00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan. In this is episode number three, and today in the show, I'm joined by Danielle Pruittt, creator of Wild and Whole, to discuss techniques, concepts, and recipes for cooking better wild game and taking your venison to the next level. Okay, hello, Hi, welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. It's me and my buddy Mr Dan Johnson right now at the moment, and we're gonna do a little pregame show. But I want to tell you what's coming up after pre um show, which is going to be a chat with my friend Danielle Pruittt. She is the founder of Wild and Hole, which was a wild game cooking website and is now one of our leading wild foods contributors over at Meat Eater. She's a A. I mean, I have to describe it a wild game cooking phenom. Maybe a venison versace A. I don't know, Danny getting any other really interesting titles for someone who's really good at cooking up really great food from deer and other critters. Um, no, man, I don't think of Dan Johnson time out, time out. Well, before we started record, you know, recording, you said we're gonna be talking about venison dishes or wild game dishes, and then you mentioned my Instagram stories that I've been putting out recently that have all the simple wild game recipe ease, And they're simple for a reason. I have a busy schedule and I have three kids, so the meals have to be easy. They have to be quick. So it's not like I can sit here and and uh cook up a backstrap in a cast iron grille, and you know, take all the proper steps and spend thirty minutes on a meal or excuse me, like an hour on a meal when I really should just be spending you know what I mean. Well, surely that makes sense in your thought processes, rational, and your explanation is is totally called for. But if I were to take any into any of that into account, how much fun would it be if I couldn't give you ship? Where would we be on this podcast? I'm just thinking I'm gonna ignore all the common sense you just said there and I'm the bus. All right, well here, now it's time for me to make a public announcement of all the listeners of this podcast. Um, it's awesome. It's awesome for a while, but do me a favor and please stop sending me photoshopped pictures of Mark's face on erotic books. I saw the one that you got. Have you gotten more than just that one? Yeah, dude, I've gotten like, uh maybe seven. Oh wow, that's amazing. I mean, if I if I set you everyone, Uh, some of them are some of them are not good. It's just like you know, simple cut and drop. But uh, some are some are good. But if you could just, you know, send them to Mark instead of sending them to me. I don't know why your wife might be asking questions pretty soon, Hey Dan, did you do this yourself? For? Uh? Why why are these pasted on the door of the bathroom? Right? Jesus Mark, I'm supposed to be the dirty one. For those that didn't listen to the last episode with you and Me, there's been a little bit of to make it a long story short, for some reason, when people search for my book That Wild Country, another book is popping up called Country Boys, which is an erotic novel of some kind, and so you know, I make sure you type in the title that wild country properly, or or else you might end up in a very different place. Um. That's that's pretty funny stuff though. Um. You're right though, I shouldn't give you crap about your cooking, because it's good that you're doing that, and you're making wild game for the family, which is no easy task with all those kids run around. But here is what I do want to give you some more crap about. Oh here we go. It is December, late December now almost, and you have a family of five. Yeah, so there's five of us total, yea and a dog that I hope dies soon. But that's that's beside the point, right, that's a whole other conversation. Um, I haven't heard of you killing any more. Dear. You got one deer in the freezer as far as I remember. How do you feed a family of five with one deer? And what are you gonna do about that? Well, Luckily this year because I helped my buddy Dan pack out a three and a half mile pack out of a mule deer, I got some of that as well. I forgot about the Remember I have a basically an Ostrich in the freezer as well, and uh, I have some Walleye in the freezer from this summer and some bluegill as well. So my freezer is actually looking really good with wild game. Good, you're not going to starve them. I'm not gonna starve Okay, then I feel better about things. I was sitting here and I'm I'm about to start my dough acquisition project that I'm always focused on here the last couple of weeks of this season, and I was thinking, do I need to get a doll for Dan and ship it across the country to make sure his family is gonna eat? Okay, So that's good. So no more plans to hunt them? Well, man, I want to so bad. I want too late season. Uh you know, I think some of the corns still standing around some of the farms that I hunt. But man, I just time and and this working for yourself has really kind of changed the game, because you know, vacation, if you take vacation at a real job, the someone else's doing your work, you decide not to work. When you're self employed, the works still there. You just have to do it. Double time when you get back, you know what I mean, Yes, definitely, definitely do um, yeah, I hear you. Man, time is the toughest thing to always come by. It's something I can relate to. Um. I am still hunting though, Yeah, yeah, I saw that. You got to talk to me about this, uh, this buck train because every time I follow along, right, it seems like you're getting close but not close enough. Yeah, I mean, it's the It's kind of the same story that we have every year on the podcast on this farm because it's in and and anyone who listened kind of knows the base six set up the basic challenge here. But the biggest thing is that a lot of the bucks that I'm hunting spend a lot of time on neighboring properties, and the majority of the farm that I can hunt is mostly field and a little bit of field edge timber, and then a couple of little spots with a little bit more um. But it just lends itself. It seems like every year the best buck around is always in this neighboring spot, and then I'm just trying to catch him the time or two that he slips up and comes across the line to my side, Um, and so that was, you know, the buck I've been hunting this year. That year I called Tran. During the rut, he popped out a few times, and there is a little betting year, a couple of little betting years on the farm. I ken hunt um that he cruises in and around during the rep So I came close, but with the boat couldn't get him within like fifty yards. Um. That was the closest I got during bow season. Now, late season opens up, and I have been trying to get a crack at him throughout the late season. We've got a gun season opened up November fifty eighth, and it basically runs all the way until December because we've got the general firearm. This is the last two weeks in November, and then there's five days off I think, and then muzzleloader opens up for three weeks. So in the middle of that muzzloader season now and so I've been trying to get out there a few times. When you know, when conditions are good, when you think that this deer might get on his feet a little bit earlier and move to one of these food sources. UM. So I don't know, I've taken maybe five six five stabs maybe during the late season at him somewhere in that ballpark. And I have not seen him on any of the knights i've hunted. But I saw him a couple of nights that I was scouting, because again, I've got a nice vantage point where I can look into. Basically, there's some gaps and a creek that runs through one of these betting areas, and so I can be far away but see what's going on back in there. And a couple of times I've seen him there um and seen what he was doing, and he was when he's in this spot. Oftentimes it seems like he head south towards a corn field that's on the farm I can hunt. So I saw him do this a couple couple few nights ago, and so decide, all right, I've got three days now that I have available with evenings to hunt. I'm gonna hit it hard before Christmas, and two nights didn't see much, saw tons of dos, but didn't see him. Last night, I went out and sat as close as I can get to that betting area, but on my side by the corn and there's a cold front that's passing through that was gonna hit overnight. Long story short, here just dear just started pouring out and they all came through. I've kind of figured out with the most likely couple of spots where dear enter my farm. Now, just over the years have seen there's a little low spot that seven times out of ten, if a box is going to come through in that coming from that direction, he'll probably come out of these two low spots. So I set up within shooting range of one of these low spots, and um, I am out there with a firearm. I'm not I'm not too picky to not use what's legal, So I'm out there doing that. So I'm within shooting range with a gun and deer after deer after deer, and then here starts coming the bucks. And as soon as bucks starts showing up, I knew that we had a chance because it seems a lot of nights you'll see nothing but does You'll see a lot of deer, but nothing but doze. But if you're in the spot and the young bucks start showing up, it just seems on this farm at this time of year, there you know, like a lot of laces and deer are they're kind of grouped back up again, there's groups of bucks together, and if one set of bucks is doing something, that usually means that the whole parade of deer will end up doing the same. So here comes a spike, Here comes a spike. He comes a nice two year old, here comes a less nice two year old. Um, and they're all coming out, passing right through where I can get a shot. And I was you know that feeling when things just look like it's gonna happen, Like everything is lining up the way you wanted to the way you hoped it would. Um, the deer piling out, nothing's been spooked, nothing's winding you. Conditions are great. Um, you're approaching prime time. And I just had like I had my had my gun on my lap, I was ready to go. I just said, this is, this is, this is a good night. And I kept telling myself, don't screw it up, Like, don't turn your head too fast and spook one of the fifteen does that are over to my left? You know, don't shift and move at the wrong time when something's looking at you. I just kept on trying to tell myself, do not screw this up, because this is one of those few chances that you might have. I could just kind of feel it and lo and behold. Maybe ten minutes before the end of shooting light, I look up and across the way here comes that son of a buck. Um, and dude, he is a really nice dear for around Tran or the bonus buck. No, this is Tran, this is Yep. So just a big framed four year old eight pointer. Um, I've seen him a ton now, I've you know, followed him. Me. It's it's it's just like, holy, feel kind of this one of these bucks. I see a lot, don't get a whole lot of opportunities, but I feel like I'm in the game. And that's how it's been with him. And he finally shows up heading right towards me. Um, if I was an offender, I could have just dusted him easy peasy on the neighbor's farm, but of course not going to do that. So I had to watch him standing there beautiful broadside as he kind of crosses clearing this little kind of brushy clearing, heading towards where I could where I could shoot. And in short, he slowly, you know as they do, slowly, taking his time walking on stop, put his head up, look to his left, look to his right, you know, just as mature bucks do, especially this time of year when they're not all rut crazy, just being careful monitoring his surroundings, making sure there was nothing amiss. And he was the last deer that came through, you know, all these other deer he come through, he followed up as the lasting line, and he comes through passes through the brushy fence role that I'm in. And by the time he came out the other side into an air where I could shoot, it was really close to than shooting light. I think I had like three minutes something like that, and I'm trying to find him my scope, And to make a long story short, he started walking directly away. As soon as he walked out into the open, and then as soon as he started cutting out, moving broad side, excuse me, moving broadside, he'd be behind a branch, and then as soon as he came into another opening, he'd be walking straight away. And this happened for I don't know a minute or two minutes where my scopes on him, but I just can't get a clear shot. And then it's like I'm right there on his shoulder, just about to take the shot. I just need him to step out from behind this one branch and then he turns away and I came. I came just a hair's with the way from squeezing the trigger on him one and then he turned so just couldn't get a clean, good oftin shot on him. That, um, you know, that was that was ethical and student light ran out and he was out of range and it was it was slipping through my fingers. So it was. It was an incredible encounter. I was pumped. It was awesome to see him because that's probably the the longest I've got to look at him and kind of be in a moment like that with him, um, other than I guess one time in the rut. So it was. It was fun, It was cool, but I left that I got out of the stand that night shook up. Really, you know, adrenaline pumping part of me was stoked that I had that, that he came out that you know what I hoped and thought and planned four came together sort of. Then the other part of me was, you know, was that it is he gonna do it again? To it I'm I'm running that time. Um, that was about as good of a chance as you could ask for and I couldn't make it happen. So that's that's that's what happened. Yeah, how much time he got left? Now? Well, I got a couple more nights of muzzleod season, so I will take the gun out a couple more times, and then after that's bow season for oh. I don't know about a week in four days of bow season after that, But at that point it's I really have to shoot some doughs out here, so as as I do often when I've got a buck him, after those that last week or two weeks, I need to do some dough management. So once I start doing that, though, it's going to kind of blow the area up, and it's unlikely that, you know, I'll get a daylight and counter with him. So I'll be out there hunting. I'll be trying to shoot some doughs. Maybe I'll get lucky and he'll stumble up into into bow range and I'll get a shot. But I'm kind of looking like the next few nights with the gun are my best chance. And if that doesn't happen, he'll probably be uh, he'll probably around it next year. Yeah man, uh, yeah, I wish I could get out and do some more hunting, but it's just as looking like if I do, it's gonna be a one and done type a hunt. And I don't even know if it's worth it this time of year to go out. I mean it's it's always anything can happen, right, but I just want to. I got so much business stuff to take care of and stuff at home to take care of, and uh, it's the holidays and then getting ready for you know, trade show season and a t A and and all that stuff is just kind of uh, there are some priorities and unfortunately, I hate to say it, man, like late season isn't one of them. Right now. Well, you know, as Jay Z once said, and I think he was probably speaking about you, I'm not a businessman. I'm a business man. And that's Dan Johnson. That's right, that's right, that's right. So well he also he's also he's also said a lot of other things too that might relate to me, but might not. I was gonna say it might be applicable. I got ninety nine problems. Maybe that's right, that's right. Um, So I am going to head out after training again tonight, and there's like a fifteen degree temperature drop overnight and fresh snow on the ground. So I'm gonna go back to the same spot because I didn't spook him. He just walked off the distance and I was able to get a ride out of there, so there was no me on foot spooking monitor. So I feel like there's a chance, but you know, how likely is it he'll do the same thing twice in a row. Who knows what I need from you before we shut this down? Is your best possible piece of advice for me because I'm down to my final shot or two probably at the buck up and after for all the whole season, and I need the greatest piece of Dan Johnson wisdom for clutch in. Uh, you know, in the crunch time period of the season. Yeah, I could sit here. I could sit here and just bullshit you. But you know, from listening to you talk about the properties that you hunt, you don't you're at the mercy of the deer like on some of the properties that I hunt. You know, having these bigger acreages, I can be aggressive, I can move around a lot, I can go deeper into the timber, I can go to a completely different part of the farm. Uh, where Tran lives and how he's accessing your property. It's I mean, it just sounds like the opportunity to be aggressive and to go outside of the box on on this buck are limited. So what I would say is just, uh, if it's gonna be cold, bring a thermiss of coffee into the timber or into the stand with you. There we go. So then about two hours in the set, I have to race down to the bottom of the tree and take a crap dude, sky dump dude. If there's anything I've taught you, it's the sky dunk. Uh. You've never tried to pull that one off. Man, it just seems above my pay grade. But you never know, maybe today tonight, well good luck man, um. But we you know, strategy aside and training aside and a late season aside. I do have to ask you, because this podcast is going to be about wild game. Yes, Uh, let's let's do like a top three or a top five favorite venison or favorite wild game recipes. Yes, and it's a good idea. All right, Um, I'll start. I guess, go ahead, um, simple one of my classic favorites and it's the it's like my comfort food when I you know, Opening Night of hunting season. I'm always hoping that we can put this on the menu because I love coming into the house with a fire going on in the living room and this on the stove, which is just a good, big old pot of venison chili. Um, my wife makes a mean pot of venison chili. So that's gonna be right at the top of my list. How about what's one for you? Well, I tell you what. When it comes to wild game, Um, it's similar, but my mom she cans dear meat, right, so we h she cans it, we cube it up, we can it, and then we add it to crock pot recipes like um, like what you would see for beef stew, potatoes, carrots, onions, peppers, Um, maybe some corn. Um, throw that some beef broth in there, and then throw in the cube venison. That is my late season. I've been sitting out in the cold all day, come home warm the spirit type of of meal. Yeah, that sounds pretty good right now, it's like fifteen degrees out. I could I could go for some of that tonight. Um. Okay, here's another one for me. Um. This is something in this episode should be dropping right around the holidays, either, like just after Christmas or or soon right in the ballpark. So you might be able to use these ideas and what Danielle is gonna share with you for a little Christmas party or New Year's Eve party or something, and this is a great option for that. Um. There's a couple different recipes out there that I've looked at, but basically a heart. Grill up a heart, and I would I would cut up a heart, trim it all up, marinate it for about a day, um, and I like some oil, some vinegar, maybe some soy sauce or something in there. There's a specific recipe. I can't think of all these things, but I'll try to share a link to it. Um. But marinade this heart. When you get it out the next day, throw it on the grill hot for four minutes on one side, another four minutes on the other side, just so you get that medium rare cooking in there. And then you're gonna slice it up thin and at the same time, while or before that will happen, you will grill up some peppers and onions, some bell peppers, and then toast some toastinise some little pieces of French bread or something. So you've got little slices, and then what you do is you take a little slice of that toasted French bread, you take a slice of that grilled bell pepper, and you take a thin slice of that grilled heart. Put it all together, take a bite of that and it is absolutely delectable. Um. I've given this to a whole lot of people that would think that heart would be disgusting, and they are converted right there and then, UM, so highly recommend trying hard. There's a lot of good recipes out there, but try it. Yeah. I saved the heart of my buck this year, and I will be eating it probably sooner rather than later. So I'm gonna have to give that one a try. Um. I'm gonna step away from deer for a second because there's there's so many ground recipes with ground meat, you know, Like I just had spaghetti, uh last night with mule deer meat. The night before we had beef burgers with white tail meat. So you know, there's there's a whole bunch of things that you can just replace your ground beef with around venison, right, we have that all the time. I talked about how easy it is. It has to be easy. You know for me a lot of the times for just time saving, but stepping away, dude, I am a taco fan, taco fanatics street tacos um and you know, you could have tacos with any variety of ground wild game, but my favorite is Walleye Street tacos with a Tripolte mayonnaise and like this uh uh coleslaw that's in it with some peppers and you put that troup that Tripolte mayonnaise in there. Oh my god, Mark, I'm getting physically aroused right now just just talking about it. Man. I love me a good fish taco and I need to do That's one thing I don't get enough of my freezers lacking with fish. Um. I do a decent bit of catching relief fly fishing in the summer, but I don't do enough fresh water you know, get in the walle i perch, pike something like that that I could fry up and eat throughout the year. So I need to fill that part of my year out because I could go for some fish tacos right about now. Yeah, absolutely, Um, okay, last one for me, and I'm gonna go with you know, it's it's simple, and it is again another one of these appetizers that might be good for the holidays, and it's something that people do all the time, but it's just so good that I keep doing it. Just your simple venison popper, um marinade, you know, cut up some backstrap or um, you know, a good cut of meat, marinade it for you know, I can do soy soy sauce and Worcestershire or something like that, and the next day cut them up into little cubes, throw a scoop of cream cheese, a holla peino pepper, and then wrap it in a slice of bacon. Throw that in the grill and you put to play to those out at any get together party New Year's Eve, shin dig and you will have happy, happy folks. Um. You cannot go wrong with that. And you can do that with all sorts of things too. I know people do that with goose, people do that with uh duck, people do it with I've even seen people do it with wild turkey. So that kind of popper wild game dish is It's easy and it's damn good. Yeah, that is a staple at our wild annual wild game feed that we have with the family. It's uh some kind of wild game, you know, enter wild game meat whatever whatever it is, into that hallepeenio popper. Man. I've had it. I've had it with rabbit before, I've had it with turtle before, and it's just it's good no matter what. So um my last one. And it's kind of back to that crock pop meal, uh back. I haven't had this for a long time, but I find myself always kind of longing for it. And that is a pheasant, a whole pheasant, right, you clean it, the whole pheasant. The whole pheasant goes in with potatoes and a can of crema mushroom soup and or you know, whatever the recipe calls for, and you put that all in there together and just let it cook, and you know, six hours later comes at that pheasant is delicious and the uh, the potatoes and the crema mushroom souper obviously delicious. And then serve it with a good glass of wine. Man, good old roasted pheasant. That sounds pretty nice. We do not have many pheasants around here, so that's not gonna be on my holiday menu, but I wish it would be. Yeah, you need to one question that I want you to pass along to her. Um, And this is always something that I really wish I could uh like talk more about. No One, no one really that I've that I found to do this or hasn't covered topics like this, But that is pairing alcohol pairing with wild game, whether it's wine or a beer or something, right, what goes good? You know what kind of beer goes good with this, or what kind of wine goes good with moose or wally or whatever. Because you know, I drink wine, my wife drinks wine. UM, and I feel that if I can pair a wild game recipe with uh the best wine for the taste buds, I think I could get my wife into it even more, all right, I am going to ask her about that for sure. Um. I've always found it a good dry red wine goes well with you know, some kind of uh steak type of thing, like if you're gonna roast a backstrap, grilled backstrap, something like that, a very meat centried, red meat focused meal, maybe like a berry sauce of some kind, you throw a dry right alongside of that, and that's pretty good. But I am very much an amateur, so I will ask the pro what she says, and uh, I'll get back to you. Sounds good man, All right, man, Well, thank you, Dan four takes some time for a little pregame show, end of the year wrap up. Uh, let's talk again in and for everybody else, you just heard me and Dan give you are very uh Lehman's recipe idea bit. But we're about to get some really next level advice and suggestions from Danielle when it comes to cooking up some delicious wild game this year. Hopefully you've got a whole bunch of the freezer. So without further Ado, let's take a very quick break and then we'll get Danielle Pruett on the line. All right, joining me now is Danielle PRUITTT Welcome to the show. Daniel Hi, Mark, how are you? I am good, Thank you so much for joining me. Absolutely happy to be here. I gotta say, we really screwed up on this one already right out the gate, because you and me were just in Bosing Tanna together last week, and somehow we never had the idea that we should do a podcast while we were there together. So I gotta take blame for that. I'm sorry, I'm an idiot. We had a lot going on. Yeah we did, but but I'm glad at least we're doing it now a week later. It's the kind of time of year that I think is perfect to talk about the topics that we're going to dive into, because hopefully everyone listening right now is wrapping up a successful hunting season. Hopefully you've got a freezer full of wild game a couple of year, maybe some ducks or a pheasant, who knows what, um. And it's the holidays, so you've got friends and family in town and you want to cook up some good food and really show off that wild game. Right. So what I'm hoping we can do here today, Danielle, is is kind of mind you for your expertise on how to help us up our wild game cooking, take it to that next level. Make sure we, you know, show the brightest possible representation of wild game to all of our friends and family over these next couple of weeks. So I'm putting a lot of pressure on your daniel I hope you're okay with that. I am fine with that. I could talk all day about this subject, so I'm happy to be here. Good. So would that be the case, then answer me this. How did you become you? How? How did you get to this point where you are a wild game cooking aficionado, where you are the face and voice of wild and Hole and you are are leading foods contributor over at Meat Eater. How'd that happen? You know, that's a funny question. I remember one one winner I had aged some meat and I was in there and in the kitchen with the saw cutting up shanks ross goo goo, and it was just like I had this overwhelming feeling of like how did I just get here? Like this was so funny. Um, I didn't grow up hunting. My dad was a hunter. My dad's from South Dakota, grew up on a farm hunting his entire life, and he moved to Texas where he met my mother and I had a family stayed in Texas and he attempted to take me hunting a few times, and growing up, we we'd take every Thanksgiving we would go to South Dakota to visit family, and he which doesn't hunt, and I would hang out in the kitchen with Grandma frying up preasent for Thanksgiving, like it was just totally normal for me to do. And then you know, we we raised like strange animals, like we had an emu farm at one point, and as a kid, I mean as a kid, I thought it was also very normal. Everybody had an euni farm and so like we had emu burger um, we'd have Emi eggs for breakfast. And so at a very early age, I think this sea was planted that a variety of animals or food. You know today you asked kids about food and they're like, well, chicken, pork, beef, most and so I think at that age that seed was really planted of anything to be food and nothing was like strange to me. But I didn't I didn't really enjoy hunting. I just I didn't get the point of it. I don't know why. I just there's something about it didn't really synk with me. Um, And I think part of that hunting in Texas was sitting in a cold deer stand over feeder just wondering what in the world we're doing. I just there. It just wasn't fun for me. And none of the women I knew growing up hunted, like, not a single one. I really didn't know a single female hunter until I was older, and so women didn't hunt and that was just kind of the norm, and so I never really took it upon myself to feel like this is something that I need to learn how to do or want to do. It just UM wasn't really a part of my lifestyle anyway. But too fast forward, I met my husband, who is an avid hunter and angler, and I graduated with a degree in apparel design and manufacturing. So I made patterns sewing the whole works and I hated After I graduated, I hated it, and UM didn't really want to go down that path, and so I decided that I enjoyed cooking and I wanted to learn how to cook, and I started working UM and some cooking classes, and at the same time, my husband, we were still dating at the time, he was bringing home game and I thought that was like the coolest thing ever, because every time I went back to work, we would all talk about what we cooked over the week end, and I always had something way cooler than everybody else. They could buy it from the store, and yeah, this is awesome I have like I had Mallard, I had venison. I just thought it was so cool, and so that's really where I started cooking. It is this exclusivity factor was immediately very attractive to me Um. And then we got transferred to North Dakota in like or twelve maybe, and that was absolutely life changing. North Dakota has been a very very special place for me Um. I think it's the first time that I got to experience a place that felt truly untouched and wild. I mean, I guess I can't I can't entirely say it's untouched because there's a lot of oil going on out there. But but there was something about that feeling of knowing that the land I was handing on, in the land that I was was hiking through was wasn't owned, you know, like we say publicly and all the time like we are the owners of that, we take care of that. But really like there was this feeling of like, this is I am in an animals, Like this is the wildlife that I am in, and I'm just a visitor. I felt like really grateful and appreciative and sort of just completely changed the trajectory of my life and my priorities. And I really fell in love with hunting up there. We we have some bird dogs and we did a lot of grouse hunting, sharp tail grouse hunting, peasants, partridge, the whole works a lot of waterfowl hunting, um. And so that's really kind of where I got my start learning how to hunt. I just started tagging along and I I really had no idea how much I would really fall in love with it. Um. So that's kind of how it all started. And I was cooking one day, I said, all right, I don't want to buy meat anymore from the gross store. I have pretty strong opinions about mass produced or factory farmed meat, and it was sort of an ethical decision for me too to want to know where my food comes from. It's really really really important for me. And we had so much access to land, and we could pretty much hunt year round between like early Canada season all the way through your typical hunting season, and then winter there's a lull. We hunted rabbits and then the next you know, spring snow gooses here. And it's just like I felt like we were hunting year round. Um. So we lived off the land and I was only cooking wild game, and I did it for a few years. When my friends and family are like, you know, you should start a blog or share these reciptions like no, that's stupid. Who cares about that anyway? So I did it UM mostly as a creative outlet, just because I thought it was fun. I never really expected anything to happen with it. And then, um, things just took off. People found out about it. I got invited to work some the events. UM just sort of appeared in a few small publications and here I am working for Meat Eater. It's it's been a wild ride. Yeah, yeah, it has a wild and whole ride. You might say, yeah, it's horrible joke. I'm a dad now, Danielle, So my humor has just got really weird. Please forgive me. So Okay, So you had this journey you you got and you fell in love with hunting. You applied that to your passion for cooking, and you started this website and you've really fine tuned the skills that you've become a great communicator when it comes to talking about cooking and working with wild game. Um. So now you have this platform that you you work for meat eat you're one of our leading contributors in that space. UM. Let's say that Steve and Yanni and Cal and myself, we all get sick one day, and we've got a live podcast coming up, and it's in front of a fifty thousand person football stadium that we're going to do the live podcasting. But we're all sick and it's just you. You're the only one who is healthy and able to be at the show. So you're sitting on stage in front of fifty people, and you get the opportunity to just present one key piece of information or you get to just make one rant. There's one thing you can get across to this stadium full of fifty people. What would that one thing be that you really want to make sure that fifty folks know when they walk out of there on that day about cooking wild Game or working with wild Gamer or something related to this issue. What's the one most important thing you want to leave them with. Um, you know, part of me wants to give like a really really smart cooking technique to help people at home enjoy their meat. But if like I had to say that this is my lasting impression, If if there was one thing that mattered the most, I think it's probably to find value and meet in all forms, Because I mean I can give you a million recipes and I can tell you how to make it fancy, or tell you how to make a good sloppy joe. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you're eating it and that you are enjoying it. And I think too often we have these we have these myths or these stories passed down from people who are are fathers or friends or you know, the I'll tell you the best way to cook a jack rabbit. First your pot and he eats, like this long story. And then you throw a rock in the pot and you eat the rock or the shoe or the wood. Like I've heard this recipe a million times when it comes to jack rabbits or snow goose or whatever, um and that those are really not true. And I want people to challenge those those things that they've been told about what's good and what's not good. And I think, I think learning to appreciate what we have is the most important thing, because when you start to become grateful or you appreciative of our meat, then then that value translates into wanting to have a better stewardship of the land, you know. I think about the good all days of hunting, or or the ability that having access to meet at the grocery store is so so easy, we quickly just forget how valuable it is. And it's not until I hear a story of somebody in Michigan or Wisconsin. Then who who's dear? The only dear they shoot that year has c w D and they won't and they can't eat it. You know, those are the kinds of things that I hear more and more Now, Um, that just really break my heart a little bit. But if like I had a lasting impression, it would probably be that we should never take what the ability to hunt and eat our meat for granted. So so what does that look? Yeah? So what does that look like an action? Like, how do we how do we put our our value of meat or appreciation of meat or all meat into action? When you say that, do you mean that we should be utilizing more cuts or more pieces of an animal or does that look like, um, spending more time and giving it more tension versus just throwing some burger on the grill and cooking all of our game up as burgers. What does that look like, um? In practice? Or what's an example? Know, I there's there's a lot of like theories out there that like you got to cook things the right way. Otherwise you're just respecting it. And I think as long as you're enjoying it, I really don't care how to cook it. If you're not enjoying it, then I'd love to tell you how to make it better. That's my job. But um, I think keeping an open mind to utilize you know, like, I don't know how many people have thrown away a dear heart because you're just like, ah, grow grow else. I don't. I don't even want to try it. And it's probably like my favorite part of a deer. Um. Just things like that. I'm not saying that. You know, I've tried liver, and I'll be honest, I don't really love liver. I don't, and so I don't. I don't want to say that you need to eat every single scrappy bit, but just keep an open mind and at least try instead of just you know, doing the usual. Yeah, so how did does someone Let's hop into a little bit of a tactical piece here, now, heart's your favorite piece of the deer. I In the introduction to this podcast, me and my buddy Dan, we're talking through some of our favorite uh simple recipes for Christmas. Or for the holidays. And one of the things I mentioned was grilling up heart and then slicing it thin and throwing it on a little piece of toasted French bread with grilled peppers and onions. Um, that was my introduction, little appetizer, repetite recipe for heart. That that changed my whole mind on eating heart, and now I'm a big fan of it too. What for you is a great way to get into eating heart because it's, like you said, a lot of people are a little bit weirded out by that. How do you help get someone into it? Um? Well, there's two ways of thinking of this. The first is to remember that it's not the guts. It's actually a working muscle, same way you know the hind leg muscle is. You know, it's it's a working muscle. So instead of being like, oh my god, I'm eating something that's like I don't know, I guess people like get really disturbed by the heart because there's you know, the valves and the a ord and all these things pumping into it, and you're like, you know, what is this? It's part of the guts. So the first thing I say is remember that it's a muscle. And the second thing is taking something that looks weird and turning it into something that you're familiar with meat. So once you start to break that down, and the best the way that I do that is sort of cutting off the valves and the fat at the top and then slicing down. There's like there's a there's two main ventricles that divide the two, and there's a stepting that runs down the middle, and so I slice down that to open it up, and basically at the end I come up with two flat pieces of meat. And once you see that broken down compared to the original, your mind and your perception completely changes of what that is. It's now steak, not an organ um. So I think just being able to to just like take that step and knowing that and seeing that is is a really big hurdle. It's the same hurdle that people have a hard time with going like well, I like steak, and I like to see it at the grocery store beautifully package. But if you were to like show me that cow and house butcher, like, well, that's too much that it's that process of going from animal to me and for me when I have to seek apart. I think it's like going from an organ to a steak, and once you see that, it's um way easier to kind of get that past the mental mental challenges there. But um yeah, once once you're at that steak level, I've literally treat it like it is a steak and either grill it or stare in a cast iron, splice it thin and eat it. It's pretty darn good. I I agree with you, and you're so right and that once you break it down and clean it up and it looks just I mean, it does just look like a steak essentially at that point, and when you cook it up, I mean it is just a really tasty, very flavorful piece of meat. Um Man, I've got something I'm going to be cooking up here around the holidays myself, and I'm looking forward to it even more now after chatting about this. What are some of the other I think I think at least one of the things that I struggled with when I learned how to butcher my own, dear, I just I had to teach myself as an adult. I bought a book and I watched some videos and I just figured it out myself. We didn't do that when I was growing up as a kid. Um, So I always had a little bit of apprehension that I was going to screw it up some way, or that I was doing it the wrong way. And how I still might be doing it the wrong I'm just kind of doing it the way I do it. Um. But when you're breaking down an animal into into the pieces and parts that you want to later use to cook, how do you or what how do you like to do that? Like? What are the pieces that you like to leave together and put into your freezer? Are you cutting up individual steaks or are you leaving muscle groups intact and then defrosting the whole muscle group and then breaking it down uh later? How do you? How do you manage that? Because because a lot of people probably just do all right, all this stuff is gonna go into the ground pile and have a bunch of burger and then I'm going to take the backstraps out and you know a few big cuts for steaks off of the backham and maybe that's it? Is there more to it? What other things should people be thinking about? Well, the first thing is like I change what I do all the time, and it's all based upon how I want to cook it. And I think I've just cooked everything so much over the years that I kind of know how I like it. Um, And sometimes I want to try new things. But the best thing is that you don't have to decide everything all at once. You know, I'll freeze whole shoulders and if I want to grind it up later on, I can. But I also really love low cooking the shoulder whole as it is and and not having them really mess with it very much. Um. And then it makes the processing job, you know, the immediate job, way faster and easier when you don't feel the burden to have to do everything and decide everything all at once. I don't ever leave the hind quarters intact. I always break those down, mostly because I think I think you can get away on a really small deer a smoking a whole hind quarter, but once you get to a bigger deer, there are just certain muscles that are very tender and certain muscles that are very and I don't want to have I just don't like eating it all in one whole thing and having tough having the tinder parts overcooked, or the tough parts too too tough to eat, you know what I mean. I just prefer to separate them out and treat each cut the way that they should be, so I do break down my hind quarters. Plus I like to make stock with the bones, so I take all the bones out and separate that out for stock. UM. But but I UM, sometimes I'll cut the top round in distakes. Usually I leave it whole and just decide that how I want to cut it later, because I never know if someone wants to come over for dinner and how many people there are. UM, So proportionate sizing is um It just depends. I never really know what's going to happen six months down the road where I want to decide how how I cook it. One thing that I do that I don't think very many other people do. When I'm thinking about round meat, I basically take all the scrap pit bits that I plane to grind, and I cube them up and I bagged them in two or four pound bags and I freeze them just like that, because whenever I grind meat, I want them to be halfway frozen, like still kind of that crunchy texture, and it takes a long time to sort of like shift that in and out of the freezer when you're processing a whole deer, and I just think it's it's really time consuming to grind everything all at once. Plus after you grind it, bag it, frees it, and defrost it, sometimes the texture can get really, really mushy. And so I've gotten to this annoying habit where I take one package of cubed meat halfway defrost it, like I'll put it in the refrigerator the night before, and the next morning it's so a little crunchy, have to rousted, and then I grind it immediately, and I have like several pounds of ground meat to eat throughout that week, and it's the texture of eating it freshly ground. It's just so good. That's the only way I do it now. Plus it just saves me that much time from having to growing everything all at once at the beginning. Do you do you grind in any kind of supplemental fat with your ground venison or is it just straight meat? I can I switch it out. If I'm gonna make sausage, I will definitely add pork fat back. But there's a lot of times I don't add any fat at all because I know that when I go to cook it, I can add fat. So if I grind, say I have two or three pounds of just venison, nothing no fat added. When I go to cook it, I'm usually going to use it in like say tacos. Well, I can add any kind of fat to brown that meat in, so I don't have to use fat back. I can use um gee like clarified butter, or any kind of oil ducks at or um I make these. My favorite thing to do with ground meat are these little tide lettuce cups, and then I brown it in coconut oil. So I mean you're still I'm still adding fat at some point in the cooking process, but it just saves me from having to like just always have torque fat pack added. No. I was just gonna say, you brought up this um specific example of when you're browning meat for tacos or for whatever, and I remember you writing an article about this earlier this year about the proper way to brown ground meat. Um, tell us, tell us what that is, because I've just been always tossing the pan and chopping it ut kind of mashing it up and letting the cook down. Um, it sounds like I might be doing it wrong. Yeah, you know, it's it's funny. I I think I might go down in history, or not down in history. I'm just going to be known as the girls who taught people have brown meat. I don't know why. So, like I'll give the first, um, first little science geeky thing about what happens when you brown something. It's called the mired reaction. When heat and carbohydrates and protein are are heated together, a reaction occurs called the miyred effect, and it's sort of a caramelization effect. And when that happens, you immediately smell those aromas and those sugars and the meat. It's it's the smell of barbecue, chocolate, coffee roasting, you know, the steaks hearing in a pan, the things that like when you smell that, you you get hungry. Um. And it's interesting I read one time that in evolution that that smell is what taught humans when food was safe to eat. So like the reason why like we react to this is part of that process of knowing like when is raw meat safety eat? Where you smell that reaction and you get hungry um. Anyway, So so what that does is it really really deepens the flavor of meat when you start to have that reaction. But in order for that to happen, things need to be relatively dry. So if you have a package of ground meat and you just PLoP it out of its tube into a pan, there's a lot of moisture trapped in that bag because whenever you freeze meat, the natural juices and the water inside the meat crystallized and they punctured the meat andy release more likely. So you've ever wondered why there's always more liquid in the bag after defrosted, that's why. But when you add that to the pan, all of that liquid ends up steaming the meat instead of browning the meat. So that's why if you add all that liquid and you just plump it right in the pan, you get kind of this grayish, she wet ground meat. You know what I'm talking about. It sounds like my typical Monday, Wednesday and Friday night. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. So you read a recipe and it's like step one, brown the meat. Well, browning the meat actually means browning the meat, and you don't really see recipes going into great detail. You just brown the meat right, Well, I started to. If you've ever gone out to eat and you're like, why is this so much better, it's really not that they're adding special spices. It's just that they're they're taking the time to develop more intense flavors at the beginning. So what I do is I take meat, and which is why I like doing everything freshly ground, is because the texture is better. And also you have way less moisture in the meat. But regardless, especially if it's taken from directly out of a bag from the freezer that's been defrosted, I'll pat it dry with paper towels first to soak up all that liquid because you really need you need that heat to come in contact with the meat and caramelize and brown without steaming it um. And it's the same trick whenever you're working with birds and you're trying to get crispy skin on a bird and you're like, why is it taste rubbery? It's because it's not dry, there's too much moisture. So what I do is dry Papa meat dry, get the pan hot, add a little bit of oil to just lightly coat the bottom, and once the pan is about medium high heat, not quite smoking, but pretty hot. Then I will add the meat in kind of a single layer and almost like you're making a little burger pat giant burger patty. You can create a crust on the bottom side, and then you can flip it to the other side and then start breaking it all up and browning the whole thing altogether. And you will notice a dramatically more intense flavor from that meat, um if you brown it that way, as opposed to just sort of steaming it. So, so let me make sure I've got this right. So I've I've got a ball of ground meat, let's say a bowl full of ground meat I kind of packed into almost a big burger patty, and make sure it's padded dry. I put it into my pan and I almost cook it like a burger or even a steak. The whole layer down, Let it brown and caramelize, and I flip it over. Let that side brown and caramelize. And then when you say break it up, though, how much am I breaking it up? Am I just breaking up into chunks? Or do I do at this point what I took quickly do WHI would just start kind of chopping it up with a wooden spoon or something until it's to whatever consistency I want for my you know, for my tacos or for whatever, um how much breaking it apart is okay. At that point it's up to you, you know, Like if I'm making chili, like having real big meaty chunks is nice. But if you if you want to eat in a little taco, then breaking it up into finer bits, uh, you'll get way more. Do get like these tiny little crunch bits that almost taste burnt um, not burnt, but they're just really crispy um, and that adds another dimension of flavor and also texture. But it's really a personal preference, I think, depending on what you're cooking, okay, cool. I was, oh, trying to be a helpful husband one day, I don't know when this was, maybe this summer, and we were making I can't remember. We're making something with ground meat in it, and my wife if it started and she had put ground meat into the cast iron pan and was starting to brown it, and she was off doing something else and I came walking over and saw that it was going and I thought to myself, oh, she just laid this layer of ground meat out. I'll start breaking it up. And she saw it when I did, It's like, dang it, Mark, you just ruined what I was reading what Danielle wrote, and I'm trying to properly ground the meat and now you're screwing it up too soon. So I learned my lesson, but it's really interesting to hear this different approach to it. Um. Yeah, I mean it's not like a right or wrong way necessarily, it's just a way to develop more flavors. I think, what are some other ways to develop a richer or more intense flavor from the beginning with venison? You mentioned that that technique establishing those flavors earlier is really what separates, you know, what we typically do at home versus what these professional chefs do at a restaurant. Are there any other techniques or things that jump out to you is as examples of that. Um. Another thing that I talk a lot about is seasoning meat in advance. So just like you and Brian a turkey before Thanksgiving, I do something very similar with all of my wild game. So if you think about what when you eat meat, what is it that makes it juicy? There's two things. It's the actual water present in meat that contributes to the juiciness factor, but there's also fat. So if you're eating a steak from a cow or a chicken or whatever you're eating that's domestic, you're also as you're chewing, we're getting fat into that meat as you buy and your and you perceive that as being really juicy. Wild game really doesn't have any fat. It lacks that, So it's already kind of got that kind of I don't want to say it's a strike against it is. There's a lot of great things about it not being so fatty, but but you're already like, you don't have that fat to make up for for mistakes when you're over cooking. So another thing about fat is that it acts as a barrier to heat transfer. So if you're cooking a steak that has a lot of fat, it's going to take a lot longer to cook because the fat is sort of blocking the heat to the meat. And then when you're cooking something like a venison, the first thing you've noticed when you start cooking wild game is, oh my god, it cooks way faster than domestic food. And that's because it's lacking that fat. So when you accidentally overcook something one you're losing moisture inside the meat, and two, you know there's no fat to make up for that, and so you just automatically translate that as being like kind of a dry piece of meat. So what I do as sort of a safeguard for over cooking or an insurance, if you will, is seasoning and salting meat prior to cooking. Just like I would salt the turkey before Thanksgiving to keep it juicy. I season meat a day or two days in advance to cooking, and I don't always brind it like a traditional brine. I usually will just add salt and pepper, just like if you were going to season your steak right before cooking that little layer crusts of salt and pepper or whatever spices you're using. I will do that a couple of days in advance and just let it hang out in the fridge for until I'm ready to cook it. So like I'll defrost meat three or four days before I plan to cook it, and then open up the package, season it, and two days later, but like, oh yeah, let's eat this, and you would you would be so surprised at how much juici or that meat is just because you've salted ahead of time. No, I've heard that before, and I've never done it that far ahead a day or two. I'm going to try to do that now, but I've at least done it, you know, hours ahead of time. And let us sit. Um. But I've I've read somewhere I can't rememb where I heard this. I read somewhere that the timing of adding salt to ground meat it should be different. Um, That some kind of reaction happens if you salt ground meat and it changes the texture or the consistency. Is that true? Am I remembering that? Right? Yeah? So it depends on like when you're cooking, um. So the immediate effect of salt is it draws moisture out. So if you salt something five ten minutes later, you go back and look and you see little beads and moisture at the top of the meat. Right, you know, So like when you're cooking ground meat, um, and you're salting it before you cook it, think about you know what I just said, as far as patting it dry and doing all that, and ground meat already had such a um, the texture has already been broken down, like mechanically broken down. So you don't really need to do anything to tender ization. It's it's already tender because ground up. Um. And I don't salt until right before I'm eating or right before I'm done browning that meat because I don't want to pull moisture out and steam it. That's the reason why I don't salt ground meat beforehand. Um. And that's that's different than like making a sausage or something, because you're making an emulsion that needs liquid stuffed inside of a a case thing. So that's that's completely different. Um. But yeah, so when you immediately season meat with salt, the first thing that happens is liquid will pull to the surface and and that sort of inhibits that browning reaction that you want. But if you let it set much much longer and sort of an ostomosis effect how happens where where the moisture is pulled out and then it's reabsorbed back into the muscle cells and it almost acts as like a brine. So to salt interacts with the moisture that's immediately pulled out and then it's reabsorbed the same way you would dump an entire piece of meat inside of a liquid brine. So that's kind of how the brining reaction works, and it basically just helps to mitigate moisture loss whenever you're cooking. So the end result is you feel like you're eating a juicier piece of meat. Interesting, I don't I don't know if there's any other reason other than not wanting to draw a lot of liquids out to salting ground meat. So so what about Here's another thing that as I'm thinking about some some I don't know if it's technique, but just the house of when you're cooking something. Another thing I've talked or not talked about that I've heard about is the idea of wanting to get your venis into room temperature before cooking it, grilling it, roasting it, whatever. Um am, I read on that and why if that's the case. Yeah, So if you're cooking a steak and you bring it straight out of the fridge, that refrigerator is what the thirty six degrees or something like that. Um. Yeah, So the temperature that meat is very cold and you're introducing it to really hot pants. So the first thing that happens is moisture is released. You know, the differential temperature automatically you've got steam coming off, um, and that comes in really big play when you're cooking fish. Like if you've ever tried to grill a whole fish and you're like, why is the skin sticking to everything, it's because it's because the fish is probably way too cold and the pants too hot, and you've got a lot of steam making it stick instead of getting a crust um that will lift freely from the pant um. So that's one reason. Um. Some people just happen to really like steak that's um, what do they call it? Pittsburgh style, sort of black on the outside and cold in the middle. Some people love that. I do not, But that's kind of If you're going for that, then cooking it while it's cold is fine because you're going to get a hard sear on the outside, but the inside is still much colder. And I know people who do that just because they have a habit of over cooking their steaks, and they're like, well, just cook it while it's still a little colder, so that I don't risk over cooking it. Um. But I think when you're doing things like anything for fish, birds, especially they it's so much better if you start at room temperature. You get a much more even cooking, evenly cooked all the way through versus very cold in the middle and charred me outside. Okay, So so then how about how about you walk us through I don't know, Let's let's take our most standard delicacy within the deer hunting world, which is a backstrap. Let's say we've got a backstrap and we want to prepare it for I don't know, New Year's Eve night maybe, um, and we're gonna do just a basic grilled or cast iron pan type backstrap. What's the right way to do that? The best way to do that? I actually wrote an article on this or a meat dot com or how to, Yeah, how to I don't remember if it's called how to cook a steak or how to spear stake or something something like that. Um. Yeah, so I start off with the same sort of tip of My favorite thing to do is if you only want to add salt and pepper, which is a great thing to do. Only having salt and pepper, you don't really need a whole lot side note real quick, Um, A lot of people I think that salt is a labor It's like, I mean, not consciously think that that they're like, I need to add salt and pepper. Pepper is actually adding a flavor to the meat versus salt is actually a flavor enhancer. So whatever you add salt to will intensify the flavor of that object or of that food. So adding salt to meat can actually just make it taste more meaty anyway. So if you're just gonna season your steaks with salt and pepper, I would do that, even if you can only do it a few hours ahead of time. A day ahead of time is really really good. I do that first, let him hang out in the fridge, and then I pull them about after thirty minutes to an hour. An hour is good time to pull it before cooking um. And then my favorite way is to either indoors on a cast iron or on a grill in a cast iron um with either like a charcoal grill with a couple of wood chips added just to get a little bit of smoky flavors going. But I like to see my meat directly on a cast iron um for a couple of reasons. The first is that you really get all the surface to be in contact with the pan, and you get a really nice crust on the outside, So all that salt and pepper, it just makes a really nice crust when you're stearing it that way. The second is that you're actually cooking it in fat. So if you've added a little oil to the pan um, you're adding a little bit of fat to the meat. And I really do think that's necessary. I don't think you need to cover in bacon or any of those things. Adding just a tiny bit of fat can go a long way. And I do that in the form of oil, and then I'll flip it. And then at the very end of cooking, you can add a pat of butter or clarified butter and just sort of spoon it over the meat to finish. And it's probably one of the best ways, in my opinion, to cook a steak um. I I prefer doing it in a cast iron, but I mean grill is nice too. I think it's a personal thing. You mentioned oil, using a little bit of oil to get some fat on their meat to cook it in. What's the best kind of oil to cook with for wild game or venison in particular, For whatever reason, we always have olive oil. Is that a good choice or is there something else we should be using? You know, I love olive oil, but I really do think that because it has a medium smoke point, that once it hits hits that smoke point and gets hot, it starts to break itself down, and I think that the flavor changes. And I also think that olive oil carries a strong flavor, and sometimes it's the flavor that I want that I really don't like cooking with olive oil. I prefer to buy a really good quality bow and save it for like a vinegarette or something like that, whenever I'm going to eat it raw, So that's or if if I'm saut hanging at a lower heat, some sort of vegetable, I'll do olive oil. Um. But it's really due to the smoke point that I don't like cooking with olive oil, at least not staring at high heat. I prefer to use something that's neutral flavored, meaning you don't taste a strong taste out of the oil, which is usually canola, grape seed, and avocado are my three go to oils. They're neutral flavored and they have a high smoke point, meaning you can get it RiPP and hot without it um starting to smoke, and then that also introduces a lot of carcinogens. Whenever it hits that smoking point, it starts to break down the oils. Um. It does. It can change the flavor, but mostly it's health wines, it's um, it's carcinogenic. So choosing your higher smoke point oil is going to be better for you. And also I just think that it's flavor list you don't You get the mouth steel of oil and sat on the meat without tasting anything added to it. Very interesting. It does make sense. You're blowing my mind. I'm gonna have to go swap out our oil choices. That's good though. I'm glad I can stop making these mistakes and getting the smoky kitchen going, which is never good. Um. What about another thing? I know that another important uh step after or after you know, searing and cooking your backstrap or most other types of meat, um, is to let it rest. It's one of those things that's preached all the time. I don't know if it's practiced as often as it's preached though by your average person out there. I always find myself like, do I really want to less let it rest so long? I don't want to be cold. Blah blah blah blah blah. Um. Talk to me about resting meat and why that's so important. So, after meat is cooked, if you were to immediately cut into it, all the moisture starts to run out of the meat, and when you let it rest, it cools back down and it gets reabsorbed back into the meat. So as you're as you're eating, that juice goes in your mouth on the meat and not all of the plate. That's that's the reason why you rest your meat. And I am not great at doing it either. I do rest it for a few minutes. I definitely do that, but to say I do ten minutes every time would be a lie. I'm just very impatient. Um, I'll let it rest if I have company over and I've got a pan sauce, so that way ten minutes go by. I got a hot sauce to add with it so it keeps it warm on the plate, Then that's then I'm okay with that. But if it's just a night at home with my husband and I and we're just like eating, I'm I'll live with sauce on my plate a little bit. Talk to me about some pan sauces because one of the things that I'm constantly trying to do is is think of a way to kind of spice up your typical backstrap or steak. You know, I've I've got to cut like that out for it's my wife and I and and you know, sometimes it's great just salt and pepper, like you said, but sometimes you want a little change of pace. Do you have any simple ways to do that that you like? Yep. So one more reason why I love cooking my steak in a cast iron is that after you take this steak out to rest, you can make a really good pan sauce in that pan because you have what Steve I think refers to as cracklings, these little fits and pieces at the bottom of a pan. In the culinary world that's referred to as fond and so all of that adds a lot of flavor to a pan sauce. So the first thing you would do is either add some sort of aromatic to the pan to sautake. So it's usually shallots minced or finely chopped, or garlic mints, and the pans usually already really hot and there may be some oiler. You can add a little oil or butter or ghe g is clarified butter for anybody, if I keep saying that term over and over. Ghee is clarified butter, which is where the milk fats have been removed from butter, which gives butter a very high smoke point, so you get the taste of butter without any milk in it. So it's more of like an oily butter. Anyway. UM, I cook with it quite a bit. Um. So you can add a little bit like a couple of tea spoons or cablespoon of either butter, ghee or or oil to the pan and then add those aromatics, which is usually either from being shallots or garlic. Ste it just until it's soft, and then you g glaze it. The glazing is adding a liquid that pulls all of the falm up from the bottom of the pants, and the glazing it could be using. Um. Kognak is my absolute favorite. Kognak or whiskey or burned bourbon. I cook with them all of the time. Um. You can use red wine and actually, yesterday I made a recipe for the Meat Eater website. It's um, it's it's sort of a Christmas recipe with a pan sauce and I use a little bit of red wine vinegar, and then you add some sort of stock, so either venison stock, UM, mushroom stock. I am. I'll explain that a little bit, add some sort of liquid to that, and then boil it, let it reduced down. UM, and I usually add one more pod of butter to just sort of stick in and add like a silkiness to the sauce, and then once it starts to cool down, it'll sticken up. If you've used a really high quality stock that is really gelatinous, you'll have a really rich body to the sauce. And it's it's really that easy. You're done. Um. Those are my three ingredients to pant sauce and aromatic a liquid and butter. Sounds pretty good. Now you there's a handful of things in there that I want to unpackage a little further. First off, you talked about stock, UM, so of course sometimes people you could just use a store bought substitute for that, but of course the best possible option is probably making your own. Um is that pretty easy to do? I think people are usually intimidating by the idea of making something like that, but it's not too bad, right. No, it's time consuming, I will say that, but there's there should be nothing intimidating about it. I haven't. I have an article on the Meat Eater about how to make stock, and I start by roasting my bones with a little bit of tomato paste brushed across the top, and that really deepened riches and caramelizes those flavors. In other words, that mired reaction that I was mentioning earlier. You start to develop that and it also develops a brown color. So then when you add water to the pan and a bunch of veggies, usually a mix of onion, carrot, celery, some herbs, peppercorns. Um. That's really just the basic stock that I use, and fill it with water and then simmer it all down. You're going to get a richer, deeper, darker stock. Um. If you roast the bones ahead of time. Um. And then everyone asked what's that ratio like? And I don't have a solid answer, because you want the highest ratio of bones to water. So if you've only got a couple of bones in there and you've got a huge pot of water, well, that ratio is pretty small. The amount of bones you have in there, so you're gonna have to reduce that for a very very very long time. Now, if you take the same amount of bones and you cut it up really small and just cover it up with enough water, then you've got a whole different ratio with a lot of bones compared to water, and you probably won't have to reduce that liquid down as as much as you would had you just started with a few big bones and a huge tall pot of water. So that ratio really just depends on the amount of buons you have and how like small you can cut it up and to shove it into a pot and then I fill the top with water and let it just gently simmer. I don't like to let it boil, just gently simmer, because I want a pretty clean, cloud free broth. And you can scum earth scumb, skim the scum off the top as it boils up from the bones um, and then strain it out at the very end um and that's how you get That's how you make stop sucks. And the best stocks are usually the ones where you have included a lot of connective tissue and tendons and like the bits, the gnarly bits, those should all be left in there because those connective tissues contain collagen, and whenever collagen is broken down, you turn it into gelatine, and that's what makes that's what's available in your body. That's how your body can utilize collagen is by turning it into gelatine. And gelatine whenever it's cold, will give you that little jelly like feel. So if you've ever seen somebody take stock home made from the fridge and open it up and it's guy like kind of a jelly like shake to it, that means it's really really rich and collagen and that's what wants it's heated back up. That's what gives sauces and stews like that really rich and velveting out feel it. I like to say, it has really good body to it. Uh this kiss um, and that's when you get really the best pan sauces is if you can use a homemade stock that's really been reduced down and it is really rich in flavor. But you can only get make so much stock out of one year. So if you shoot one year year and you make you know, like I don't know, like four different quarts four to six quarts of stock you can go through it pretty quick, especially if you're gonna use it for a stew. And so sometimes I find myself having to buy store bought stock. And my trick like, if you have like the little box of stock, and your recipe calls for half a cup of stock, and you make your sauce without half a cup of store bought stock, and you're like, you know, it's just kind of watery. It's just not really, it's just not a great recipe. It's really bland. Well, it's usually because the stock you're using isn't um it isn't very rich. So my trick is that it's a recipe calls for half a cup, that's the amount of of liquid that you should be using. So I will take a pot fill it with at least double that amount. So I'll start with one cup and I will reduce it down until I get half a cup or however much that recipe calls for. Taste it. If it's still kind of watering, I'll add more from I'll add more stock and reduce it down again until I can taste it and I'm like, that's a really rich stock. And then I add that to the pan and that's sort of my cheeter way to get a a good tasting pan sauce using store bought stock. Interesting, Yeah, it does, it does. That's a really good idea because because lots of times we're stuck using some of that store bought stock. And I thought the same thing though, So that's a cool way to uh to rich in it up a little bit. Yeah, sometimes my recipes call actually tell you to do that. That's in my fears, like what if somebody uses a homemade stock that's really good and then they're like, wow, it's way too rich and right, So you've always it's always it's all relative. You know. You you talked about when making that pan sauce, Um about adding I think you said, I read a red wine vinegar or something like that. Um, And it just it just popped a little light bulb in my head. That just made me, uh, curious about your thoughts on another one of these foundational elements of cooking. Um. There's this book that came out on a show I don't know a few years ago called Salt, Acid, Heat, Fat or something like that. UM, And I always there you go, thank you. And so I've been curious by that and read some of it and and talk. We've talked about salt, We've talked about the reaction that meat has to salt. We've talked about some things related heat. But what about acid? What is acid? How is that a part of our cooking process? How can we use acid in in some of our wild game preparation? How does that fit into this all? You know, that's a really good question that I don't think people give acidity enough credit in cooking. And when I discovered that food needed acidity, Like when I learned to taste and pick up the notes and the flavors and try to really balance something, I noticed how important a city was. There's so many times where you home cooks, especially are making stepping. They're like, man, it's just missing something, so you add more salt, and the next year you're like it's still missing something, but it's salty, so whatever. Um, that's It's a really common thing. I used to do it all the time. And then I learned how I learned the different flavors and for the different five different tastes and how they balance with each other. I realized that most of the time, so you have um salt, salty tap east, so those are your things like parmesan and anchovy. Well, get into ummmy salt, it's anything salty. Um you have sour, that's anything acidic, your lemon juice, your vinegar's stuff like that. You have bitter taste, so you're a stringent kind of hardy greens, um, bustless sprouts, things like that. And then you have sweet, which is obviously anything sweet tasting. And then umami is the fifth taste, and that is that is what sort of coats your mouth and makes you crave and want more. It's it's described as being intense and um rich in flavor. A lot of times it's described as being meaty mushrooms, miso if you're familiar with eating aniso, um that has a lot of umami flavors. Parmesan actually a zoo mommy ancho, aren't you mommy? Um? So, those are the five taste and we're kind of constantly as a as someone who develops recipes. When I'm going through how I want to develop something or create a dish, I'm constantly thinking and tasting and checking those balances along with other things like texture and color. But those are the things that I'm going through And as I started to learn how to cook. I noticed that things that I thought needed more salt really just needed a little bit more acidity. So when you think about making a pan sauce, usually you're deglazing with two types of liquids. A lot of times it will call for either red wine or some sort of liquor, and that's because they do each add their own character and your their own flavors to it, but they but they're also slightly acidic, and that acidity helps to balance whatever rich butter or cream you've added to the sauce. And so without having any of that, and then you kind of are left with this like overly rich flavor. Um. And so having just that hit of acidity really goes a long way. UM. And most recipes, I think call for some sort of liquor or something alcoholic, And I think that's because he's alcohol can can provide a lot of really unique and interesting flavors, and I think that's why many people love cooking with it. But I have friends who don't drink, and they want to be like, Okay, I don't drink, and I don't want to go to the store to buy this bottle just to use a table spoon or two for this recipe. How else can I do this? So yesterday I developed a new recipe using dried mushrooms. And I took the dried mushrooms and I took part of them and ground ground them up into a powder mixed with salt and pepper. And that was a crust a rub for them. For the steak um, for it was an analope back strap sticks and then the rest of the much rooms, I did that little trick I was telling you about where I reduced uh store bought stock to make it richer, but I added some more dried mushrooms to it. So I reconstituted the mushrooms and in the stock, so I got a richer stock, and then I um have mushrooms out of it. So I used the mushrooms as an aromatic with garlic and and then I added just a hit of that red wine vinegar just just enough to give a little bit of acidity to that rich mushroom broth and then the rich butter um. And I think acidity for some reason just pairs and very very very well with wild game. I love acidic flavors with with the witness and and so um that was the sauce that I created. It's going to be for my Christmas dinner that I'm um doing with my family this year. But um, yeah, what man, there's there's I'm I'm fascinated and jealous by the ability to actually develop a recipe to know how to combine these different flavors and processes to make a dish. Um. That that's really really interesting to me. And it's way above my pay grade. So I'm never gonna get there but them. But most people, right, I mean most people, your average guy or girl out there who wants to cook. Um, They're gonna follow a recipe for something. Um, but there's these other techniques that we can use to execute on that recipe, probably as best as possible. Are there any things along those? Are there any other techniques or cooking styles that wild game at home, wild game chefs cooks folks like me, um should know more about or should better understand. Um, I'm thinking things you know, like like stuff like braising is something you hear about a lot. But maybe folks don't really understand what's going on there, or any other technique or style of cooking that you think's worth touching on. Yeah, I let's talk about tough cuts for a second. So I get asked, you know, like so many questions about cooking with tough cuts meat and like something that's like tough to eat, you like the shanks or the brisket off of deer, stuff like that. I get asked a lot of questions about that, and learning how to cook something low and slow. It's probably one of the most important things you can do when it comes to wild game, because there are so many cuts that are just so so tough, like a turkey drum to stick stuff like that. But you're just like, how do you make this edible? Um? And when when you're either I use the term technique, my own coined term low and slow, because that encompasses a lot of cooking techniques like brazing or even smoking, crock potting, all of those things. You're doing the same thing. You're cooking at a low temperature for a very long period of time. And the reason for that is that you need you need to cook for a long time because you need to break down connective tissues. And the problem is where things start to really get tricky for people is you need that temperature to be at least a hundred and sixty degrees a minimum to actively turn collagen into gelatine. So to actually break down that tissue into something um edible, you do need heat to do that. However, when you're heating meat, if you think about what a muscle looks like, you've up these long fibers that are sort of coiled around each other, and there's like thousands of thousands of these strands that make up a muscle or a piece of meat, and whenever you're cooking, introducing heat does start to twist. So like if you've got a imagine a wet towel in your hand and you're twisting that towel and you're ringing out all of those liquids, that's exactly what happens when meat is heated. So when you cook something for a very long time at say too high of the temperature, that exact reaction is happening. So maybe you have something in a crack pot or you're braising something and you're like, well, I cooked it for hours and hours and hours, it all shredded apart, and it's tender, but it's still really dry. Have you ever had that happened like a pot roast? No, matter what you're like, it's sitting in a pile of liquid, but it's still dry. Like what gives if you Usually, Yeah, it's usually a function of the temperature being a little too high. So that's where you play this balancing act of you need enough temperature to actively break down meat, but not so much that you're drying it out. And so that's why I use the term low and slows, because you need a pretty low temperature. But the lower you go, the longer it takes, like much much longer. Um. So if you're cooking something at two d and fifty degrees or two you're you better plan to be in that kitchen all pay long or or letting it go all day long, you know, um, And a lot of people just don't want to invest that kind of time unless you've got it in a crop pot or something where you can walk away and leave it, which I think is why some people like suvied a lot is because it's like a crock pot, but you can get a precise temperature and walk away from it, um leave it at home without anything happening, where leaving you can't. You don't want to leave an oven on for fourteen hours you know, it's a really long time. I mean, you can if you're going to be there, but that's that's a long oven cook time. Um. And so that's that's sort of one of the challenges that I think people have to face with wild game cooking is that it does take much much longer to tenderize than something that you would buy from a grocery store. Because the animals were eating, actually moved their bodies and they survived, and who knows what they go through on a day to day basis throughout their life. Um, that will tossen their meat and make it more difficult to tenderize. But son, what's the right way to y? So then what's the right what's the solution, um, other than just making sure and may be the solution is simply keep the temperature low on like let's keep let's let's look at a very simple thing that a lot of people would do that I do. At times, you've got a roast, you throw it in the crock pot, you surround the roast with some kind of stock or broth, you throw some vegetables in there, and you turn on the crack pot and leave it and you come back. And sometimes that can turn out pretty decent. Or like what happened to me the other day is I did that that basic thing and came back and for some reason that roast was really dry. How what's what's the pro tip to adjusting that simple plan to make it better? So the exact same thing happened to me when I was trying to cook turkey legs for the Meat Eater Crew last spring. I've started early in the morning. Um, I seared the meat first, added all my veggies and everything, added my liquids, put it on low in a crock pot. Literally eight I want to say, maybe even twelve hours later, it was like not quite done. Some of it was tender, but it was kind of dry, and I was like, what is going on? And the problem is most crock pots you have, you have a temperature setting of warm, low, hot. What temperature is that? You know? Like what I I have a crock pot that when I say low, it's probably like almost boiling in there, which is way too hot. Um, it's way too hot. So that's that's sort of the thing with croc pots is sometimes you get a good crock pot and it works like a charm. And I've used crock pots that like, literally I want to throw them out the window because I have no idea what they're doing in there. Um. So I think, you know, investing money in a good crock pot that um you know, doing your homework and researching the brands and and knowing sort of what temperatures those are at and having like a little bit more adjustability in a crock pot is really the answer. But I like to say, if I'm going to brace something, Okay, So I have a recipe for a neck chop. So it basically it took a deer neck and cut it cross wise throughout the whole neck into these chops, kind of like you would cut a shank for Asso buco. And I put that in the eved at and it was done in like four hours, like maybe less. Yeah, it's for about four hours, which to me was way faster than I thought. And I was, I mean it was just fall apart, juicy, tender, amazing. Um. And so I I like that temperature at two to fifty two seventy five, I don't you can go if you if you go over three hundred, it'll cook faster, but it may taste a little drier. Oh, other thing is obviously adding salt a couple of days before seasoning it. Brining it before you do that helps the meat retain the moisture when cooked. That's even just for braised dishes. Giving it a brine beforehand will make a very big difference, just like you brine before you smoke meat. And again in principle, and when you talk about braising, you're just talking about a slow cook in a liquid right basically yep, in they oven, so inside the oven and a covered dish with liquids, and that that's essentially achieved that low and slow type of method um to break down some of those tougher, tougher meats, right yep. Okay, what about what about this um? And we we've kind of talked around it and it's such a it's so cliche. I almost don't want to bring it up, but we kind of have to just in case there's new listeners or there's someone who's listening who's a little bit nervous about cooking with wild game or venison, and that's this whole idea of gaming meat. Someone saying, oh that tastes gaming. You've got folks coming over Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve and like, I don't want to eat that, you know, DearS just too gamey for me. Um, how do you what do you think about that term? Is a BS and or how do you avoid whatever this hypothetical gaming thiss is? How do you get rid of that flavor or that lack of flavor whatever it is? You know, I've used the term before, but when I use the term, I know exactly why I'm using it. And that's Um. Oh, this one time we got into a ton of snow geese. It was a spring conservation season, and I mean, I think there must have been about fifty sixty birds in our garage and I I was I think my husband went out and hunted and I was working. Um at that time, I worked a full time job, and UM, I was like, I just I can't clean all these like in one afternoon or one evening. And so like we'd hang them in the garage and sort of one by one clean all of these birds because there's just so much to bite off at once. UM, at the after a long work day. UM. And of course at that temperature in the garage it was it was pretty pretty perfect for aging and hanging birds. So it was like kind of a win win. Um. But we had so many birds and we'd clean them and we put them in the fridge, and um, I wanted a vacuum see all of them. And I remember that I started going through and I just realized, like I don't have enough like refrigerator space for all this meat. Like I would clean it, put it like inside of a pan or a bullet inside the fridge, and then I like kind of keep going. I did it for a few days, and I guess there was like a lot of liquids or blood pulling at the bottom of this bowl or something happened. I was like, oh, now you can like age it like a like for a long time, Like I've done that so many times, it's not a big deal. But there was like some sort of moisture and it was like the bottom cup of breasts were like sitting in there like a pool of like blood or juice or something. And so a few days I finally get to the bottom, like, wow, we can eat, you know, we can eat days and freeze the rest and um, that's bottom pieces. Man, those are gaming. And I say the word gaming because I took very poor care of them, you know, like, I know when I use that word, it's referring to myself of doing a very poor job at processing that meat. It's my fault. It's not the animal's fault. It's mine. Um, So why don't is that term like I specifically wants to say that. Um, there's a difference between the flavor of wild game and the term gaming. I think we like to use it as a blanket term for all of wild game, and that's wrong. Um. We need to be more conscious of how we describe the flavor of meats. Because an animal was going to taste like what it's been eating, and it's supposed to. I'm not going to say that it's always going to be good. I've eaten am organs there before. They're not good because they're eating like, you know, anything eating like worms and like little fish and things like muddy things like aren't great. I mean, does that mean I say the word gameing? No, they taste like what they've been eating. UM. I like to think of the term gaming as meaning something has gone wrong when something your meat to give it a foul flavor, and that could be anything like in Texas, that term is used so often, and I think about how hot it is during hunting season. I mean literally a week ago was almost eighty degrees in Houston and it's December, And I think about how many people are shooting gear and maybe they bring a cooler and they put the meat in the cooler and then they go get ice, Like you're trapping that meat in heat before you add ice, you know, like just sink stupid stuff like that. Um, and then they wonder why it taste off. UM. So that's I don't know what those are my thoughts on it. I think. I think besides the exclusivity factor, the initial thing that attracts me, or that attracted me to wild game in the big inning, was the idea that every time I was cooking wild game, I had the opportunity to work with something new. Every animal lives in a different location, especially if you're cooking something like waterfowl. I mean they're migrating across the country eating and who knows how many different fields or areas. I mean that flavor, I mean their diet effects or flavor so dramatically, and so every time you eat wild game, you're you're eating something that's lived a completely different lifestyle and different food. And I really really enjoyed that versatility and that change and being able to pick up on things. I think is absolutely incredible and I think it should be celebrated. I I love the flavor of wild game and I love being able to taste the changes and meet based on um, you know, like we do a lot of water hunting, like eating ducks in nor Dakota compared to eating ducks and Texas, or I shot a ponghorn in White Oming, And the stagey flavor that people complain about to me is is is herbal and grassy and rich, and I mean, I absolutely love it. So I'm very careful never to interchange those two words together as far as like game flavor and gaming. Yeah, but but yeah, when I think of the word gaming, I'm thinking instantly is it really the flavor of the meat or did you do something wrong? Yeah? I feel like the time it's our fault. Many times though, I feel when that terminology is used by someone who's not the actual typical eater of wild game. So let's say you've got a cousin or and aunt who who lives you know, it doesn't matter where they live, but they just don't hunt and they don't eat wild game typically, so all they ever eat is pork, beef, and chicken. They'll say, Oh, I don't like I don't like venison. I'm not going to eat that. It's venison's gaming. They typically seem to apply that term to anything that doesn't taste like beef or anything that doesn't taste like chicken. Right, if it's different than that, they're gonna call it gaming. And for whatever reason, that difference and taste, um, they're not receptive to. So let's take someone like that. Let's say we've got our crazy, crazy aunt Millie coming over and she's anti wild game because she thinks it's gamy. Do you have any suggestions for the aspiring wild game cook who's going to cook for that person? I gotta cook something for the person who's afraid of gaming meat, and I want them to have their mind and their eyes opened to the possibilities. Do you have a suggestion for something to cook up for that person that tough customer? Um, you know it's hard because I think, well, the first thing is like knowing that you've done everything you can to make the meat from the field to the table to be as clean in as good as possible. You know, that's always the first thing, no matter what. But I would just be extremely open and honest and be like, if you've never had wild game, this is what you're going to notice, and this is the reason why. It's because this animal has been forging on a variety of ingredients that attribute disflavor. You're used to eating something that is very blend and standardized, and um, when you go to the grocery store, you know what you're getting and you know what you're gonna taste, like, this isn't gonna taste like that. But I think I would cook a recipe. I don't know. Part of me says, cook something that they're familiar with, But I don't want to give someone the need to compare to domestic if that makes any sense, opportunity to live, Like, don't cook them like your favorite steak, your favorite recipe with steak, I'm gonna make it with venison because they're like, that doesn't taste like my favorite steak. Red. You know, like, give him something that they've never had before. Um. You know, some of my favorite recipes are usually they're not anything crazy, weird or anything, but they're not something that people typically cook at home. Often um, and I make um, it's an Italian salsa verde sauce, And I'll just take a steak, grill it with salt and pepper or nothing more or syrit and then serve it with this salsa verita, which is made up with finely chopped parsley capers, garlic, anchovy, lemon juice, and olive oil. And that has so much mommy flavors and acidity and fat all sort of wrapped up in this one like cold sauce, and you just put a tiny bit on it, and it just seems like that salty nous is an enhancer, and like everything just sort of comes alive and just like a very very flavorful thing, and it's hard to not love it. It's so hard to not like it. I don't care who you are or how much you hate game. Um. That's kind of my goa too. For someone who's never eaten wild game before. He's just not something that they're like commonly order at a restaurant or cook at home. And does that recipe on the website too? It is what's what's it called? Again? Just so people can look it up if they need to need to pull it out. Of their bag of tricks. I think it's veniss and tenderloin with Italian salsaverity. Perfect. Well, that is going to be That's gonna be something I want to try too. That sounds pretty darn good. I've got two more kind of rapid fire questions for you before we can wrap this up. Daniel, this has been great, really interesting because I've loved getting to bounce back and forth. Mean, like these foundational techniques and concepts and then specific applications are specific recipes or dishes. It's got me excited to get working on some things here for Christmas. Um. Okay, first off is alcohol pairings with venison or other wild game. Do you have any recommendations as far as types of drinks that would go well with certain dishes or certain cuts or types types of game, anything that comes to mind? Um, I think it was. I think it really depends on what you're preparing. A really nice steak dish should have a good glass of red wine. Um. There's a few other dishes, um man, I was I gonna take? Oh so, one of my favorite pairings is duck Alla orange. Um. I have one on the media website called duck all a bourbon because I add a little bourbon to the sauce. But I like to think of it as a savory old fashioned, so pairing that with an actual old fashioned is really good. Um. I think bourbon and wild game just naturally go well together. But I don't drink hard liquor, uh so I usually just stick to wine. But I think, um, tacos, you need a beer, anything spicy, I want to I have to have a beer with it. I agree. I think it just really depends on what you're how you're preparing it. Okay, Well, I second your thoughts on the good red wine with with a steak or something like that. That just seems to I don't know, I don't know how to describe the tastes as you do, but um, it just seems to compliment very well each other. So yeah, it's okay, we've got some red wine to drink with our steak. We've got some beer with our tacos. Um. I don't know if either one of those options is your typical Christmas or New Year's or holiday time period dish though, So do you have any couple favorite holiday dishes that you'd recommend folks think about or look up if you've got any recipes out there, any couple holiday suggestions will be great. Well. The one that I just did yesterday will be on the website I think next week. Hopefully I'm going to get it up in time for Christmas. It's a very earthy, earthy mushroom rubbed backstrap with a really simple pan sauce and anything really deep and earthy like that. It's going to pair well with the bold red wine, cabernet or something like that. Um Another completely different spin is mold wine. There's a lot of spices in that, like clove and cinnamon and star anise that just are amazing with waterfowl. And I have a recipe on the website for a mold wine glazed roasted duck. So basically I took I made a homemade mold wine, and I took about a cup of that infused red wine and reduced it down with sugar to make a glaze, and then put that on top of a duck to roast in the oven. And it was this really like I call it meat candy because just like rich and meaty and savory, but also like sweet caramelized candy at the same time. It's a it's a rich dish that I would only eat at Christmas. Um. It sounds harder than it actually is to make, but if you love to um to explore new things in the kitchen, I would highly recommend that. And then the last one is a recipe that is sort of modified off of a prime rib dish, except it's with the venis and roast, and so I used the suvied for the recipe, and if you have one of those, it works perfect. But it's basically a simple salt and pepper um seasoning. You give it a seer in the a cast iron or a pan first, and then you add some garlic, rosemary and stock to the bag, seal it up, and then you cook it until it's done, and then you take it out and you use all those juices and make an add juice sauce at the end and just sort of reduce it down and it's really flavorful, and then the leftovers make like the perfect like kind of like a prime rib sandwich. Was like a horse radish mayo. It's really good. UM. That's also one of meat eaters. That sounds very good. Now, could you do that in like a Dutch oven or something if you don't have a suvid, yeah, I think it's just you just need to change the cut. So I used the bottom roast, which is pretty tough, and so that's why I did it with the suvied. I did it for a long period of time. And if you don't have, if you want to do it in the oven, I would suggest doing like the starline tip or the top round and or even I guess you could do the backstrap sort of something similar um and doing it in the oven, something that's more tender and doesn't need a really lengthy amount of time to cook. Um and is how I would substitute that. Cool. Well, that sounds very good. I am two, very very hungry now after hearing all this time, so I think I need to go fix up a decent lunch. Danielle, thank you for chatting through all this. This has been really interesting. I'm looking forward to all the new recipes you've got coming out and if people want to follow along with with what you're doing, whether that be the recipes or anything else, where can they find that stuff? I Am on Instagram and Facebook. Uh Instagram, Well they're both the same, wild and whole and that's it. W I L D A in d W H O L E. Perfect, Wild and Hole and then the Mediator website has got all sorts of recipes from you as well. Correct. Yep, pretty much most of my recipes around there. I do have a website and I update it from time to time with non meat recipes, like I think I just did something on how to brown mushrooms, Um, how to get golden brown mushrooms that aren't gray and rubbery and so whom. Um, you'll find other other recipes that are not meat related, just side dishes and stuff. Cool, all right, daniel Well, we're gonna be checking out all that stuff. I appreciate you taking the time and uh, best of luck with all the holiday cooking. Thank you you as well. I want to hear what you make and how it turns out. All right, the pressures on. We're hosting Christmas Day here at the Kenyon House, so I've got to I've got to perform. Yeah, well, I'm sure you'll do great. Thank you. Thank you for the confidence talk latter, Danielle. All right, all right bye, and that's gonna be a rap. Thank you guys for listening. I hope you've been inspired to get out there and take your cook into the new level. Try a few new techniques, try a few different kinds of recipes. Get a little bold with your options and choices. As far as the cuts of meat you try, try that heart. I'm telling you what you really need to try the heart. And I do hope that uh you have a terrific holiday season. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. Um ma'am, it's been a great year. Appreciate you guys following along. Thank you for being along for the ride and being a part of the Wired hunt community. So until next time, have a great, great weekend, a great holiday, and stay wired to Hunt.