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

FORAGER | CHEF

Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

  • Home
  • About
  • Wild Mushrooms
    • Mushroom Archive
    • Posts by Species
      • Other Mushrooms
        • Lobster Mushrooms
        • Huitlacoche
        • 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 and Onions
    • Wild Herbs and Spices
      • Spruce and Conifers
      • Pollen
      • Prickly Ash
      • Bergamot / Wild Oregano
      • Spicebush
      • Golpar / Cow Parsnip
      • Wild Carraway
    • 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 and Organ Meat Recipes
    • Charcuterie
  • Recipes
    • Pickles, Preserves, Etc
    • Fermentation
    • Condiments
    • Appetizers
    • Soup
    • Salad
    • Side Dishes
    • Entrees
    • Baking
    • Sweets
  • Video
    • Field, Forest Feast (The Wild Harvest)
    • Foraging Videos
    • Lamb and Goat Series
    • YouTube Tutorials
  • Press
    • Podcasts / Interviews
  • Work
    • Public Speaking
    • Charity and Private Dinners
    • Forays / Classes / Demos

Smoked Venison Neck Pastrami

Jump to Recipe Print Recipe

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 a cut plenty of people still throw away and turn it into culinary gold. If you’ve never taken the neck off a deer in one piece, I show how to do that in this video, which is also a great treatment for them if you want more of a center of the plate type dish. 

Pastrami and it’s cousin corned beef are some of the most popular ways to cook game I know of, and it’s not hard to understand why. There’s a certain magic transformation that happens when you soak tough cuts of meat in brine for an extended period of time. Brine is a great equalizer in the world of meat tenderizing, and you can just about make any cut from any animal tender by soaking it in brine and then smoking, braising or boiling it.

Smoked venison or deer neck pastrami recipe Smoked venison or deer neck pastrami recipe Rolled, smoked venison or deer neck pastrami recipe
Deer pastrami recipes are nothing new, but venison neck is well suited to the prep here because of the flat shape of neck filets, which are the perfect thing to season, roll up and tie into a meat log. Typically with pastrami, you crust the outside of the roast with peppercorns and coriander before you smoke it, which makes a crunchy, aromatic crust. That crust is part of what makes pastrami so good, and is what sets it apart from it’s corned cousin, which is boiled. Using a neck allowed me to not only crust the outside, but, since the neck is rolled and tied, the inside too, for maximum crunch factor. 

If you haven’t made pastrami before, I highly recommend trying it, with whatever cut of venison or game (goose breasts are great too). It’s an easy charcuterie project for beginners. The finished product is useful for all kinds of things too, and they don’t necessarily have to include being on a sandwich. You can dice it and cook with cabbage, fry it up with eggs (how I’ve been eating most of mine) and all kinds of other things. Moral of the story: save those deer necks! 

Smoked venison neck pastrami recipe

Smoked venison neck pastrami recipe
Print Recipe
5 from 1 vote

Smoked Venison Neck Pastrami

Pastrami made from rolled, tied venison neck.
Prep Time15 mins
Brine time5 d
Course: Appetizer, Breakfast
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Offal, Venison
Servings: 8

Equipment

  • Smoker

Ingredients

  • ½ a venison neck (roughly 2 lbs) filleted off the spine retaining as much meat as possible, and cut into a rectangle that can be rolled up

Brine

  • 3 quarts water
  • 195 grams salt roughly ¾ cup
  • 1 oz pink curing salt sodium nitrite
  • 3 Tablespoons pickling spice
  • 2 cups dark brown sugar
  • 1 large yellow onion sliced
  • 3 dried bay leaves
  • 1 bulb garlic halved horizontally

Final Coating

  • 3 tablespoons whole black pepper
  • 3 tablespoons whole coriander

Instructions

Brine

  • Lightly toast the pepper and coriander, then crush coarsely (I like it crunchy).
  • Combine the ingredients for the brine and bring to a simmer in a stock pot. After the mix boils, chill completely.
  • Cut the neck open a bit if one part is larger than the other so that the neck lays flat like a book. Alternately, pound it with a mallet to make it flat and even, which will make rolling it into a log easier.
  • Immerse the neck in the brine for 5 days, repositioning it at least once to promote even penetration of the brine.

Smoking

  • After four days, remove the neck and pat dry, then season the inside (meat side that was next to the spine)
  • aggressively with the coriander and black pepper, reserving some to coat the outside.
  • Roll the neck up like a jelly roll, and tie it snug with twine, then coat the outside lightly with more pepper and coriander. Vacuum seal the neck log to help the coating adhere and refrigerate overnight, or wrap very tight in cling film (optional).
  • Smoke the neck at 250 for 2 hours, then put in a deep pan with an inch of water and cook, covered for another 2 hours at 300, or until it’s visibly shrunken and is fork-tender, checking on it here and there and adding water to make sure the pan doesn’t dry out.
  • Remove the pastrami, wrap in cling film to prevent it from drying out, then cool and refrigerate before slicing with a long, sharp knife.

Venison or deer neck pastrami recipe

Related

Previous Post: « Can You Eat Wild Mushrooms Raw?
Next Post: Fresh Horseradish »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




Primary Sidebar

James Beard Award Winner

beard award

Subscribe (It’s free)

Forager Chef

Forager Chef

Footer

Instagram

foragerchef

FORAGER | CHEF®
🍄🌱🍖
Author: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
James Beard Award ‘22
Host: Field Forest Feast 👇
streaming on @tastemade

Alan Bergo
Had a blast on the last day of the @wild.fed shoot Had a blast on the last day of the @wild.fed shoot cooking in the Garden of Eden, a.k.a Sam Thayer’s orchard. 

We’d planned on making ground squirrel, bullfrog and crayfish gumbo but only the crayfish came through. Luckily I had some back up andouille just in case. 

It’s may not be traditional, but gumbo with crayfish broth, a heap of @mushroomforaginginmn porcini, milkweed pods (in lieu of okra) wild rice and crayfish-chanterelle salad didn’t suck. 6 of us polished off a gallon 😁.

H/o to chef Lenny Russo who I pestered with questions on frog-based foods beforehand. Hyper-local meals like this are what we made at Heartland in St Paul during my tenure there. 

@danielvitalis 
@grantguiliano 

#ditchlobster #mudbugs #gumbo #crayfish #wildrice #wildfed
Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water by hand with Sam Thayer and @danielvitalis for @wild.fed 

Daniel and Sam were the apex predators, but I got a few. 

Without a net catching crayfish by hand is definitely a wax-on wax-off sort of skill. Clears your mind. 

They’re going into gumbo with porcini, sausage and milkweed pods today. 

#crayfish #ninjareflexes #waxonwaxoff #normalthings #onset🎥🎬
Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizo Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizomes and blueberries for this weeks shoot with @wildfed 

Been a few years since I worked with these. Thankfully Sam Thayer dropped a couple off for me to work with. They’re tender, crisp and delicious. 

Sam mentioned their mild flavor and texture could be because they don’t have to worry about predators eating them, since they grow in the muck of cattail marshes. 

I think they could use a pet name. Pond tusk? Swamp spears? Help me out here. 😂

Nature makes the coolest things. 

#itcamefromthepond #cattail #rhizomes #foraging #typhalatifolia
I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so much we filmed it instead of the original dish I’d planned. 

Cooked natural wild rice (not the black shiny stuff) is great hot, cold, sweet or savory. It’s a perfect, filling lunch for a long day of berry picking. 

I make them with whatever I have on hand. Mushrooms will fade into the background a little here, so I use a bunch of them, along with lots of herbs and hickory nut oil + dill flowers. 

I’m eating the leftovers today back up in the barrens (hopefully) getting some more bluebs for another shoot this week w @wild.fed 

#wilwilwice #wildrice #chanterelles #campfood #castironcooking
Baby’s first homegrown mushrooms! Backyard wine Baby’s first homegrown mushrooms! Backyard wine caps on hardwood sawdust from my lumberjack buddy.

Next up blewits. Spawn from @northsporemushrooms

#winecaps #strophariaaeruginosa #allthemushroomtags
It’s wild cherry season. I’ll be picking from It’s wild cherry season. I’ll be picking from my favorite spot tomorrow a.m. and have room for a couple helpers. It’s at an event on a farm just south of St. Cloud. 

If you’re interested send me a message and I’ll raffle off the spots. Plenty of cherries to go around. I’ll be leading a short plant walk around the farm too. 

#chokecherries #foraging #prunusvirginiana #summervibes
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Privacy

  • Privacy Policy

Affiliate Disclosure

 I may earn a small commission for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this website. Your purchases help keep this website free and help with the many costs involved with this site as it has continued to grow over the years. 

Copyright © 2022 ·