• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Forager Chef

Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

  • Home
  • About
  • Mushrooms
    • Mushroom Archive
    • Posts by Species
      • Other Mushrooms
        • Lobster Mushrooms
        • Shrimp of the Woods
        • Truffles
        • Morels
        • Shaggy Mane
        • Hericium
        • Puffball
      • Polypores
        • Hen of the Woods
        • Dryad Saddle
        • Chicken of The Woods
        • Cauliflowers
        • Ischnoderma
        • Beefsteak
      • Chanterelles
        • Black Trumpet
        • Hedgehogs
        • Yellowfeet
      • Gilled
        • Matsutake
        • Honey Mushrooms
        • Russula / Lactarius
          • Candy Caps
          • Saffron Milkcap
          • Indigo Milkcap
      • Boletes
        • Porcini
        • Leccinum
        • Slippery Jacks
    • Recipes
      • Fresh
      • Dried
      • Preserves
    • The Basics
  • Plants
    • Plant Archive
    • Leafy Green Recipes
      • Leafy Green Plant Varieties
    • Ramps
    • Wild Herbs and Spices
      • Spruce and Conifers
      • Pollen
      • Prickly Ash
      • Bergamot / Wild Oregano
      • Golpar / Cow Parsnip
    • Wild Fruit
      • Wild Plums
      • Highbush Cranberry
      • Wild Grapes
      • Rowanberries
      • Wild Cherries
      • Aronia
      • Nannyberry
      • Wild Blueberries
    • From The Garden
    • Nuts, Roots, Tubers and Grains
    • Stalks and Shoots
  • Meat
    • Four-Legged Animals
      • Venison
      • Small Game
    • Poultry
    • Fish/Seafood
    • Offal
    • Charcuterie
  • Recipes
    • Pickles, Preserves, Etc
    • Fermentation
    • Condiments
    • Appetizers
    • Soup
    • Salad
    • Side Dishes
    • Entrees
    • Baking
    • Sweets
  • Video
    • Foraging Videos
    • Lamb and Goat Series
    • YouTube Tutorials
  • Press
    • Podcasts
  • Work
    • Public Speaking
    • Charity and Private Dinners
    • Forays / Classes / Demos

Venison

cooked venison or deer ribs with antlers on a board
I love venison, and I cook a lot of it. My selection here is different hunting sites that specialize in it though: I work primarily with off-cuts, organs, cured meats, and things off the beaten path.

You can find backstrap recipes anywhere. If you're new here, make sure to try your hand at Venison Bacon. If you're adventurous, try some smoked kidneys or learn how to work with deer trotters.

Smoked Venison Neck Chili

Smoked venison neck chili recipe

I love a good bowl of chili, and smoked venison chili is a great one. Deer chili is probably one of the most trusty recipes a lot of people who cook game keep around as it’s a great place to toss a couple pounds of ground or stew meat: just forget about it for a…

Read More

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…

Read More

Smoked Venison Leg Roast

smoked venison leg roast on a wood board

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…

Read More

Venison Fat Shmaltz

rendered venison fat in a jar

Wondering what to do with venison fat? Oh do I have a treat for you!  There’s a huge misconception about venison/deer fat and it’s use in cooking. Basically, people think it tastes like chapstick, it’s gamey and horrible, too rich, or some other common unfortunate misunderstanding. If you’re here, you’re probably bambi fat-curious, so know…

Read More

Sicilian Venison Heart Sandwiches (Vastedda Palermitana)

Venison heart confit sandwich like vastedda palermitana

Italian street food is truly some of the coolest out there, case in point: la Vastedda Palermitana. Also known as pani ca muesa or pane con la milza, this sandwich has a few names, all of which are probably more attractive than a descriptive English one. Why? Well, to be blunt, the Vastedda is a…

Read More

Smoked Venison Neck Pastrami

Smoked venison neck pastrami recipe

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…

Read More

Dry-Aging Meat and Game at Home

How to dry age venison 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…

Read More

Honey Mushroom Gulyas / Goulash

Venison goulash or gulyas with honey mushrooms recipe

Honey Mushroom Goulash / Gulyas has been in the works for years over here, and I’m excited to finally share it with you. It’s without a doubt, one of the best things I’ve had with them, and, it’s pretty traditional, more or less. I know I’ll get some contentious comments about my creative liberties here,…

Read More

Venison Breast / Brisket with Mustard and Breadcrumbs

how to cook venison breast

I eat a lot of meat, but I’m not much of a hunter. I know plenty about butchery and processing animals though, so when I got my first charity deer year, one of the first cuts I knew I would take out was the breast or brisket, which I’ve never, if rarely seen people mention…

Read More

Sochan with Venison Bacon, Ramps and Maple Vinegar

Sochan with venison bacon ramps and maple vinegar recipe

It’s Sochan season, and while I was reminded of it in a big way while hunting morels in a flood plain forest. There were lots of familiar plants (no morels), but most of all I was struck by the Rudbeckia laciniata / Sochan—it was everywhere I turned. The colonies seemed to go as far as…

Read More

Spring Venison Terrine with Ramp Leaves

Venison liver terrine with pigeon, ramp leaves and wild ginger recipe

When things are starting to pop up in the spring, my first instinct is to go out and start putting things up and preserving. If you’re like me, you probably have some other things that need to get cleaned out of the freezer too, first. Enter pates, terrines, and all the glorious charcuterie that you…

Read More

Dried Ramp Leaf Venison Jerky

Dried ramp leaf venison jerky recipe

I make sure to dehydrate plenty of ramp leaves when I can during the spring so I can use them in whatever I want during the year–if you have access to them, there just isn’t a reason not to. They’re mild, less aggressive than something like garlic powder, but still have enough kick to flavor…

Read More

Liver Ketchup

Liver ketchup, a condiment made from venison, lamb or other livers

Liver ketchup is another piece of history I came across doing research on lamb and goat in an old Scottish book by An Comunn Gaidhealach (a seriously legit Scottish name) first published in 1907 under the title of The Feill Cookery Book. Like most of the old books I have, a lot of the recipes…

Read More

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Pre-Order MY BOOK

Categories

Forager Chef

Forager Chef

Instagram

foragerchef

Consider the salad, here, a little mix of ephemera Consider the salad, here, a little mix of ephemerals, and other tender young plants and herbs. 

The instinctual knowledge involved in choosing different plants at their peak to serve together raw, with thought put into how the textures and flavors will work on someone’s palette, to me, is one of the highest forms of culinary artistry. Something most people will never taste in their life. 

A little oil, salt, pepper, acid, a touch of sweetness from maple, maybe few fresh herbs are all you need. Bottled dressing of any kind would be like putting Axe Body spray on food. 

#spring #ephemerals #toothwort #troutlily #springbeauty #foraging
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Last entry. I’ve saved t 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Last entry. I’ve saved the smallest, fern gulliest plant for last. 

False Mermaid Weed (Floerkea proserpinacoides) is a good little plant Sam Thayer showed me. It’s tiny, as in all the photos are from me on my belly, in a wet ditch. It’s so small it’s hard to get the camera to even focus on it (see pic with my finger for scale). 

Mermaid weed likes wet areas, like ditches and spots that hold a bit of water (perfect mosquito habitat😁). 

Like chickweed, Floerkia greens are like nature’s Microgreens. They’re in the Limnanthaceae, (a new-ish group of brassicas) and like the Toothwort form earlier this week, you’ll taste a strong mustard-family flavor in a mouthful of their tender stems. 

They’re literally wild mustard sprouts, and, unlike other wild sprouts (garlic mustard 🤬) they stay sprouts, and, they actually taste good. 

It has a wide range over much of the eastern and western U.S., and is listed as secure globally, but is endangered in some states and shouldn’t be disturbed in those places. 

I’m lucky enough to have some large colonies near me so I do clip a few handfuls each year-my annual reward for removing some of the garlic mustard nearby, that, along with atvs, dirt bikes, and contamination from local water pollution, is one of the biggest threats to this tiny green. 

#floerkiaproserpinacoides 
#wildsprouts #mustardsprouts #ferngully #tiny #foraging #mermaid #🧜‍♀️
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Virginia Bluebells (Merten 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are one of the most beautiful harbingers of spring I know, as well as one of the most delicious. 

They’re in the Borage family, along with the namesake plant, Comfrey (which I only eat a few flowers of occasionally) and Honeywort. 

The flavor of the greens, like borage, has a rich flavor some people might describe as mushroomy or fishy, but after a just a few moments of cooking (30-60 seconds) they get mild and delicious, with a subtle bitterness. It’s a good bitter though-nothing like dandelions or garlic mustard that aren’t fit to be in the same basket, let alone on the same plate. 

The shoots are sweet and delicious, much more mild than the greens. As they can grow to be over a foot long, they’re almost more of a vegetable than a leafy green, depending on when you harvest them. 

Bluebells love moist, rich soil, but you don’t have to go to the woods to get them. Many people know Virginia Bluebells as a garden plant, and they can make a great edible addition to your landscape.

#virginiabluebells #foraging #ephemerals #springwildflowers #wildfoodlove #mertensiavirginica
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / White Ramp (Allium burdickii) 

If you’re in a ramp patch you might occasionally see some with white stems (pic 1,2). These are a cousin to the more common variety with much larger leaves and red stems (pic 3,4,5)

Allium burdickii is not as common as the red-stemmed variety, and in every ramp patch I’ve been in, the white ramp is heavily outnumbered. 

Where I harvest, I like to leave them alone, and mark the areas where they grow with sticks or middens on the ground so I can go back in the fall and help them spread their seeds. I also try and remove garlic mustard when I see it-a much more imminent threat in my mind to ramps than foragers out to gather some leaves. 

2020 was a banner year for ramp seeds, and you can still help the plants right now (pic 7) as some seed heads are still full and would love for you to give them a shake as you walk by. 

#alliumburdickii #ramps #ephemerals #foraging #spring
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 #4: Erythronium leaves E 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

#4: Erythronium leaves 

Erythronium (Trout Lily) are another ephemeral that I see widespread in my ramp patches, there’s at least 32 species world-wide, with at least one endangered species in MN (Dwarf Trout Lily). 

They’re a beautiful, delicious plant I eat every year, but I can’t recommend serving them to the general public. Plenty of people say these are edible, but also emetic if eaten in “quantity”. 

I can tell you, at least with E. albidum and E. americanum I’ve eaten, that some people are much more sensitive than others, so if you want to make a salad to serve people, make sure they’re comfortable eating it, and use a few leaves as a garnish. 

Funny enough, I didn’t learn about these from a foraging book. Like knotweed, I learned about them from one of my favorite chefs: Michel Bras, one of the most influential chefs of the turn of the 21 century. 

Any chef that works with wild plants owes a debt to Bras. His book, although a little dated now, still teaches me new things all the time. While flipping through the book I also caught a recipe using tansy flowers 😳 that I’d probably pass on. 

The whitefish crusted with sunflower seeds is a dish of mine from 2012, and an example of how I eat the leaves: a few at a time, as a garnish. 

#troutlily #erythronium #michelbras #ephemerals #foraging
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwor 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) is another beautiful spring wildflower that loves to grow in the same habitat you’ll see ramps and spring beauty. 

Its small at first, but grows to a worthy size for eating as it flowers. It’s related to cabbage and mustard greens (Brassicaceae) and eating just a few leaves will give you a potent, spicy pop of mustard-family flavor reminiscent of horseradish. 

Eaten in combination with other things, like in a salad, the flavor becomes submissive and you’ll barely know it’s there. 

Some people eat the spicy roots shaped like canine teeth, but for the work I hardly think they’re worth it. 

A great wild spring green for the salad bowl-eat them leaves, tender stem, flowers and all🤤. 

#cutleaftoothwort #cadamineconcatenata #ephemeral #springedibles #foraging #wildfoodlove
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Footer

Privacy

  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2021 · Foodie Pro & The Genesis Framework