A Wild Food Christmas

[SapperDawg]

Friends -

Hope each of you had a great Christmas with your families. Our tradition has evolved to having an early Christmas Eve mass followed by an adaptation of the feast of the seven fishes. Christmas Day features a big hunk of meat, followed by muc a much smaller meal later in the day. This year, I tried to make it an all wild foods/locally sourced series of meals.

To kick off the festivities, we had a new gumbo adaptation: greenhead ducks killed a week ago, wild turkey legs from this spring, and some pronghorn I killed in the fall.

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This turned out really well. Used Hank Shaw's method here: https://honest-food.net/wild-game/venison-recipes/venison-stews/wild-game-gumbo/

We chased the gumbo with some Gulf Coast oysters, shrimp and flathead catfish.

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Not gonna lie, pretty much set for a coma that night and still had a few hours of assembling and wrapping presents. Evan Williams Single Barrel 2011 helped get through that task.

The main event for Christmas Day was a cured, whole smoked venison ham. This turned out way better than any of us expected:

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Ill post the recipe in a post below. Only thing I would have added here is a good sour cream horseradish sauce. That would have taken it to a 10/10.

I ground some pronghorn sausage early in the morning and used that in the stuffing, and then made little Vietnamese fried sausages with what was left later using Jenny Ly's method: https://www.chasingfood.club/articles/vietnamese-caul-fat-wrapped-sausages

Note that instead of using caul fat I used very thin sliced bacon....worked just fine and fits very well with a mustard based BBQ sauce.

Finishing off the night sampling some of my collector bourbons: Weller 12, Elijah Craig 18 & 23, Redbreast 21.

Here is to continued good times, and successful pursuits all around!

Hail State!

[SapperDawg]

Bone In Venison Ham

Let your skinned hind quarter age for a week in the refrigerator.
* Bone In venison hind quarter
* 2 gallons water
* 2 1/2 cups course sea salt
* 1 tablespoon of pink salt #1 (sodium nitrite)
* 2 cups brown sugar (packed)
* 2 teaspoons mustard seeds
* 1 tablespoon of whole black peppercorns
* 8-10 juniper berries
* 5 allspice berries
* 2 cloves
* 6 bay leaves
* 8 garlic cloves (crushed)

Using a large pot, combine the water, salt, sugar and spices and bring to a boil, stirring until the salt and sugar dissolve. Allow the cure to cool back to room temperature, a little ice may be added to assist the cooling process.

Use a fillet knife to pierce the quarter in several places, then place the quarter in a nonreactive bowl or cooler, just large enough to allow the quarter to lay flat, then cover with the with cure.

Weigh the quarter down using a heavy glass or plate to keep the quarter entirely submerged. Allow the quarter to cure in your refrigerator for one week..

Remove the quarter from the cure, rinse with water, pat dry with paper towels, sprinkle with pepper or rub of choice, and allow it to rest on a drying rack in your refrigerator for one day.

Truss the quarter with butchers twine and allow it to hang in your smoker at 175? for five hours to take smoke. Check the internal temperature, it should be a little over 100?. After five hours bump up the temperature to 200? and smoke for 2 hours bringing the internal temperature up to the high one teens to low 120s, then wrap in foil and increase the smoke temperature to 225? for one hour.

When the internal temperature hits 130? re-wrap in foil and bath towels then place the ham in a cooler with the lid on for several hours to rest.

[Liverpooldawg]

Mixture of my family and my wife's family for us over the holiday period: one meal is traditionally Southern: turkey, ham, dressing, deviled eggs, fried okra, yeast rolls, and various southern desererts. One is perhaps my favorite.......because it spans both families and is absolutely traditional for both....gumbo! Another is a classic Christmas Meal: standing rib roast, Yorkshire Pudding, bread, mashed potatoes, English peas, and various deserts including figgy pudding. As for my immediate family.....steak, salmon, and various other things, all on the grill. The vacation from the diet ends, soon, when our son heads back to England. I'm FAT.... and I wasn't before Thanksgiving. ����������

[BrunswickDawg]

Good stuff as always Sapper

I didn't get any pics - but I was satisfied with our meal choice this year. We do our big meal Christmas Eve, then a brunch Christmas morning.
Normally I slow grill a pork tenderloin, but Harris Teeter got my food order wrong and gave me pork loins instead. I was mad at first because it messed up my timing. The flip side was they had a huge sale on pork loin and I got 2 3lb loins for $6.
I used a Type A rub the night before, then slow roasted them over apple wood chunks for about 2 hours. I basted them with a mix of vinegar, Worcestershire, olive oil, and Tabasco every 20 minutes. I finished them way early, wrapped them in foil and then stuck them in the cooler wrapped in towels for about 2 hours while I finished everything else. They were melt in your mouth good. For sides we had a home-made shells and cheese - Gruyere, white cheddar, and parm topped with bread crumbs; butter peas, grilled asparagus, and a mashed potato concoction with cream cheese and sour cream that clogs my arteries just thinking about it.

We do a home made triple-shot eggnog for the season with brandy, dark rum, and bourbon. Puts you in a festive mood fast. Overall a good time - got the kids home for a few days, had my parents over, and no stress.

[SpeckleDawg]

Wow. That's quite the feast. I've eaten so much over the last week that I didn't do a whole lot for Christmas Day. I did cook a big Sandhill Crane breast that I killed in OK a couple weeks before. It's a fine eating bird!

https://i.postimg.cc/rFvGcGHg/8-FCEDA3-F-71-CD-4-D90-9311-DA2-DF660-FC02.jpg

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[SapperDawg]

Spec - I have three Sandhill tags in my pocket right now for the first season in AL since 1911. Problem is, they are all locked up on the refuge and cant figure out a good way to hunt them.

[SpeckleDawg]

I saw they had a season in AL this year. Any idea how many tags were given this year?

[SapperDawg]

1200ish. I think just over 400 of us drew, and we got 3 tags each.

[BeastMan]

Nice looking meals there. I worked and when I wasn’t working I was dealing with 2 toddlers. We went with tacos Christmas Eve and traditional Christmas Day. I fried and smoked a turkey and both were outstanding. Ready for the schedule to get normal. Got a big buck around I’m trying to put an arrow through. Late Merry Christmas to all you fellas. I’ve been way too absent here

[Prediction? Pain.]

This thread is ridiculous. I want to host an event of some kind just so I can try to get some of y'all to cater. Good lord, people.

It was another Briskmas at our house this year. As always, dry aged beef from a local farm. But 2019's cut was a an absolute beast -- 20.5 pounds before trimming.

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Even after I trimmed it, it was so big that I had to cut the thing in half and use my two-tier setup in the egg. And even then it was a tight squeeze because of the thing's thickness.

https://i.postimg.cc/B6ZX9CTf/IMG-20191225-080304.jpg

Didn't get any worthwhile pics of the finished product, but it was solid. The one on the bottom level -- which mostly consisted of flat -- didn't get as much smoke as I normally like, but whatever. If they'd have been thinner, I would've switched their places halfway through. But the point-predominant half on top was too thick to fit on the bottom. Oh well. (Also experimented with "pink paper" instead of foil for the crutch this time. No complaints. Figure it's probably cheaper and less wasteful in the long run so I'll probably make the switch.)