Wild Foods

Knowing how to properly sauté fish is something that every cook needs to have in their arsenal. It’s a quick way to cook practically any fish, and with practice, you can perfect the technique so that you get a beautiful golden crust and juicy fillet. This is a really simple recipe that allows fresh...

This recipe is the perfect thing to make after a spring outing in the forests of the Northeast. Wait for large, mature ramp leaves to make this, ensuring that you only snip off one leaf per plant when harvesting so that the plant can rebound and grow again next year. To learn more about harvesting...

Processing wild game as a profession is gritty, dirty work. In a matter of months, hundreds of animals go from the field to the butcher's cooler, leaving hunters wary of the outcome and processors burned out from the grind. Here are a few tips to maximize the amount of meat you pick up from your...

One of the things I love most about recipe development is that you can start a recipe off with one idea and end up with something very different. This soup, for example, began as a riff on Olive Garden’s chicken gnocchi soup, but somewhere along the way, nostalgia hit. The aromatic smell of leeks...

Wild turkey meat can be tough, especially the drumsticks. It’s why many hunters don’t even bother to keep their legs, which is a damn shame because they’re delicious. The best way to cook the drumstick also happens to be the easiest—pressure cook until the meat falls apart! If you’ve ever made soup...

Nothing beats the excitement of finding a huge, bright orange flush of chicken of the woods mushroom (Laetiporus) growing on a stump or log in the forest. For this recipe, you’ll want to use only the freshest of specimens—no pale, dry mushrooms here. If you cut the mushroom off of where it’s growing...

A bucket of stripped salmon carcasses, leaning against the stern of the boat, obstructed my daily deck-scrubbing duties. As my skipper counted the post-trip tip money, he gave the bucket a casual nod and said, "Feel free to take those collars home for dinner if you want." "Uh... what's a collar?" I...

This is the kind of special dish you only get to make once or twice a year since it requires so many hearts to make, and each bird you bring down only has one. It’s a good idea to bug your friends, family, and hunting buddies for their hearts and organs if they’re not going to use them—that way, you...

Confit is a classic French preparation of cooking meat in its own fat to create a succulent fall-apart dish. It's often used with duck legs and duck fat, but bear meat and grease also work exceptionally well. To learn more about the technique, check out this article. These crispy potato baskets...

I recently teamed up with fourth-generation chef, Linda Huang of Hummingbird Kitchen to learn some basics of Chinese cooking. She taught me how to make traditional stir fry using mule deer along with this venison dumpling recipe. Making dumplings might seem daunting, but they come together pretty...

Ryan Callaghan hits the kitchen with Linda Huang.

For some hunters, adding domestic fat to venison is taboo. For others, it’s a necessity. One thing is for sure (and no more evident than here at MeatEater): at-home butchers have a wide range of preferences regarding fat content and there are no set rules. Here are some of our thoughts on adding fat...