If you like making charcuterie at home, or even just like a good bag of jerky, you’ll love biltong. Just think beef jerky, but softer, more tender. I learned about the South African charcuterie through a friend who’d lived there, and, after a bad biltong craving, built a curing chamber specifically for it at home. …
Charcuterie
Charcuterie is the art and craft of curing meats, and it's a passion of mine. I've cured thousands of pounds of meat for all kinds of projects over the course of my career, and my skill working with various odds and ends is something I pride myself on.
Here you'll find recipes for things to make out of trim and scrap, as well as intensive, show-stopping projects like headcheese, homemade sausages, fancy French terrines, and simpler things like venison bacon.
Venison Tasso Ham
Venison tasso may not exactly be a traditional charcuterie, but if you like spicy, smoked ham, you’ll love it. If you’re not familiar (it’s kind of an obscure ham) tasso is a smoked creole ham that, from my experience, typically has a spicy rub of paprika and cayenne, among a bunch of other things. When…
Venison Liver Pate
Looking for a good pate recipe for venison liver (or any liver for that matter?) here you go, this is my go-to. This is basically the same recipe I was taught by one of my old chefs, who learned it from a master butcher from Rome (Chef Fillipo Caffari). Mostly we would make it with…
Venison-Bear Fat Nduja
I’m a charcuterie freak: if it’s cured, salted, smoked, aged, potentially strange and delicious, I’m on board. Nduja, a little known spreadable salami from Calabria that’s been a chef secret for years now checks a lot of those boxes. I had my first taste of it at a dinner by Chef Wyatt Evans at his…
Creole Blood Sausage Cake
Blood Sausage Cake is one of the more appetizing names I’ve typed into this website. All jokes aside, I can guarantee you that if you have access to fresh animal blood, and enjoy offal, it’s definitely for you. It tastes great, too, and if you have ancestors from Scandinavia, like I do, they’ll applaud you…
Prickly Ash Sausage
If you harvest your own prickly ash berries (Xanthoxylum/Szechuan peppercorns) sausage should be on your list of things to make. I love the bright, citrusy flavor and gentle numbing quality that prickly ash adds to a dish, but it can be difficult to incorporate them into foods and have them taste coherent if you’re not…
Boneless Rabbit Roulade
When I worked under the former personal chef to the princess of Monaco, boneless rabbit roulade was one of the dishes on my station. Essentially it’s a roll of rabbit, without bones, stuffed with a slice of prosciutto or other charcuterie that’s cooked and sliced, and served warm or cold. It takes some skill with…
Smoked Venison Kidneys
Smoked venison kidneys are not only one of the best ways I’ve had kidneys (steak and kidney pie is my other standby) but it’s one of the best recipes for offal and organ meats in my repertoire, period. If you’ve had kidneys are didn’t care for them in the past, or if you’re new to…
Smoked Venison Shank and Trotter Terrine
I love a good chunk of charcuterie, and this year’s wealth of venison has been crying out to be made into a sliceable terrine en gelee./aspic. The venison trotters I mention in this post are chock-ful of collagen, making them the perfect thing to help bind a chilled headcheese-style terrine. You could definitely make a…
Smoked Lamb or Venison Country Ham
Ever wondered how to make prosciutto? Or even something similar at home? It’s a great piece of pork charcuterie, but a difficult one to make well at home unless you have some serious patience. Back at Heartland restaurant in St. Paul when I worked under Chef Lenny Russo, if there was going to be prosciutto…
Smoked Venison Leg Roast
There’s not much better than a good piece of smoked meat, especially a smoked venison / deer leg roast. If you’re a long-time reader of this site you’ll know that I love charcuterie: sausages, salami, terrines and pates, as well as the cousins like whole muscle cures and brined chunks of meat like pastrami and…
Smoked Venison Neck Pastrami
Pastrami made from venison neck was a great break from the usual pounded, stuffed roast-type recipes I typically do with my deer necks. You can slice it, you can dice it, boil it, put it on a sandwich, fry it up with eggs or stick it in your ear, it’s a great way to take…
Dry-Aging Meat and Game at Home
Got a special occasion coming up, or a holiday celebration? Hunter in your family shoot too many deer and you’re running out of space? If you like meat projects, dry-aging them is a good one to add to your repertoire. By now, most people have heard of dry-aged meat, and, if they haven’t tasted some…