Cooking Wild Game

Venison is versatile. Anything you can do with beef can be done with venison. I craved a burger last week and didn’t want just a cheese burger, it had to be something really good. It took a few hours to think of something different while the burger from my deer thawed.

Cheddar cheese is a nice stuffing for the center if you have good, flavorful cheddar. If it’s not flavorful it’s going to be lost to the venison. Onions and bell peppers were too close to meatloaf. I moved jars and bags in the cupboard around. hmm… The Mason jars of mushrooms, Jalapenos and sun dried tomatoes gave me an idea. We wild harvested Lobster and Chanterelle mushrooms earlier this year. The Jalapenos and tomatoes are from our garden. They would work. I soaked them in warm water to rehydrate. It took less than an hour. I drained them well, patted them dry, and chopped them together. I added pepper but no salt, and powdered garlic.

I didn’t need to add egg or bread crumbs as a binder. The butcher added beef fat for moisture when he ground the meat. Wild game can dry out easily while cooking if you’re not very careful, and really, a little fat in food makes it taste better.
The cheese melts as the burger cooks. Flip venison burgers three or four times to keep the cheese from melting through. It probably will leak a bit before the burger is cooked (unless you like it rare) but that’s alright. The only thing that would have made the burgers better is homemade hamburger rolls, and I didn’t make any. It was so good I ate mine without a roll.