanation. So you look at the recipe and you're like, good god, it's so long. But it's really not. Like I just told you the recipe. You see it and you stick it in the oven, and it's foolproof. And that's why I
like it so much, is it's absolutely fool proof. So if you're somebody who's like very intimidated to cook like steak for a handful of people, and like one guy wants it medium rare, and the other one wants it medium and the other one wants it rare, and you're like, gosh, I got like eight sticks to cook. It's intimidating even for me.
And so.
This is like one way.
This is a picture ye looks really good.
So basically it's just this one big roast. And what makes this kind of like if you want to elevate it a little bit, I have a recipe for a mushroom rub. So basically you see it and then you season it with this mushroom rub, which is just dehydrated mushrooms that have been blitzed with a little bit of rosemary, salt and pepper.
That's all it is. But it adds a ton of flavor.
And so you use that rub and then you put it in the oven, and then the thermometer is off key because you have no idea. Without that, you have no idea how fast or how slow that thing is cooking, and so you want to take it out about eight degrees before it reaches final temperature that that you want it, but that way, like when you do it, you're cooking for a lot of people. You can start with the seer, but you don't have to put it in the oven
right away. You can get all your side dishes ready, put it in the oven, and then sit there and drink your beer a glass of wine, shoot the shit with people, and you're not like frantically like in the kitchen trying to figure out how am I going to get everything finished at the exact same time, because I think that's what a lot of people struggle with. So
this is why I like that recipe. It's very hands off, and I think that's kind of what you want to do in the holidays, is you don't want to be like, you want a great meal, but you also don't want to be slaving away and stressing out about it either, like you should. You should enjoy your.
Time with people. And so once yeah, and so.
When thatmmeter hits the temperature, you just take it out, let it rest, and serve it. This recipe also comes with an ausu, so basically, like if you've got homemade venison stock or beef stock, you just reduce that down with a little red wine and some herbs and garlic, and so that's just kind of a nice little little meaty sauce that you can serve, serve with it, and you know whatever sides that you typically like mashed potatoes,
something green however you like it. But that one's like really great as it is like in like thick slices with that juice. But I'll also like say, do a couple extra roasts and then have it cooled down, chilled, and once it's cold, slice it really thin and you'll get like really great sandwich meat for like the next day.
So it's kind of like a you know, if you're going to go through the trouble of like making a big meal, you want to have leftovers, right, especially if there's like a lot of people in the house, a lot of lot of hungry people, like just kind of help yourself to some meat. It's kind of a nice one to have on hand.
I love it. That sounds really good. So you said bigger slices and let it rest for five ten minutes before you do that.
Probably, yeah, a good ten minutes.
Okay. As far as like the venison main dishes, that's your go to. Is there any other venison approach? For the holidays that you would recommend backstraps or anything I've done, like a smoked backstrap. Is there any better way to utilize that one?
You know?
I mean I think backstrap. I feel like everyone that's such a touchy subject. I feel like people have like can be really set in their ways when it comes to backstrap. Whether it's I'm not gonna say anything, but like my father in law man, the only way he'll eat it is to butterfly it open, and that's the way he likes it. To me, it's like I just don't like it so thin because it overcooks really easily.
That's a personal choice. I think it's also like a very, you know, just a thing that just gets passed down from each generation and like it's and it becomes nostalgia.
So I think that's why people get touchy with it. Let's see.
But yeah, backstrap, I mean smoking it's good and it's it's kind of like the same concept of like you can take the whole loin And what I really like to do is almost kind of like a reverse seer where it starts on the smoker at a low temperature and at the very end seir it or vice versa.
You can start by giving it a really hard sear in like a cast iron, but keep it still like raw in the metal, and then put it on the smoker until it hits you know, that medium rare one twenty eight to one thirty, and take it off.
But that's the same kind of concept where you.
Have like a whole honk of meat and then you can just slice it for everyone to just kind of grab it as much as they want.
Yeah, I want to make sure I got something there. Do you always take meat off about eight degrees ahead of the final temperature? Is that like your standby?
So? I mean no, it depends on the size of the meat. The bigger it is, the more residual heat it will continue to carry or the residual Yeah, the residual heat will continue to cook it for even longer, so that makes sense. And also how hot it is. The hotter, like say the oven, the faster it'll that
temperature will keep rising. But if you're using like a lower temperature oven that's more gentle, the slower that climbs, so when you take it out of the ove, and that residual heat will just go a little bit slower, so it just depends. And the same thing with like a smoker. You're generally going to have that smoker at like what two hundred and so it's not going to climb as high as if you had that smoker at three hundred.
And fifty degrees.
When you take that off, it's going to keep climb and climb and climb and climbing. So it's really a factor of the size of the meat and also how the temperature of which you're cooking. Okay, I'm sure there's a scientific term for that.
I like your explanation. So back to like classic holiday dish substitutions. So that was a very good idea for like the prime but with venison. Do you have any recommendations when it comes to like a poultry or a waterfowl? Do you do you ever try to incorporate duck or wild turkey or pheasant or anything like that.
Eat well, I do.
Thanksgiving, our tradition was always a whole roasted pheasant. But like with us, especially at Thanksgiving, like I pretty much eat a whole pheasant to myself because I'm like a total glutton. I mean I could get by with half a pheasant, but like to be honest, I'd rather eat the whole thing because I just want a lot.
So that's a hard one. Depends on how.
Many people you have in your family, how many how many mouths you.
Got to feed.
But a lot of times with birds, I like to sort of cook them in parts. The legs are generally tougher and so like this is not really a crispsy holiday recipe, but one of my favorite things to do with like a whole pile of goose legs is to cut feed them and then I'll like season it with barbecue rub before before I cook it, and then when it's done being cooked, then you slap it on the grill and it's it's kind of my my way of
having like barbecue duck legs or goose legs. Yeah, it's not like a Christmas e recipe by any means, but it's winner is usually the time when we shoot the most waterfoul.
That's the whole roast goose in the middle of your table like the No.
I know, it's like it's like you want to do it because it's like part of for show. Yeah, but you've either you're either going to get the breast cooked perfectly or the legs cooked right, and then the other the other half is not as good, and so it's you know, it sucks, but it's just better cooked in parts, if you know. And then of course, if you took the time to pluck the skin, you really want to
make that skin really nice and crispy. There's nothing I like more than a crispy seared duck breast with the skin on, and I like doing that for a bunch of people my cookbook, there's a recipe. I think the recipe is also on the Meat Eater website. It's called Boozy duck Alla Orange, and it's duck all orange is like just a famous French recipe for duck. But I've always found it to be like a little sweet for my taste, so I kind of altered it to add
some bourbon in there, lush sugar. It's just a more savory, bourbon y kind of a sauce. Basically imagine an old fashion in a pan sauce.
That sounds pretty good. I feel like duck. I feel like duck breast is something that feels like a pretty good Christmas alternative. What's the trick to making a good duck breast? Because I feel like, duck can be so good, but some people have this idea that it's you know, tough or kind of weird. What's the right way to do it?
First, have the right duck, choose a dabbler. That's the first and foremost. I think that's probably the biggest misconception when I hear about people not liking duck, it has everything to do with their diet and what they're eating is going to tell you what they're going to taste like. And I mean, I could talk a long time about that,
but I'm not I'm not going to. But as far as like the actual like way to make duck skin crispy without overcooking the meat, pluck the skin, pad it really really really really dry with paper towel, and don't salt it or anything. Score the skin through the skin and the fat, but not cutting through the meat into little hashmarks, like through through across the breast. And then you want to make sure that you bring it at like pull it from the refrigerator, like at least thirty
minutes up to an hour before you actually cook. And the reason is that cold meat hitting a hot pan will create condensation, and so that condensation moisture is the enemy of crispiness, just to put it that way, So you want to pull it out of the refrigerator early, and then you want to put its skin side down in the pan while.
It's still cold.
So you don't want to start the pan on high heat and then add at it.
You want a.
Cold pan, then turn the heat onto medium high, and then I put some sort of like a weight, like a meat press weight on it, or you can use a spatula and hold it down and let it sort of start sizzling. And so what that's doing is letting the fat render out. The fat underneath that renders and the moisture escapes, and that's how you get the skin crispy, because if you just do it out over high heat,
you're not rendering out that fat. So it's kind of the same idea of if you've ever had like a ribis steak or like you know, a piece of meat pork chop that's got a lot of fat on it, but like the fat hasn't been rendered and you're just kind of chewing on it. That's exactly the same thing that's underneath the duck breast and order to get the skin crispy, you have to get the fat out because it's not gonna be soft like like you would think
it would be. And so once that fat renders and that skin is crispy after like three or four minutes, then you'll flip it and then cook it a few more minutes on the other side. And just like checking a steak, you can kind of like fuel the density to know when it's done and then take it off the heat and that's it. And normally I just like salt and pepper, so I don't salt salt the skin side down because it'll draw moisture out from the skin.
I salt it on the meat side after I put it in the pan, and then after I flip it, once it's already crispy, then I'll put salt and pepper on it.
Okay, this kind of gives me an idea of running through the main ideas here. So we talked duck breast, We talked of a roast from a deer, and another big one for Christmas or the holidays would be a turkey. Do you have a turkey breast? A wild turkey breast idea, So.
It's almost the same concept as that the roast. Pan roasting is my absolute favorite way to cook a turkey breast, and that's the same thing. Start on the stovetop, basically searing it, and the only purpose of doing that is to develop the brown flavors, like that golden color flavor, the smell, all the things you associate with something that makes you drool. And then you put it in the oven with the thermometer and it's the exact same concept. You just put it in until it's with the turkey.
You don't do eight to ten minutes. You'll pull it like, I what is it? I think I pull it at like one forty five?
No, what was that?
Right?
I still have mom brain. I'm also not sleeping anymore.
I did not, even though I wasn't the mom and the deal. I remember being around and it's difficult at that phase five months. It's much easier when they're four and six, I can tell you that much, Thank God.
I keep asking people when it gets easier, and they're like, it doesn't.
I'm like, no, no, you've got much better, much better nights of sleep ahead of you. But while you're thinking on that, another question. Fifty one okay, yeah, not one sixty five? Okay, one, it's so one of the things as curious as you were saying that when I I've always thought you have to brine a wild turkey breast to really get it to be moist. In this situation, are you are you doing this roast without a Brian first or do you also brain?
This good question And Brian's definitely make it taste better. But I because of the way that I cook it as being a dry cooking in order to get like a really nice brown exterior, I actually prefer to just salt.
It like like like you would season it before cooking it, you know, maybe like a little extra salt, and then keep it covered in the refrigerator for like a day.
Do you that?
Like a whole day in advance.
And that does like the same thing as brining it, except you don't have to have a big pot of water and salt, you know all that stuff. There's a time and a place where that traditional brine, Like if you're smoking meat, you definitely want to do that. But for like for this recipe, I just basically season it twenty four hours in advance, and you'll you'll notice some difference.
Okay, So I'm going to assault at twenty four hours advance, keep it covered in the fridge for the day. On the day of the holiday, I'm gonna take it out. Do I need Do I put it in cold or let it get to room temperature?
Yeah, room temperature, same thing, Like pull it out thirty forty five minutes before you're gonna cook it. And then yeah, sear it in a pan. And in some recipes, like you can sear it in the pan on one side, flip it and then transfer it to the oven. And that's like a real easy way. I've kind of gotten away from doing that. I'll sear it on both sides over really high heat, put it on like a sheet metal sheet tray, and then put it in the oven.
And then that way, the pan that I just seared the meat in is free to make like cook that to cook either make a pan sauce or like cooking vegetables, which is kind of a really like it's a thing that you don't see a lot of people talk about.
But since I've.
Had a baby and I'm trying to minimize cooking as much as I can, and like amount of pots and pans, it's like one way to like minimize having use an extra pants pan to cook. Like, say, and I have a side sauteed veggie, I'll cook it in the same pan with that turkey, and you end up getting all the flavors from the turkey that actually.
Add a lot of flavors to the vegetable.
I used to reserve that for making pant sauces, but I haven't made a pant sauce in a while, And so it's as simple as just like adding like gosh, say, like with turkey, you could just add like lemon juice or white wine and a button some butter and it's in a little stock and make a sauce if you want it, or just cook your vegetables in that same pan and you'll you'll you'll be able to kind of get the same effect of getting the fond from the bottom of the fan the pan into the veggies.
That sounds great, Uh okay, So turkey, duck venison. Is there any world in which there is a ham replacement? Like could you do a wild yeah hog?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done that a handful of times. We get some smaller hogs. Mostly all most of our hogs that we get come from the family ranch where like, oh they just come and go those treat they're tricky, tricky little it use a cuss word, but I won't. They kind of like when there's a heavy rain, there's like a big ravine that runs through the ranch, and when that rain comes, everything kind of floods up, and these just packs of hogs come out into the fields
and just tear all the pastures up. So there's like certain times of the year that we'll set a trap, and when we set the trap, sometimes we'll get a nice fat sal A lot of times it's just a bunch of smaller pigs, which is really kind of ideal for making ham. So I'll just debut, take a whole hind quarter, debone the femur, and then brine it in
like a traditional brine with salt and sugar. And I don't really get crazy with like, oh, add this spice and onion, because you really don't get that much flavor from a brine. It's it's the salt and the sugar.
Sugar.
Sugar will definitely kind of get in there. But yeah, and then and then trust it, like kind of take some twine and like sort of trust it into like the ham shape. Let it dry out in the refrigerator so that the skin is dry and tacky so that the smoke can actually absorb into it, and then I'll smoke it, put it on the smoker at like two hundred degrees for till it reaches like a well with wild hog tile, it reaches an internal of one to sixty five. To make sure you don't get trygnosis.
Yeah, I'll avoid them. So do do you ever incorporate wild game into a side dish or an appetizer or do you have any ideas for a good wild game appetizer or something like that? If I'm trying to make an entire wild game meal every single course. Uh, I don't know if that might be overkill, but if I were to try to do that, yeah, ideas.
So like I'll take you know, like that roast where I was saying, slice it thin, I'll do that. If you've got like a bunch of people and you want to do like a Christine, you can do some sort of soft cheese on, like a borson type of like garlic cheese spread, and then just a slice of that meat and you can add like bisolmac vinegar, like a
like a glaze to it. But you can make some sort of steak Christini really easily with that, and people will just eat a million of them, and then for something kind of different, it's a little bit more time consuming, but everybody loves it. Our little croquettes, which is basically a fancy term for like a ball of fried cheese and potatoes and meat.
I'm in on that description.
Yeah, it's walk me through that one.
This Yeah, I make this one, Travis says. Travis's side of the family has a Christmas party every year and there's.
Like, gosh, forty people.
The family's gotten huge, and so everybody brings. It's like a potluck style, And so I'll like do this whole thing ahead of time so much that like you can even freeze it and put it in your freezer. That's how far ahead you can do it. And then the day you go in, you can pop it in the oven. But base you've got ground venison or not just ground venison. If you could do like sausage, like breakfast sausage is
really the best. So I mix breakfast sausage leftover mashed potatoes and pimento cheese, and you just like mix it all together, chill it and then roll it into a ball, like a meatball sized ball, and then like dip it in an egg and then roll it in panco and then like do it to all of them and then at that point you can like flash freeze it like that,
but it's not as good. I think what it's best is like go ahead, set the fryer up deep fry all of those things and and they're I mean, they're obviously best right out of the fryer when they're super hot, and like the inside is just soft like cheese and meat. It's like it's like you can eat a thousand of them.
It's so good.
But but like that's like one of those things is like if you're doing it at your own home and you're just like down to just sit there and like fry as you go, that's great. But if you got to take a dish to somebody's house, it doesn't really work. So what I'll do fry all of them and you can keep it in the refrigerator for like the day, and then when you get to that person's house, like throw it in a really hot oven to reheat and
that works. Or if you're like you don't have time to do it right before, but you can do it like a cup few weeks in advance, after you fry it, flash freeze it, and never freezer.
It's like one of those.
It's like a frozen meal, like you just pop it out of the freezer and put it in the oven and eat It's it's pretty pretty simple.
Sounds great this. You know, you brought up something that my wife asked me to ask you about, which was now that you have a child, any thoughts or ideas maybe similar to what you just described there having kind
of freezer type meals ready to go. But has having a child changed how you cook or what you choose to cook, And do you have any ideas for you know, cooking wild game well but not well well done, but doing it in a high quality fashion with a family, right, Because like I've my wife and I have got two young boys, and we want to cook good meals and
we want to have great food. But life's chaotic. Every night you get the kids home from school and you're cleaning and you're fixing stuff up righty for the next day, and you're finishing up work and you're trying to do something around the house, and you're trying to deal with the kids and it has has becoming a mother brought anything new to you as far as ideas for blending cooking good food along with making it somewhat convenient given the chaos of life.
Yes, I still think.
I mean I before I had him, I made a ton of freezer meals, and some of them were hits and some were misses, and some of them, like there's a few that I'm like, I need to just make
a bunch of this and freeze it. What I found that I've done a lot more than I never did before was just meal prep just for like lunches and things, because I'm I'm still breastfeeding and I'm like starving all the time, and i just want something to eat, and I don't I don't want to go out to eat or do any any of that kind of or eat unhealthy. So I do a lot more meal preps. But and I kind of have like a formula for like what I'm making of like a protein of vegetable starch kind
of kind of thing. But I think I'm still at the stage where he's young enough that like he's he's going to bed at like seven thirty to eight, and
I will have already prepped certain parts of dinner. Either, like after work, there's like a period of time like a like a small window where I kind of keep him in the kitchen and I just like prep a few ingredients and then I get them ready for bed and then and after that, that's kind of when I go in the kitchen and I just like sear the meat and like throw.
It all together.
So I think what I've taken away is like I love food so much that I don't really want to compromise that much. Like it's still like the thing that at the end of the day makes me feel like human and who I am, because I feel like you're just at this stage.
I'm still so.
In the trenches, and it's like I think about him all day every day, So at the end of the day, when he's finally asleep, it's sort of like my piece of time to remember like who I am as a human adult and have an adult conversation. So like, I really try to treasure that meal. But what I've found.
Is that it's easier for me not to do it all at once, Like don't try to cook your whole dinner in that one little hour of time that you have.
Find ways to.
Prep little ingreat prep pieces of food, Like if I want quene wall, like, I will find time at a different point in the day or the day before, have keenwall made. Have like your like, have like the starch or whatever. Like I'll boil a whole bunch of baby potatoes and keep it in the fridge, and then later on, like for dinner, all I have to do is just like smash it and throw it in a frying pan.
Until it gets crispy.
So I think that's the biggest takeaway, is like avoiding having to cook everything all at once and finding ways to to do little bits of it throughout the day and or you know, days ahead of time. I don't know if that makes sense.
Yeah, no, it does. It does make sense. And I've found that we have done that of thing like forward planning has helped a lot. Like my my wife's really great, Like she plans the whole week of meals out on Sunday evening and then we'll start making some of these
things days ahead of time. If she's got a window, well maybe Sunday afternoon we're home, then the two of us might work on something that we won't be eating till Wednesday, but we know we have a little bit of time now, but yeah, Monday and Tuesday night we won't be able to or whatever it is. Yeah, that seems to help.
Yeah, I mean I would have never thought I would have been like a meal prepper, but it really is kind of the only way to just because sometimes you just need to eat, and it's great to have good food that's already cooked and when you're so tired.
But yeah, now here's another one. So if kids make cooking difficult. Another thing thing that has maybe become a challenge for some people with eating, you know, high quality foods and meals has been costs, especially you know, in recent years, inflation has definitely been something that everyone's feeling, and I know that's happened on food especially. Two questions you can take either version of this question or both. Do you generally have any any ideas for cooking well
on a budget? That's question number one? Or question number two is if you could pick a couple things to skimp on, so a couple things with the kitchen that you would buy cheap, and a couple of things you would not buy cheap, but absolutely like pay for the higher quality ingredient what would those be so I can I handle thank god, or I can't believe it's not butter, but I should really buy the expensive U truffle or
whatever it is. Are there some things that we can go okay on budget but should spend extra money.
On things you can go budget like ingredient wise, grains, beans, those things you can get a lot of it for really an expensive and go to a place that sells it in bulk, and that's definitely the cheapest route instead of like quenwall I hate so much Quenoall go go buy it from the bulk section and not like little bags every time at the grocery store. You're gonna like save a lot more money doing it that way. But all those kind of grains and things are significantly cheaper.
But as far as like, I mean, I primarily eat wild game, so that automatically cuts the grocery bill in half because I'm not buying meat and it's granted you're paying for it. Yeah, there's other costs associated with it, so it's not I'm not going to say that it is the most economical because it can certainly not be. But in terms of grocery bill at the moment, that's
not really where my money is spent. I pretty much just buy a whole bunch of vegetables, like other than that, you know, you know, stocking up, you know, whenever, like you find all the winter squash, I grab a handful of them because they stay on the counter for a long time without going bad. Because I think that's another big thing associated with cost is food waste. I think people waste a lot of food without even realizing it. So I make sure to empty out my refrigerator at.
The end at the end of the week.
And like it's surprising how often I'll look in there and be like, I have green onions, parsley, what am I gonna make? Like while I'm going to go into the pantry and having a well stocked pantry, like, okay, I have some grains, Okay, I have like I have.
Like I'll keep like jars of.
Roasted bell peppers and things like that, and like you can you can find a way to scrap a meal together at like using whatever you have. And that's probably the biggest takeaway to minimizing food budget is to stop cooking every meal from a recipe that requires you to go to the grocery store to get those ingredients and instead find a way to make a meal using whatever
you have. And I think that's a really hard one because some people are just not wired to think that way or just can't that That can be a real challenge.
But I think it takes a certain amount of confidence in your ability and understanding like what goes together and what wouldn't, And.
Well, I think it takes less.
I feel like most people if you can, I think most people in terms of flavor and what goes together. I think that's the easy part because there are so many restaurants we go out to eat so much these days, Like you can easily off the top of your head go think about like if you were to if you were to go to a Free Words or Chipotle, like you already know what your order is gonna be because you know what ingredients you like to put together. It's
the same concept at home. You can just literally put what you like together and based off like things that you go out to eat all the time already. I think what people have challenges with is like timing it all all right, Like how like how do I put cook all these separate things to make it go together without spending forever in the kitchen, and that's where like some of the food prepping comes in hand.
But there's there's a lot.
Of times where Okay, tonight for dinner, I want something really easy. I have a redfish fillet, I have some spinach, and I have lemon. That's all I have to make a meal. And so but I got well, I have rice in the pantry, I mean, like like the fresh ingredients. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take like a big pan that like a skill it with
a lid. I'm gonna saw tete some onion, garlic, saw it, add the spinach, add rice, and add the same amount of liquid that you would normally cook the rice, and then add the fish on top, cover it with the lid, and cook it the same length of time that you would normally cook the rice. And in one pan you have steamed fish with spinach and rice and it's like a handful of ingredients and it doesn't take long but
pretty good. But that's like one of those scenarios where I only have a few things and I can find something in my pantry to make a meal. But the trouble is that it's hard for somebody to know, like how do you combine all those things into one?
Like what are the steps that you take? I wish I.
Could give you a quick, easy answer without having to give a cooking like lecture on how to do it, but that takes practice.
What's your best resource for someone who wants to better understand how to do that? Is there any resource that gives you a little more of the how? I mean, your book has got a lot of great recipe ideas and instructions for the specifics. But it's like I remember thinking myself, I should read that book salt, acid, fat or whatever.
That's fantastic resource?
Is that because I kind of thought that that maybe gives you the hows of how those four kind of foundational things work. Is that a good resource?
That's a fantastic resource. I mean, so the basis of that book is what makes food taste good. It's salt, fat, acid, and then heat. Like all those elements are what combined
to make a dish really good. And so she breaks down like sort of the science behind how salt works, how fat works, and fat in different forms outside of what you would typically think of instead of just like be fat, Like there's fat and also avocados or whatever, and so she like kind of breaks it out and then she like explains cooking techniques and so basically it just sets you up for a foundation of knowledge so that you can take that information and basically apply it
to whatever you have on hand.
That's a great resource.
All right. That's that's what I thought. That'd be a good one for me. And uh, now you've confirmed it. Okay, rapid fire a couple more thoughts or a couple more ideas I'm looking forward from you. Number One, soups or stews for the how like the winter time period, I guess more generally the next few months. Chili is the
old standby. We all do our venice and chili. Is there any other soup or stew or potted kind of meal like that that you would throw into our idea list for the next few months other than chili?
Yeah, you know, I just did want.
Well, I'm gonna give you two. I hate to give recipe keep saying my cookbook, but whatever. So there's one that's just venison and red pepper soup. Really easy. I came up with that one. I came up with that during COVID because it was the same concept of like I only have a few things and I gotta cook out of my pantry, like and so that's a good one because it's ground ground meat, which everyone's always trying to figure out what to do with ground meat besides spaghetti or tacos or burgers.
Or telling it.
But it's a it's a really good one, so simple it's to go to. Yet another one I just did was stew me. I actually just posted a recipe today is with mustard.
So like you.
Carrots, venison, a bunch of dijon mustard, onion, and then you like let that slow cook on the stovetop and then you know, separate pan. I put mushrooms on a sheet tray and roasted it and you add it at the very end. You can add it all in one pot at the beginning, but the mushrooms tend to get kind of rungey, yeah, rubbery when you cook it for I mean, it's fine, it's not a big deal. But the texture and the flavor of it roasted separately and
added at the very end is really good. And then I take like some good whole grain mustard and then dollop it on top at the end that's like a really good one that's like very different than most stews you would typically make.
Sounds very good pot roast. That's another one that I feel like everyone's making the winter. At least I grew up on a good pot roast. I know you've got one in the book. Any thoughts on making a good pot roast during the winter.
Oh gosh, Use a low temperature in the oven, use the right cut. I feel like people the biggest mistake is using something that's like got no silver skin, because I think silver skin is like the devil. But the best cut for me is the neck, like it's deep. The neck makes the best pot roast.
Or the shank? Which is it?
Is it really pot roast if you're using a shank? I'm not sure, But it's all the same concept of braising a tough cut of meat with this handful of vegetables and a broth.
It's all the same concept.
But yeah, I think that's like the best tip I can give is to use something with all that silver skin on it, to let it break down and in a tenderize and it's you'll get something better than like just a plain hunk of meat with absolutely no silver skin it. It tends to magically get dry even though it's sitting in a pot of liquid.
Right, I've had that happen. Yeah. So so by using the silver sk I think I have been guilty of removing the silver skin from something before pot roast. Yeah, so by keeping all of it on on the right kind of cut, is that? Is that what gets you kind of almost like a silky texture. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's yeah, save a lot of time, don't waste, don't sit there.
And trim it all off.
Yeah jeez.
Yeah.
The longer I'm doing this, like, the more I realize, like I've wasted so much time doing unnecessary cleaning and trimming and all sorts of stuff, It's like, yeah, keep it simple, just throw it in there.
Yeah, all right, final thoughts here, give me a pitch. Pitch me and my listeners on the idea of conscious eating eating consciously, which is kind of the theme of your book, which I think a lot of us naturally find value in. But maybe help us understand really quick what you are referred to when you talk about eating consciously and why that's or how that's something we could all incorporate into our lives a little more.
So I think about that in basically, what are the what's the story behind the food on your plate?
And the more you.
Really peel back the layers of that onion, the more you start to begin to see and understand conservation, sustainability and how precious our resources are, and so conscious eating for me is just taking the time to think about all the ingredients on my plate, where they came from, what it took to get there, whether you're eating wild game or if you're eating beef chicken, report learning about
those farming practices. And you know, an interesting thing about my book is I did include some recipes for beef chicken and port because even though I went a long time not buying meat from a grocery store, the more I began to hunt and like sort of become connected to that animal and the habitat and learn about conservation, the more I understood how important it was to support farmers who share the same common goal as I do
in bettering our environment and our habitat. I think we tend to like look at these and two separate like lights like hunting and farming, but there should be like a more symbiotic relationship because agriculture plays such a huge role in habitat and environment, and so to me, conscious eating is sort of like looking under the microscope of all the things that had to happen to get this food.
On your plate.
And if you hunt, then you understand where you hunted, you know, if you hunted on a farmer's land, like what he did, the farming practices, like there's just a lot of layers that go into it, and so like you can scratch the surface or you could dig really deep. But the more you do that, the more connected you become to your food, and the more meaningful your meals will become.
Well, I can certainly speak to how that has come to fruish and just as a hunter, I can tell you like every time when I eat something that I harvested, killed on my own, I don't think there's any time that I don't like say out loud to the kids, like, Hey, this is that Sam and the daddy caught Alaska, Or Hey, this is that buck that dad got last year in Wisconsin, or hey, this is that deer that you and me got together Everett and you just it becomes like a
story around the meal that makes the meal richer, and I swear it tastes different because of.
My husband always said his redfish tastes better because it was caught.
With a fly rod.
I believe it. Well. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us about all this, Daniel. I appreciate you putting together this book. Lots and lots and lots of ideas. We've already tried a number of these here at the Kenyan household, most recently, I think the pumpkin the Venison pumpkin Student. Yeah, yes, we didn't talk about but that was a really good one too. Oh good, which speaking of silky, I would describe that one. It's kind of a silky flavor to that one. Yeah, But
real quick. For folks that want to pick this up as a last minute Christmas gift or a belated Christmas gift or a New Year's Day gift to themselves for a better you're cooking, where's the best place for them to buy it? Where do you want them to buy it.
From the meat eater dot com. We have it for sale on our website, and then, oh gosh, you know, I say wherever books are sold. Someone once got very offended that I said that because they thought it was a lazy response, but it is true. You can pick it up at Barnes and Noble. My local bookstore has it. I don't know you know which small independent stores have carry it or don't carry it. And then of course there's always Amazon if you're very last minute shopper.
Perfect, All right, Danielle, we'll congrats on the book. Thank you amazing work, and thanks for taking time to do this.
Yeah, thanks thanks for having me on.
All right, folks, Hope you guys enjoyed that one. Be sure to check out the Wild and Whole Cookbook over on the Meat Eater website or Amazon or your local bookseller, whatever it might be. Enjoy the upcoming days and celebrations with your friends, with your family. Hope you get to get outside, maybe fill another deer tag or two if you are definitely, please tag a dough we need to manage those dope populations as we will discuss in future episodes,
and have a great time out there. I appreciate you all being with me this year, being with me this fall. I hope it's been a fruitful and enjoyable hunting season, and I hope you get a little time to sit back, relax, reflect on the past few months, and hopefully a lot of great memories. So thanks again for being here, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.