• 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 Species Archive
    • Posts by Species
      • Other
        • 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
        • Red Cinnabar
        • Yellowfeet
      • Gilled
        • Matsutake
        • Russula / Lactarius
          • Candy Caps
          • Saffron Milkcap
          • Indigo Milkcap
        • Fairy Rings
      • Boletes
        • Porcini
        • Leccinum
        • Slippery Jacks
    • Recipes
      • Fresh
      • Dried
      • Preserves
    • The Basics
  • Plants
    • Plant Archive
    • Leafy Green Recipes
      • Leafy Green Plant Varieties
    • Wild Fruit
      • Wild Plums
      • Highbush Cranberry
      • Wild Grapes
      • Rowanberries
      • Wild Cherries
      • Aronia
      • Elderberry
      • Nannyberry
      • Wild Blueberries
    • Wild Herbs and Spices
    • From The Garden
    • Nuts, Roots, Tubers and Grains
    • Stalks and Shoots
  • Meat
    • Four-Legged
    • Poultry
    • Fish/Seafood
    • Offal
    • Charcuterie
  • Recipes
    • Pickles, Preserves, Etc
    • Fermentation
    • Condiments
    • Appetizers
    • Soup
    • Salad
    • Side Dishes
    • Entrees
    • Baking
    • Sweets
  • Video
    • The Wild Harvest
    • Foraging Videos
    • Lamb and Goat Series
    • YouTube Tutorials
  • Press
    • Podcasts
  • Work
    • Public Speaking
    • Charity and Private Dinners
    • Forays / Classes / Demos

Venison Trotter Cakes (Cromesquis)

Jump to Recipe Print Recipe
Fried venison trotter cakes with watercress, highbush cranberry aioli, and roasted pepper

Deer foot tater tots. It’s what’s for dinner!

What’s golden brown, crispy-fried, ooey-goey and delicious? Venison trotter cakes. Almost like a meat-filled tater tot, trotter cakes or cromesquis as they might be called are a little chef secret I’ve adapted to venison here. Most of the time you’re going to see them made with pork, which is how I was taught to make them from an old friend of mine—likely a trinket he brought back from his time as sous chef to Dan Barber at Blue Hill or his tour at Charlie Trotters restaurant in Chicago. 

Venison feet or trotters for cooking

Yep. You’ll need deer feet to make this recipe.

What the heck is a trotter cake? Well, if you’ve made headcheese, you’ll be familiar with how meat picked off the bone gets firm as a rock after braising, picking and chilling. The meat off a cooked trotter, if it can even be called that, is basically a mass of wiggly flubbery tissue, and, just like headcheese meat, once it’s chilled, it’s rock solid.

In it’s purest form, it will offend the uninitiated, but there’s a secret: mincing the meat ultra fine yields a sort of finely textured meat duxelles of sorts, one that you can use for all kinds like adding to soup and sauces. For the cakes, you simply chill minced, cooked trotter meat, then bread and deep fry. Warming up the trotter meat loosens all the collagen and stickyness that keeps everything all together, turning it into a decadent, crispy little morsel that no one has to know came from a deer’s foot. 

chopped, cooled venison trotter meat

Chilled minced venison trotter can be cut into whatever shape you want, then breaded and deep fried, which melts the meat inside the cake.

Cromesquis

Quick note on cromesquis here. This is a sort of archaic French culinary term that, at least to me, should specifically refer to morsels of fried confit if you’re a stickler (a little something I learned from Jean Francois Piege). That being said, “trotter cake” isn’t as romantic sounding as trotter cromesquis, so, every time I’ve seen cromesquis on a menu, they’ve been made with trotters. For the record too, if you’re in the Twin Cities area and want to try some, CHef Russell Kleins locally famous Meritage Brasserie usually has them 

You can call them whatever you want, but for me, there’s a certain ring to deer foot tater tots. 

Fried venison trotter cakes or cromesquis with highbush cranberry aioli

Fried venison trotter cakes or cromesquis with highbush cranberry aioli
Print Recipe
0 from 0 votes

Venison Trotter Cakes

Crispy fried cakes made from smoked venison trotters. Makes about 12 1 oz portions.
Prep Time30 mins
Trotter cooking time1 d
Course: Appetizer
Cuisine: American, French
Keyword: Offal, Trotters, Venison
Servings: 6

Ingredients

Trotter cakes

  • 6 oz finely minced cooked venison trotter, warmed (see recipe)
  • 2 oz mushroom duxelles
  • Fresh chopped Italian Parsley to taste
  • Fresh ground black pepper to taste
  • Lemon zest to taste
  • 1 small clove garlic grated or mashed to a paste
  • Kosher salt to taste

Breading

  • All purpose flour as needed
  • 2 large eggs beaten
  • 1 cup breadcrumbs like panko pulsed in a food processor

Instructions

  • Mix the trotter cake ingredients, then taste a tiny bit, and adjust the seasoning for lemon zest, salt and pepper until it tastes good to you.
  • Pack the mixture into a mold like a loaf pan lined with cling film and refrigerate until rock solid, at least a few hours. Unmold the trotter loaf and slice into cubes or fry-able morsels.
  • Toss the pieces of trotter loaf with flour, then dip in egg and toss in breadcrumbs. Chill the cakes to firm them, alternately they can be frozen, and then deep fried from frozen which will ensure the crust stays crisp, since after a few days in the fridge the breadcrumbs will get soft.
  • Deep fry the trotter cakes until golden (350F is good, although I don’t usually use a thermometer). Alternately, you can shallow fry them in a cast iron skillet. Allow the cakes to cool for a moment on a paper towel before putting on a plate or eating.
  • Serve with lemon wedges or a zingy dip like aioli. And be careful not to burn yourself, since trotter cakes can be deliciously molten.

 

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Related

Previous Post: « Dried Venison Soup with Timpsila (Bapa Wohanpi)
Next Post: Steamed Fish with Trotter-Mushroom Sauce »

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. How to prepare and cook venison trotters / deer feet says:
    December 19, 2020 at 10:36 am

    […] Trotter tots / cromesquis  […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

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

Recipe Rating




Primary Sidebar

Categories

Forager Chef

Forager Chef

Instagram

foragerchef

Got treated to a home cooked meal of big lamb meat Got treated to a home cooked meal of big lamb meatballs from the Icelandic lambs @shepherdsongfarm gave us. 

It’s been a while since I had fist-size meatballs. They reminded me of dinners I had with Grandpa at Yarussos in St. Paul, where you got one meatball to rule them all on top of your spaghetti and red gravy. 

Obv I had to make some with venison, wild rice, ramps, and bergamot. The wild rice is fun. Hefty. 

Also forgot to oil my hands, like a chump. 🙄

#ballingonabudget #meatballs #naptime #venison #rampleaves #comfortfoods #rusticfood #monardafistulosa
Tres Leches soaked in candy cap milk was a fun var Tres Leches soaked in candy cap milk was a fun variation I did on the house dessert of a little restaurant I was at for a time. 

Don’t be surprised if you smell like maple syrup a few hours after eating it. Using ground dried golden chanterelles is another variation that’s on my list to try. 

Link in bio to see how to make your own. 

#candycaps #treslechescake #myteethfellout #wildmushrooms #wildfoodlove
ARISE #fungimancer #frostbite #morels #tisthes ARISE 

 #fungimancer 
#frostbite #morels #tistheseason #mushroomhunting #winter #offseasontraining
Big thanks🙏 to all of you who showed your suppo Big thanks🙏 to all of you who showed your support with the first line of spirits @ida_graves_distillery and I collaborated on. 

Brock did a great job wrangling the wild things, and we have plenty of fun ideas in store (think aging nocino in barrels, new flavor combos, etc). If you’re in the Twin Cities and still need some, the amaro is #soldout but @ombibulousmn has nocino, and should have the spruce  liquor (goes down like pine gin) soon. Thank you!

#distillery #foragedcocktails #nocino #craftspirits #drinkatree #mnspirits #smallbatch #godscountry
Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, roadkill is too s Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, roadkill is too specific a term for me—I don’t limit myself to vehicular-harvested meat. 

However you feel about the topic, grab some popcorn and head over to the comment section on my blog (link in bio) for the 🔥personal stories from readers have shared from around the world. 

There’s the kid who brought home a nutria after school, a wife getting 4 deer with the same car, a train hitting a herd of elk, a bear named squish, living in a house with weasels, and more. 

#budgetgourmet #gleaning #scavenging #meatismeat #roadkill #freefoods #finderskeepers #wastenotwantnot
Sam Thayer dropped 25 lbs of his highbush cranberr Sam Thayer dropped 25 lbs of his highbush cranberry cultivars (3 types!) on me before the last snowfall and I honestly don’t even know where to start after processing them. I’d already made jams and hot sauce already and I have enough for a year. 😅

Great time to practice the cold-juice which ensures the juice isn’t bitter. 

Anyone else have any ideas? 

You can still find some on the shrubs if the birds didn’t get them up by the north shore. 

#highbushcranberry #winterforaging #birdberries #sweetnectar #foragerproblems #juiceme #embarassmentofriches #wildfoodlove
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Footer

Privacy

  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2021 · Foodie Pro & The Genesis Framework

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.