Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 990: Elevating Your Wild Game Cooking For the Holidays and Beyond with Jesse Griffiths

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Ep. 990: Elevating Your Wild Game Cooking For the Holidays and Beyond with Jesse Griffiths · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Go farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by renowned chef Jesse Griffiths to
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: talk through different ideas and techniques for elevating your wild
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: game cooking during holidays and beyond. All right, welcome back
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: First Light and their Camera for Conservation initiative. This week,
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: as we head into the holiday season, we are talking cooking.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: We're talking about wild game preparation, recipes, techniques, concepts around
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: how to become a happier and more effect dive chef
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: and operating better in the kitchen, making your deer, your turkey,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: your upp and birds. Whatever it is that you've put
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: in the freezer this season, how do we best use that,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: How do we best prepare that and share that with
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: our friends and family over Christmas or the New Year's
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: or whenever you're listening to this. That's what we want
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: to get to and my guest is one of the
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: absolute best in the business to help us do that.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: This is Jesse Griffiths.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: He is a very widely known chef, the author of
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: several different cookbooks, The Hog.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Book, the Turkey Book, a Field.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: He co owns a restaurant in Austin, Texas, Die Dewey.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: He's been a frequent guest on The Mediator's show and podcasts,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: and it's just an all around terrific leader in the
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: space of hunting and fishing and using those foods to
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: just enjoy the fulfillment of your hunting and fishing experience.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: And that's really what we want to achieve today is
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: talk through a handful of things. Number One, what are
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: some ways that we can think through and plan and
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: prepare to cook wild game so we actually enjoy the process,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: so we're not stressed out on Christmas Eve or Christmas
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Day or New Year's Day or the big date night
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: or Thanksgiving or Easter or whenever it is that you're
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: going to be making this great wild game meal for
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: your family or your friends that you really want people
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: to enjoy and.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Have a great experience with.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: How do we do that in a way that you know,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: actually leads to a great meal, keeps you from being
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: stressed out, keeps you from feeling all this pressure that
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: you need to knock out this perfect meal and you
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: can't have it overcooked or undercooked or whatever it might be.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: So that's one set of ideas we talk through. Second thing,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: we talk through our actual ideas recommended preparations and recipes
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: and meal menus and types that you might want to
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: consider for Christmas or New Year's.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: Or any other big event coming up.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: And then finally we talk through some key concepts specifically
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: around venison. We do talk through some highlights when it
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: comes to wild turkey preparation, but then we spend a
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: little bit extra time later in the conversation specifically on
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: preparing and making the very best deer meals that you
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: possibly can, fully utilizing venison in the best ways possible.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: So that's our chat today with Jesse Griffiths. Is a
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: good one. I think it's perfect for this time of year.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Hopefully you've got a bunch of meat in the freezer,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Hopefully a deer or two has been tagged and bagged,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: and you've got a package and ready to go, and
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: this is a great time to celebrate that success with
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: people you care about at this most wonderful time of year.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: As I say so, enjoy my chat with Jesse Griffiths,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: and enjoy the upcoming holidays. I'm wishing you a merry Christmas,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: happy holidays. Whatever it is you celebrate, however you celebrate,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: I hope it's a terrific season for you, and looking
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: forward to wrapping up the year here soon and getting
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: ready for twenty twenty six, which which I can't believe
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: is already here. So without further ado, enjoy my chat
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: with Jesse. All right, joining me now on the show
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: is Jesse Griffiths. Welcome to the Wire Hunt Podcast. Jesse,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: thank you Mark. It's it's been a long time coming,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: so I'm really excited to.
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: Talk to you here.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: I know, I kind of am disappointed in myself. I
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: guess I will put one hundred percent of the blame
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: on myself for not having made this happen sooner. We
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: have so many shared friends, we're in the same circles,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: we probably have cross paths very close to each other
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: multiple times over the years. So this is, like you said,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: a long time coming and very well timed. I would say, Ja,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna jump right into like the inciting incident. There's
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: this phrase using like film and stories and stuff, called
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: the inciting incident, the thing that kind of sets the
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: story in motion. And my inciting incident is that my
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: wife is stressed, she is overwhelmed, she is already worried
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: about the days in weeks to come, and I'm hoping
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: you can help me, Jesse. I'm hoping you can help
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: me because we're talking in mid ish December right now,
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: and the holidays, the holidays are bearing down on us
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: very quickly, and I got to believe that my wife
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: is not the only person who is feeling that, who
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: is feeling stressed by everything going on, whether it's family
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: coming to visit, whether it's gift giving or thinking.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: Or anything like that.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: And then, of course there's all the food, there's all
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: the meals, there's all the get togethers, the gatherings, that
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: the feasts of one kind or another, And that is
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: obviously where I'm hoping you can help me and my
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: wife and so many other people. But I got to
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: ask you first, how are you on that front? Do
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: you feel that stressed during the holidays or when there's
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: big events like this coming up. Or is this like
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: your moment to shine? Is this your super Bowl?
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's my favorite time. I got to say
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: Thanksgiving my edge out Christmas because that's my that was
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: my day to cook. I take full control. I mean,
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: you can bring a bottle of wine, but other than
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: that being not even don't even think about it. I am.
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: I am in charge, maybe to a fault, but it's
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: a I mean it's a it's a cooking holiday. It's
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: an American cultural cooking holiday. And there's not a lot
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: of Christmas could be another one this whole holiday season.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of excuses to celebrate with food, and
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: I think as hunters we have we get that kind
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: of extra bit of excitement and the ability to serve
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: something and then somebody's like, so what is this and
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: they're like, oh, well, I'll tell you what it is.
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: But also it's going to come preloaded with a story,
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: so everybody I can listen to this very compelling retelling
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: of how I masterfully got this turkey or hog or deer.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: So for for folks who don't have that built in
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: sense of confidence or the excitement that you have coming
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: into this, what would you tell someone who's a little
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: bit reluctant, who's a hunter who has deer in the
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: freezer or turkey or something, but maybe approaches this with
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: a bit of reluctance or that lack of confidence. Because
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: I do think there's a certain pressure, at least that
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: I've always felt whenever I prepare venison or turkey or
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: any other wild game for friends and family, especially if
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: they don't you know, hunt or fish themselves. I always
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: feel this pressure like, Okay, this might be their only
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: exposure to this. I've got to nail it. I really
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: need to make sure that they have a good experience.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: What would you say to somebody like that who's a
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: little bit nervous.
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you're right. And there's an incumbent on us
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: to make these things totally shine because we're stepping out,
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: you know, we're not going to the grocery store and
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: getting a pre fat in a turkey or a outstanding
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: Redbros that's just loaded with all this fat, which is
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: like the nerfing of animals. You know, it's just like
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: just adds these these uh you know, bumpers to it
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: that that give you a little more leadway. I think
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: that uh, it's it's going to come down to a
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: lot of organizational skills. You know, I come from a
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: background in kitchens and that's everything. You know, you have
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: to be highly organized. And I'm not just talking about
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: the day of or the day is leading up too,
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: but like you need to just be thoughtful about your approach,
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: like pick what you want to do with an eye
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: towards execution. You don't want to be working on on
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: details or hunkered down in the kitchen making sure that
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: everything is perfect, like right before serving. So I'd say, like,
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: be thoughtful about what you want to cook. I mean,
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: you can still do like Showstoper stuff that's slow cook.
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: You know, you can throw it a crock pot. You
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: could cook it the day before and reheat it. Possibly
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: without getting into details here because I'm still speaking in
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: some broad stroke, but I really think that, you know,
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: we're gonna we're going to talk probably more conceptually than
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: than details. I'm not gonna be like, oh, maple syrup's
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: going to be the thing that takes every dish to
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: the next level, but really it's going to be more.
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: It's gonna be concepts. Like you know, I want to cook,
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: I've got a hind leg of venison, or I've got
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: a big top round and it's like, okay, well, let's
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: break this down and think about how we're best going
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: to execute this so that you're, you know, drinking eggnog
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: right before it goes out, and you're you're cool because
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: it's done, you know, and you've you've kind of full
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: proofed it or at least thought it out, you know,
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: Thanksgiving for me, our holiday meals that are big, I
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: have them very well mapped out, and I have it
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: to where there's a phrase in the kitchen's called ali minute,
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: which means like to the minute, which means like there's
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: certain things that you cook all the minute, you know,
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: and then there's certain things that can be done and
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: just on a reheat schedule. And so I minimize the
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: all I'm a net or the things that I have
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: to do with some immediacy. I really try to so
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: like gravy is going to be made a date or
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: two beforehand, all these things, I'm really trying to minimize
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: what I'm doing in those last few minutes before serving,
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: because then you can also call on people to help
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: you and be say, hey, this just needs to go
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: from cold to hot, Like how do I do that?
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: Not my problem. Get it done, you know, work done.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: So I think that you know, step one conceptualization. Pick
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: a cool recipe, pick something that's within within bounce, you know,
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: and within your your comfortable comfortability zone of being able
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: to execute it. Research it, figure out what can be
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: done beforehand, and also set a reverse timeline. You know,
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: we're eating it too, okay, So by eleven thirty it's
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: a very very latest this stage needs to be done,
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: you know. And then at one point thirty this needs
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: to be done, and then at two o'clock it's on
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: the table.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: I was originally going to have us kind of talk
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: through some high level almost like pillars of preparing certain
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: types of wild game or commandments of it. But you've
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: got me, You've got me already laser focused on the
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: upcoming events. So I think I want to reverse things
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: and I want to continue down this line of thought
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: that you've started here because I've I've realized that I
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: am guilty of something you discussed there, which is which
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: is you know, the minute by minute stuff. I'm always
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I'm always doing everything all at once. I'm stressed about it.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: I'm running from place to place, i can't keep track
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: of where anything is. I'm trying to have this sauce
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: cooking while I'm also preparing this cut of meat, while
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: I'm also trying to figure out what the potatoes are doing,
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: while I'm also trying to do this, and it never
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: seems to go well because of that. So this whole
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: kind of reverse timeline and the conceptual kind of plan
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: of how to break that out down that makes a
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: lot of sense. What other I guess can you? Can
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: you continue down that line of thought? Continue as we
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: get into the day when you're when we're talking about Christmas,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: let's say, hypothetically or whatever the holiday might be that
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: somebody has coming up on a day like that, when
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: you start executing on your personal plan, what does that
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: look like and what are some of the little things
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: that you do during your day that the average person
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: probably isn't thinking about that would make it less stressful,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: that would make the actual outcome better.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: Mm hmm definitely. I create lists, I write it all out,
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: I have timelines. It might be helpful that we can
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: What we can do is we can go in and
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: we can dissect the Thanksgiving many if you want. Yeah, sure,
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: it's going to be very, very recognizable. So I think that,
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: you know, and that's always that's always key too. It's like,
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: if that's what you want to have, that's like really
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: traditional stuff, then go for it. But I mean, you
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: can always put it in the context of game. So
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: if we maybe that's the best way, because then it'll
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: be it'll be more. Okay. So Thanksgiving we had turkey.
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: We had a wild turkey breast, okay, a big wild
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: turkey breast. We had a wild turkey leg quarter.
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: We had a ham from a faral hog, a green
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and a whole pan of roasted
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: reod vegetables out of the garden, and we had rolls.
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: Uh that's it right, pie too. My first course doesn't matter.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: We had some oysters and boot and this is that. Okay,
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: that's you can weed that, throw some summer sausage and
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: some cheese or whatever. Let's let's concentrate on that main course.
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: So the ham began six days beforehand started brining it
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: because I knew I split this ham with a friend
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: of mine, so he's kind of simultaneously and he's a carpenter,
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: so his skill set totally different than mine, but we're
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: working kind of in tandem. So I'm like, you know,
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: six days beforehand, I'm texting. I'm like, hey man, you
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: start briding that ham and he's like no. I was like,
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: you need to do that. He's like, but it's six days.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: I'm like, I know. You know, it's got a brian
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: for four days. Then you've got to smoke it, and
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: then you've got to cool it down and then you're
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: gonna bake it. So if I did all that Mather right,
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: that's six days, So start now. So I've got it
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: broken down. So the first thing I started doing was
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: briding this ham, knowing that it needed to go that
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: long made space in the refrigerator. If I didn't have
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: space there, I had a cooler set up with a
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: bunch of ice packs that it was rotating in and out.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: It's just organization, you know, through and through. The turkey
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: breast is something that I've been doing for a few
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: years now because it gives everybody turkey, which they want,
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: but it also enables me to serve very nicely cooked
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: wild turkey to them, but nail it and so I
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: cook it SUV, which if you're not familiar, is when
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: you vac seal it and then cook it in an
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: immersion circulator which maintains a very precise temperature. Literally, I
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: think the only thing I ever break out this immersion
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: circulator for is Thanksgiving turkey because in my mind, my opinion,
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: that is the best way to cook a whole turkey
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: breast because wall to wall it's cooked to a very
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: precise and perfect temperature. Also, let's be set it aside
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: and just forget about it. So for three hours it's
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: gonna cook in there, I'm gonna pull it out, and
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: then I'm gonna give it a quick sere in butter.
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: So back up three hours from from the from serving time,
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: and I know that it needs to go in at
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: that point. Actually it it's called three and a half hours.
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: So those are my main proteins. The hog will be brined,
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: pulled out. I'll dry it off re away all day,
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: maybe for like twelve hours, so that it developer gets
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: a nice dry crossed on it before it goes into
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: the smoker. It smokes for several hours until it's basically
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: just cooked through, and then day of it's going to
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: go into the oven and bake with a glaze on it.
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: So you know, in order to make my life a
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: lot easier, this brining and smoking, it can happen way
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: ahead of time, Like I could have that thing smoked
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: five days before the day that we're going to serve that.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: And if having that done five days before enables me
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: to tackle all these other tasks, that's going to be
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: a great idea, you know. So let's say I've got
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: my ham smoked, I've got the glaze, mate. So now
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: all that has to happen to that ham is it
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: needs to go into the oven. And so then I'm
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: going to start thinking about everything else that goes into
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: the oven, and I'm going to kind of find an
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: average temperature that it needs. The oven needs to be
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: set up, so three fifty is probably good, like middle
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: of the road. So if my other is at three
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: point fifty, then I can still bake the green bean
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: cast role, I can still roast all those vegetables, and
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: I can keep my mashed potatoes hot in there too,
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: So I'm like cool, Okay, So I've got a place,
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: you know, I've got a hot place for all of
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: those things stovetop, I'm and be seering off that turkey
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: breast and so I'm also thinking about where things are
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: going to get cooked because you might be confined to
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: a four burner stove, you know, you might not have
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: a huge kitchen it so you also, for me, a
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: huge source of stress is space, you know. And it's
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: like when stuff starts stacking up, it gets really you know,
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: and then you're not you're not moving as efficiently. You're
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: also defeating one of the main things. And I mean,
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: I'll get down to like I would like to state
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: what I think is the number one most important thing,
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: not just about cooking for holidays, but I mean about
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: cooking wild came in general, is don't forget to enjoy
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: it like you like deer hunting, right, If we could
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: somehow maintain that linear enjoyment from the preparation of going
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: on that hunt to processing the deer, scanning it, getting it,
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: getting a cold, packaging it, and then eating it. If
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: we can maintain that throughout, you're really winning the game
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: at that point, you know. And so if you set
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: yourself up for success by just being clean and organized
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: and just kind of have it at all, you know,
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: planned out, just game plan this thing like you would
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: have hunt, you know, it's just you know, I'm going
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: to start downwind at this point, I'm going to walk
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: up through here. You know, there's there's they pass through
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: this pinch point a lot. It's the same style of
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: planning that you would would do for the day in
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: the kitchen, you know, like at this point, I want
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: to be here, you know, and I want to make
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: sure that I don't Like when you're turki hunting, you
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: don't want a lot of stuff around your feet, you know,
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: in case you have to move, you don't want to
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: knock something over. And so it's the same thing. I
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: don't want to have a place to set pants over
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: here and things like that. So I think, you know,
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: just that that constant conceptual organization is going to make
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: the execution not only tolerable, but the downright pleasant. Yeah.
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: So yeah, there we are with our our hamd, which
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: is more or less cooked. All it needs is the
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: final application of heat. You know, three and a half
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: hours before serving time, the turkey has has started in
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: the circulator. It's you know, at one hundred and forty
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: degrees for three hours. On the nose, it's already seasoned.
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: You know, it's got lemon and garlic and a few
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: sage leaves tossed in there, and it's got salt and
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: pepper on it already, so it's going to be good
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: to go. All I gonna do is cut it out,
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: get some butter, hot in the pants, see it off,
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: put that nice brown on there. I mean. This year,
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: another thing that I did, which I think really speaks
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: to this conversation is we had a couple of add
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: ons people, you know, so we're going there's three more
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: people coming. I was like, well, I don't think this
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: turkey breast is enough, so I'm gonna pull out a
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: turkey leg quarter as well. I don't need to figure
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: out how to execute this in a relatively small kitchen
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: so that we have this extra bit of meat. And
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: then I'm like, yeah, but we still need to make gravy.
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: And so I thought, well, wait, what if I just
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: made turkey leg gravy? You know, essentially just brown the
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: turkey leg off, added some onions, added a little flour,
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: and then added turkey stock in there. And then two
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: days before we're serving, I've got this turkey leg cooked
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: perfectly with a ton of the slightly thickened turkey stock.
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: It's essentially two things, and one I've got my gravy
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: and my turkey leg all in a pot, all ready
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: to go. It's cool. It's going to be even better
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: on the reheat because a lot of times these braised
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: and slow cook things, once they cook, they kind of
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: tighten up a little bit, and then once they cool
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: down and sit that that moisture, that liquid will seep
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: back into that muscle structure so that we'll get even
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: more tenderness. And that applies to a venison stew or
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: anything you slow cook, Like if you cool it and
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: then reheat it, you'll notice that it's more tender, it
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: has more moisture to it. So instead of making gravy
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: and having a turkey, you know, the turk, the dark
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: meat part of the turkey, I just could buy those
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: two things. And it's like, if anybody needs gravy, just
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: take a spoon and spoon that onto the mashed potatoes.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: And so now we've got our turkey breasts, we've got
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: a turkey like quarter, we've got our ham, and it's
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: all essentially done. You know, there's there's I know what
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: I need to do with that moving forward. I gotta
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: seer off the turkey breasts. Beyond that, everything else is
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: just coming out of the oven. Mass potatoes. You know,
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: I make those the morning of just so that they're fresh.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: I feel like reheating them is almost harder, but you know,
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: just you know, organized get up that morning and peel
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: the potatoes, put them in water, and then you know,
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: just start them with plenty of lead time. That's also
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: something you need to think about. It's like how well
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: does this item hold like hot, you know, for for
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: a while. You know, bashed potatoes in keep them hot
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: for probably three or four hours, and they're gonna be fine,
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: just either on a low heat or in an oven,
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: or just give them a little bit of a reheat.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: And so that's an advantage that you have this with
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: a side like that green bean castle again, you know,
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: I had all the components of it, and I make
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: mine totally from scratch. You know, I've got like it's
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: a turkey stock and milk sauce, like a Beshmel sauce
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: that I'm gonna toss them. That's essentially like a on
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: him but a mushroom soup mixed goes. I blameed on
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: my green beans off beforehand, had them cold, and all
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: I had to do was a symbol my cold green beans.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: The sauce mix that up I do my I make
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: my own fried onions too, and that was another thing
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: I had to do that morning, you know. So so
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: far the morning of I'm making mashed potatoes and I'm
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: frying off these onions to go on top of the
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: green bean castle. And then I need to chop up
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: all my root vegetables. I've got sweet potatoes and beets
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: and turnips and carrots out of the garden and I
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: just chopped them all up awesome with a little bit
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: of I can't even remember it's olive oil or duck fat,
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: salt and pepper, and those are in the pain that
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna serve them out of. Another trick, you know,
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: like I'm constantly like cooking in the thing that I'm
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: gonna serve it out of, so when it comes out
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: of the oven, goes on the table, I'm not trying
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: to spoon it into something else. Even the mashed potatoes,
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: I'm mashing them in the pot that they're gonna get
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: served in. So there's very little what we say plating
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: the green bean castle. It's already in the castle. There's
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: cold ready to go into the oven. So now it's
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: go time, like forty five minutes before we're gonna sit down.
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm thinking about pulling the turkey out. The
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: root vegetables are in the oven, the mashed potatos are reheating,
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: the green bean cast role is in the oven, the
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: hand is in the oven. The rolls go into the oven.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: Ten minutes out, and you know, I have one person,
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: two people maybe helping me, and all I have to
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: do is slice the turkey, put that on a platter.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: We're ready. We're ready to go now. I mean, I
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: hope people are listening and be like this guy, what
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: I mean, I do think about these things in that way.
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: It's just like and sometimes I will alter the menu
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: in order for it to be more easily executable, therefore
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: more enjoyable. You know, I'm not going to put like, Okay, well,
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: I'm also gonna retissary of goose out in the backyard
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: while all this other stuff's happen, because that's just not
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: gonna be much fun running in and out stressing about
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: how good it's going to be and worrying if all
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: these people that don't hunt are then going to be
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: like that one't very good dude, Yeah.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Well, I think you know, regardless of the I think
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: everybody will have their own version right of how complicated
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: they want their meal to be or how much will
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: be homemade versus you know a few things that are
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: pre helped out. But I think what you just said
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: there makes a lot of sense no matter where you
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: are on the experienced list, which is spread out the
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: timeline so that you have enough time to do this
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: so that you don't need to rush all at once,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: have that planned out. I love the scheduling idea, like
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: the like the reverse engineering.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: I need to do that.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: I do that for a lot of other things in life,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: but I've never done a good enough job of doing
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: that when you know, really trying to prepare with a meal.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: So that is a simple but huge suggestion.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: What do you what do you.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Think about as far as menu choice? I guess what
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to get is menu choice. I came from
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: a family that looked at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner as
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: basically the same thing. We replicated Basically Thanksgiving dinner happened
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: again Christmas. My wife's family thought that was atrocious and
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: she couldn't believe that we would have basically the same
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: thing again for Christmas. Where do you stand on Thanksgiving
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: versus Christmas?
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: Menu choice?
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean personally, for me, Thanksgiving is at this
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: point almost a set menu. I love the green bean
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: cast role. You know, I have a garden and also
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: green beans. We had tons of them so in the
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: Turkey and sometimes I think it's important to, you know,
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: go with the tradition. I like that too. You know,
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to do something crazy, and I think
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: that's it's nice in the ham and so also I
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: think that the the audience, it's what they want, you know,
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: It's like they want these comforting things, and so I'm
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: very much into that. Christmas, however, all bets are off.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: You know. I think I'm pretty sure that this year
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: we're gonna have a Chinese dumpling making party on the
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: twenty fourth, and we're gonna just kind of wing through
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: a lot of the freezer. I've got tons of ground pork,
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: which is perfect for dumplings. I've also got turkey and
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: shrimp and fish and things like that. So Christmas for me,
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: in New Year's Eve as well or in New Year's
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: Day can be all over the board something, you know.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: But I do. I love the idea of just going
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: in and doing these blowout dinners with game and dim
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: sum is I mean, my daughter loves dumplings in Chinese
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: dim sum where you just have ten different things and
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: this is a pain in the butt, don't get me wrong. There,
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: it'd be a whole lot of work. It's all done
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: the day before and it's done together, which is fun.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: It's like that, you know, it's not and again back
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: to like the essential point of this is enjoyment. It's
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: just like making the dumplings is going to be fun,
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: you know. It's like it's going to require a lot
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: of organization and a bunch of recipes. But we'll have
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: everything made by the twenty fourth, and then on twenty
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: fifth we're steaming, frying or baking everything off, you know,
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: and it's just all done and that'll take a matter
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: of forty five minutes. And the nature of that also
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: is that it doesn't all have to be ready at
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: the same time either, which is cool. You know, you
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: can kind of just do one thing and then the
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: next you know, you can be in the kitchen with
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: a glass of wine and just like at these it'll
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: be done in fifteen minutes. Let's just have this now
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: and everybody eats, and in the next next course, you know,
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: a little bit of rabbit next, and then next up
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: is as a flounder. Next up is some hog, followed
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: by some more hog, and then more hog, more whatever.
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: But you know, I think for me, I like to
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: get a little creative with it. I mean, you think
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: about the Italian Americ relitis. I have more of an
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: American Italian tradition, and the feasts is seven fishes. You know,
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: on Crystal Eve, you have seven different fish dishes, And
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: I think that you can honor that tradition, but you
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: could get as creative as you want. You know, I'd
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: be like, just make seven different things with fish. What's
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: seven things? I'm like, I don't know. But then within
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: that concept, what I would do is say, like a
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: couple of these things have to be cold and pre made,
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: you know, so you're not making all seven at the
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: same time. One might be like a soup or something
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: that's a reheat. One might be something that you have
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: to do in the moment, all of them new, and
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: then you know, just like kind of stage it out
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: so that you're not having to be all hands on deck,
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: moving around hot pants for with all these different things.
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: But you know, I think it's also an excuse to
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: just you know, really get into it and get that
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: enjoyment out of it and experience that, you know, and
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: uh yeah, just use the game. You know what it
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: is for us, it's it's it's I think it's really
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: it's great for celebrating, you know, like that that deer.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: You know, this pecan fed dough that we're about to eat.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: It's like, it's going to be amazing. And let me
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: tell you again, let me tell you about it. You know,
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: it took a master of woodsman to pull this off.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I love your point though about how this
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: should be almost an event in itself, right, And I
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: think a lot of us, I'll speak for myself, sometimes
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: have been guilty of it just being a means to
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: an end, right. But the way it sounds like you
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: approach it is you really are looking at the cooking
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: process as a part of the celebration itself. And so
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: in doing a little bit of forward thinking and a
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: little bit of preparing ahead of time, you set yourself
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: up for the ability to do that. You can invite
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: people to do it with you. You can have some
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: wine while you're doing. You've got some music playing that
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: is part of the get together and that seems to
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: make a lot of sense.
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Do you like Do you like siding in your rifle?
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: I do, Well, let me take it back.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: I'll take it back sometimes if I've got friends there,
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: it's a fun thing. Otherwise it's usually I get the
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: job done so that I can get out there and hunt.
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: To be honest, Yeah, yeah, if we if we start
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: looking at this as like every step of the way,
• 31:38
  Speaker 5: I mean, going on on X, you know, six months
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: before that turkey huh, being like, I bet they're right there.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: You know, that's fun. It's fun. Yeah. For me, scanning
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: a deer, hogs whatever, very rough. You know, I do
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: a ton of it. But for me particularly, I don't
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: know how many times i've you know, somebody else has
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: gotten a deer and I'll be like, hey, you want
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: me to skin that? I love it. I love when
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: you feel the skin off and you see steam come
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: off of it, because making that it's it's moving from
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: deer to food real quick. At that point, it's like
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: the temperatures coming down. And I find that very that's
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: enjoyable and so like if you can just that mindset
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: of like, hey, I'm gonna enjoy this rather than not.
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: And so many times it's it's just a choice for making.
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: And if you set yourself up, you know, like hey,
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna hang out with friends. We're gonna we're gonna
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: map out this dinner, like we're you know, let's just
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: create a real time, conceptual Christmas dinner here. We're gonna
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: just cook five dishes from one deer or one elk
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: or something cool. It's like everybody just gets together and
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: like kind of brainstorms it, or maybe everybody takes a dish,
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: but you but you know, now it's like, hey, we're
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: not gonna all there's there's five dishes. We've got a
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: four burner stove. Therefore we can't all four be on
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: the stove. So one person gets the stuff, one person
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: gets the other. Months person's gonna, uh, you know, have
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: something a cold dish. You know, maybe somebody's bringing some
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: sausages and then the grill just on the porch. It's
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: gonna be going, you know, you map it out that way,
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, you're you're in kind of
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: a different realm of enjoyment. You know, you're not in
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: everybody's way. You've got it mapped and it doesn't have
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: to be over complicated. I'm I'm I'm not. I'm trying
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: not to overcomplicate. I'm trying to decomplicate these things with
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: these with these suggestions. But I think you know it
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: could be supremely fun.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: So let's talk through a few more specific ideas as
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: far as menu. I would love to start with deer
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: and then maybe tackle a couple other categories, And just
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: if you would be willing to throw out a couple
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: of favorite preparations or suggestions that would fit well for
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: this Christmas or New Year's time frame. And of course
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: these can be used any but we're just thinking kind
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: of a big special celebration.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: What would be your.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Top handful of venison dishes that you know somebody might
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: want to consider and look up the recipe and check
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: it out.
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, we like to have prime rib at
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: Christmas or all the time, right, But something you know
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: in the medium rare z you know, like and also
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: I like to think about that too, like different textures,
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: different cooking methods, different outcomes. So maybe some medium rare
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: beer or but by that I mean something that's roasted
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: or grilled. And then then coming from that idea, you
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: could just continue on that prime rib rap and you
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: could say, oh, like a nice horse radish cream, some
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: mashed potatoes, some cream spinach would be really nice with that,
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: and you could, you know, just all of a sudden,
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: have like a really nice Christmas menu right there. You
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: could also think, you know, we like Christmas has like
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: kind of this spice note to it, so like your
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: warm spices like cinnamon and clove, orange, maybe red wine,
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: things like that, and you could think like, oh, well,
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: we could make some sort of stew of venison, or
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: we could do a pot roast, but just putting a
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: little bit of these things in there to kind of
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: just elevate it beyond like a salt and pepper pot roast,
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: you know, just like a couple of clothes in they're
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: a little creating a cinnamon, a couple of bay leaves
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: and a little orange zests, and all of a sudden,
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: it's a little more christmasy, you know. And then you know,
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: you serve that alongside your medium rare grilled backstrap, or
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: maybe you're gonna grill off the high round off of
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: an elk or something like that, or tender loin off
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: of a mouse, and then you could have like a
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: little braized slow cook upon it. And like I said earlier,
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: that could be done, be done five days beforehand, you know,
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: and just read it. And it's also going to be
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: good with the mashed potatoes. You know. You could serve
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: some raw I love raw venison, you know, like a
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: little just classic carpaccio or classic tartar or something, you know,
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: like some some tindon bowing and you chop that up
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: and mix it with them, a little bit of chopped
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: caper and parsley, a little dab of mustard, and serve
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: it on some little toasts you know beforehand, uh shank
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: a neck ribs, you know, I just adore deer. I
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: love venison. I think you could go in a lot
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: of different directions, but what I would conceptually aim for
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: mostly is, you know, if you're comfortable with it, something raw,
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: something grilled, medium rare, something slow cooked, maybe something brothy.
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: Maybe you do a soup course, you know, something like
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: a French onion soup with a deer shank in it. Yeah,
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: it's always really nice and it can be really done beforehand.
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of ways to delve in there. But
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: you know, while you're thinking about all your little stations
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: where you're cooking and trying to stay out of your
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: own way, also think about the different textures and flavors
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: and preparations to kind of get a diversity of that
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: and that I'll make that more meaningful. When we're finding
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: restaurant menus, you know, we never go like hot item,
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: hot item, hot item, hot item. There might be something
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: cold in there. It might something broathy, something that has
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: more brightness and acidity, and that just makes a meal
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: just more profound, you know, and your your senses are
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: you know, you're covering the spectrum. It's like a song.
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: You have base notes and you have trouble, you know,
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: and you want to get everything in between.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Are there any other, uh, for lack of knowing the
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: proper vocabulary, these other diverse categories that you want to
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: mix and match when thinking through a meal. Because that's
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: a great insight. And I've heard some of this talked
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: about with different types of flavor types, and but I
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: have not really understood it myself. Could you expand on
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: that if there's any other ways we should be thinking
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: about this. Like you mentioned brothy or silky or smooth,
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: I imagine there's crispy or crunchy or different ways to
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: think about. What else would fall into this this I
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: don't even know how to speak about it because I
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: don't know the right words. How else would you speak
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: about this? What other types of diversity would you add
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: into a meal like this?
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's a lot of it right
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: there is you know in temperature, I mean temperature, texture, brightness.
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: I really those are like the foundational things, ok there
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: in creating something in a menu that's diverse. And again,
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: this can be as simple as you want, or you
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: could just do a monster mixed grill of things, you know,
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: like and like the shock and all platter that's just
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: got everything piled up on it. You know, You've got
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: different cuts. So people are like, what's this? So this
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: is the tenderline, this is the backstrap. This is a
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: little bit of soloin. These are two different sausages that
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: we have. This is a slow cooked shank or a
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: big chunk of neck right here that we put a
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: slow cooker for seven hours, and it's in there too.
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: And so then now you're looking at it and you've
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: got you know, this is different from that a little bit.
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: Then you've got the sausage and it can be all
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: over the place, and then that's fun too. And then
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: that's just one shot. You put it all on a
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: platter and it's you know, a little primal and people
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: love stuff like that. And then you've just got some
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: vegetable sides around it, and it can be that simple,
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: you know, and it could all almost all be executed
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: over a fire as well.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so let's talk birds. You mentioned your Thanksgiving
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: turkey preparations. Would you add any other turkey ideas to
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: the Christmas menu for folks to consider? Or upland birds
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: or waterfowl? What are a couple other things to think about?
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean my first where I always go first
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: with that would be some sort of pate or tureen,
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: and I lose a lot of people with that. You know.
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: I've got many many goals in life. One of them
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: is to get everybody a little more are a little
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: less afraid of those words. It doesn't have to just
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: be liver. I mean you could make a pat or
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: a tureen out of ground pork or ground venus like
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: no liver whatsoever. These are just words, you know, like
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: basically just cold preparations. When I think birds, that's one
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: of the first things that I think of. It is like,
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: that's a great starter that can be made a week
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: ahead of time and then just popped onto a plate.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: Done.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: Yea like reacts, which is like shredded, slow cooked. Any
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: bird would be great, from a dove to a turkey,
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: you can do that with and it's really nice. I've
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: got several recipes for it. There's recipes that exists all
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: over the place for things like that. Very simple. You
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: serve that with a little bit of pickle, some some mustard,
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: and some crackers or some toasted bread. First course done.
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: Other than that, birds, I mean roasting birds whole. While
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: I do it and I encourage it it, we might
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: be kind of delving into a realm of creating some stress,
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: which is how this whole conversation started. It's like, are
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: we gonna nail a whole roasted bird for this? And
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: I'm not trying to dissuade anybody from doing that, but
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: I'm just saying that the there's a there's a degree
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: of peril that you could Yeah, with that, you know,
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: it's like you know, but you know, fortune favors the bold,
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: So maybe you're gonna nail you know, six roasted mallards
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: for twenty people. That'd be really cool. I think that
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: for me. When it comes to birds, separating them out,
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: like I discussed with my own Thanksgiving menu, separating the
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: legs from the breast, particularly with game birds, is a
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: very good idea. It's a fail safe. You know, you
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: don't have to worry so much about the legs being
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: right on, and you can get those done way ahead
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: of time. They can be cooked to perfection three, four
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: or five days before go down, and then they're cool
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: and all you got to do is gently reheat them,
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: and you know they're there. You don't to worry about it,
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: And then that gives you the opportunity to nail the breasts,
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: which is where the more precision needs to happen, whether
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: that's a duck breast where it needs to be very
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: nicely seared and the fat needs to be crisped. But
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: those duck legs are already separated and they've been slow cooked,
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: and then you're going to put them back together and
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: everything's going to be perfect. The medium or duck breast
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: is going to be there, and then those almost shredding
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: duck legs are already cooked. So no matter what the
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: bird is, that would be my recommendation. You know, I
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: just got done with a really fun pheasant hunt with
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: Ryan Callahan up in South Dakota, and that's you know,
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: we're also hunting, so this is I mean a similar topic,
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: and that if you've been hunting all day, you don't
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: want to rush back to camp and be trying to
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: throw together at dinner and then eat at ten pm.
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: Right it's the worst. I want food to be on
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: the table at seven, so that it's just like anybody
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: want needs to go to bed, you know, if we're
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: going to get up early, it's it's doable. You know,
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: you don't want to be waiting on that same concept.
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: So you know, you know, at lunch when we come
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: back in for a minute, I would like run into
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: the kitchen get the legs going from the pheasants, and
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: then in the evening when we get back and it's
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: time to assemble everything, then I'm cooking the breast. The
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: legs are done, you know, they've been slow cooking all day,
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: those pheasants you know little runners. So I mean they
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: legit took four or five hours to get tender, but
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: I've got that done. You know, the legs are done
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: and then the breasts take ten minutes maybe, and so
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: that works out. That's that's a lesson in planning as well.
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: So for bird Yes, i I'm an avowed bird eater.
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: I love game birds. I love we eat a lot
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: of dove, we eat a lot of turkey. I don't
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: live in a region with a lot of other upland birds,
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: but when the opportunity arises, I like to do that.
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: So I think the key concept here would be separate
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: your breasts and legs, playing everything out. You know your
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: your breasts are going to cook at the very end,
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: and you can have your legs pre cooked. You know,
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: I'm pre done.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: So if somebody wants to go the turkey row for Christmas,
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: like my family would do. You mentioned you did the
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: turkey breast for Thanksgiving. What is your number one best recommendable?
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: How would you recommend someone prepare a turkey breast for
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: a Christmas dinner? You mentioned you might mention it kind
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: of generally earlier, but how would you kind of spell
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: it out in detail to just nail it for that
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Christmas dinner wild turkey breast the Jesse Griffiths way.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah again, So I'm going to go, like, like I said,
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: like that that souv method with the emerging circulator for me,
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: like I said, it's the only time I break it out,
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: and I have not found a better way to cook
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: turkey breasts. So one one hundred and forty degrees sounds
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: a little low for turkey breast, but since it goes
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: for three hours, it alters the texture and essentially pasteurizes
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: it as well. It's it's not a complex method, you know,
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: in a circulator. I don't know how much they cost,
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: you know, like anything, but it's not like five hundred dollars.
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: I think it's probably around ninety dollars to buy this
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: crazy little tube that mounts into a pot and then
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: it maintains a temperature to very precise. You can do
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: one hundred and forty point five degrees on it. I
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: like one hundred and forty degrees for three hours for
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: the turkey. And what that really enables me to do
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: is pre season my turkey brust with you know this
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: classic poultry seasonings of say age rosemary, parsley, maybe some celery, leaves, salt, pepper, garlic, lemon.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: You know, it's like when you smell it, like that's familiar.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: That's poultry seasoning right there. It's pre season it. And
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: it can sit for two or three days sealed in
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: that bag, and then that bag just drops into that water.
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: Three hours later you pull it out. You don't even
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: have to see it. You could just slice it right there,
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: and it is. It is the thinnest tip of that
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: turkey breast and the thickest part are cooked exactly the
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: same and they're cooked perfect, very tender.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: And so you are not brining it. Is that what
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: you're saying, or is that technically sort of a brining
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: method by putting it in that bag with salt water
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: for so many.
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: Days there's no water involved, but as the salt reacts
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: with that turkey breast, it is. And this is this
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: is a funny thing for me. I'm always like complaining
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: about people saying dry brine, because brine to me and
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: implies a liquid. This is a dry brine. This is
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: you know, you're pree. Other thing you're doing with that
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: is you're seasoning it throughout. So it's not just season
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: on the outside. So all of those flavors, the salt is,
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: you know, the limon and the gar like, are hitching
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: a ride with the salt to the interior of that turkey,
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: so that when you cook it, you've got that flavor throughout,
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: you know, and so it's really nice. I think, you know,
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: that's probably for me, the ultimate way to cook turkey
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: breast specifically, but also you could roast it seared off
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: really beautifully. Another thing that I kind of a standard
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: that I apply to a lot of poultry is that,
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: like I particularly if you have the skin on poultry,
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: I like to only cook it direct heat or in
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: a pan on the skin side, and then I like
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: to cook the flesh side in liquid. So typically it'll
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: be some sort of stalk from that same bird, you know.
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: So to spell that out, it would be like, if
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: you had a skin on turkey breast, what I would
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: recommend would be to seer beautifully that skin side. Then
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: when you flip it over, add stock to the pan,
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: and so that flesh side is cooking more gently with moisture,
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: and also you're getting a lot of steam. You could
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: throw that into the oven and then just monitor it,
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: you know. You can either do that with a probe,
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: a remote probe thermometer, or just check it, you know,
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: and then once it hits your target temp, which I
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: would say it would be one fifty if you're cooking
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: it conventionally, pull it out. And then you've also got
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: the starting of your gravy, you know, or a sauce,
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: and you just need to whisk it all a little
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: butter to that and then it's that's done as well.
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: But what you've only applied, that applied that dry heat
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: to that one skin side, and it keeps it. It
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: tends to eat poultry a lot more moist.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: I have a dumb question, but it just a rose
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: and it's something I've thought about while doing it over
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: and over in the years, over the years, but have
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: never really now what the correct way to do it is.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: If I'm checking the temperature on something like a turkey
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: breast or a backstrap or something like that, should I
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: be I feel so silly asking this. Should I be
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: sticking that the momare in the same hole over and
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: over or should be doing different holes every different time?
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Does that matter? Can I do it too much? Like
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: it's taking it in and out of the oven, or
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: checking it over and over on the you know, on
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: the skillet. Is that a bad idea in some kind
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: of way. That's two part question.
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: I guess, yeah, and I mean I appreciate that I
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: a food scientist might call me out on this and say, no,
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: I'm wrong. I feel like it doesn't matter that much.
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: You definitely want to be hitting the thickest part, you know,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: So a turkey breast or any any bird, poultry breast
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: is relatively tear drop shaped, and so there's going to
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: be one thickest part of that that you definitely want
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: to be probing, because that's the part that needs to
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: be to signify the rest of us done. Yeah, I
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: don't think it matters that much. I mean, if you can,
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: you know, if you can still see that little and
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: just kind of keep going to the same one, you
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: might experience some moisture loss of bubbling up out of there.
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: But to minimize everybody's stress, let's just say that it
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: doesn't matter, and then let's believe that too.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: Fair enough, all right, We've talked upland birds, we talked turkeys,
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: we've talked deer.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: You alluded earlier to some ideas with you know, a ham.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: You mentioned a creative idea around.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: Fish, seven fish ideas for Christmas the Italian tradition. Are
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: there any other you know, off the wall ideas or
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: a fish or hog suggestion that you want to throw
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: in the mix for people to be thinking about over
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: the coming weeks. Or do you feel we've covered some
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: of your favorites?
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: Oh? No, I love I love the idea of talking
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: about fish. You know, here in Texas for the longest time,
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: but they started closing the flounder season in the month
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: of November, which totally support you know, it protects them
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: during their you know, vulnerable spawning time. There was several
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: Thanksgivings where if I had caught a big flounder, we
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: would eat that for Thanksgiving, big stuff flounder. You know.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: That was before I kind of got locked into the
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: turkey and ham. But I still think that it's it's
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: we're going after the same thing here. It's like something
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: big and celebratory and you've got a nice twenty three
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: inch flounder and you've stuffed it with fresh blue crab
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: meat and peppers and corn bread and butter. That's pretty
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: celebratory and it feeds a ton of people. And it's
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: the whole thing too. You know, it's impressive. People like
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: all that whole flounder. You know, doing a whole roasted
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: fish is very cool for something like that for a celebration.
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: And now if you know, I will freeze a flounder,
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: you know, for such things. If I get a nice,
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: big one, I'll freeze it, you know, be like oh,
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: or even if it's not a holiday, you know, just
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: be people over. We might have just a whole big flounder.
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: I think that uh, you know, fish that that cook
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: whole nicely, you know, would things like flounder even I
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: mean a lot of saltwater fish. You know, you could
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: do big red fish on the halfshell, your rock fish
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: from the West Coast, bigger ones, you know, you can
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: roast those whole, and then also another you know, like
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: up there with the Pataisan toureenes. I want to normalize
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: fish soups too. You know. It's like the rest of
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: the world loves fish and broth and things like that,
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: and there's just exquisite recipes all over the world four
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: fish soups, and they when done right, they can be beautiful,
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: you know, really really nice. And I think people just
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: they see those two words together and like nah, fish soup,
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: and I'm like, yeah, but really listen to hear me
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: out here. It's like it's you know, some potatoes and
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: tomatoes and pepper are a really route you want to
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: go with it, And it can also be made in
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: a big batch. It could be made beforehand, and then
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: you could just have your dice filets set aside and
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: then literally the last minute or so of those get
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: added in and so they're cooked perfectly. And then you
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: can start to throw other stuff in there. You can
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: clams and muscles and shrimp and squid and all these
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: other things can kind of go in there too, and
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: then you've got a party paea. You know, like if
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: you go out there and you know, like cook outside
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: a big paya, throw whatever you want in there. You know,
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: up squirrel, you know it's awesome and piea. You know,
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: just just think, you know a little bit creatively around
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: that stuff, and don't be afraid to do seafood. Seafood's
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: very celebratory and you know, the rest of the world
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: getting somewhat in agreements in agreements with me on that.
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: And then the hogs, you know, we we have. That's
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: the very prolific here. I tend to hunt a lot
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: of hogs, and if we get a particularly beautiful one,
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: then it can be a really nice centerpiece. The one
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: that's got a lot of fat can roast nicely like
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: a nice dry heat roast. Whether that's in the oven,
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: you're also throw it on the smoker cook it. So
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: you could do a whole arm roast a whole big shoulder.
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: You could do a ham, you know, in many different styles,
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: not just the way that I describe, like brining. You
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: can just slow roast it being put it in a
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: crock pond. And then there's also things like porktto where
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: you could bone out the backstrap and leave the belly
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: attached and roll that up, tie it and roast it.
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: Got a rescue for that in the hog book. There's
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: all kinds of stuff hogs are. Hogs are really easy
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: to play with if you've got a particularly nice one,
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: like if it's got a lot of fat on it,
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: and they lend themselves nicely to cooking large pieces of them,
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: if they do have that intrinsic fat and so, and
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: most people love pork, you know, a really good fat
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: wild pig could be absolutely delicious and slow cooking things,
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: you know, like a big roast like that. I know, hey,
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: that's going to take six hours, but also it's gonna
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: hold well for another six hours after that, you know,
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: so I've got so much leeway with that. Like if
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: we're eating it too, it just means that I need
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: to have that in at eight you know, I've got
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: a pre season in the refrigerator, a big arm roast.
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: It's in the refrigerator, it's ready to go at eight am.
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: Just goes right in the oven, you know, at two o'clock,
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: no worries, it's just done. You know. It's so easy.
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: But you know I've seasoned at twenty four hours ahead
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: of time. I had it in a refrigerator in the pan.
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: I'm going to serve it out too, you know, again
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: like cutting down on those steps.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Is there is there a resource for people, like a
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: like the best book or something that you would ever
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: recommend to someone that talks about just those simple foundational
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: principles of cooking and planning, you know, the stuff that
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you guys learned in the first week or
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: two of culinary school or something like just the basics
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: the foundational skills or things to be thinking about that
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: if anyone was out there and just thinking, man, I
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: got to figure out my my my cooking game, you know,
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: not specific to anyone recipe or cut, but more so
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: just you know, this foundational stuff you've kind of been
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: referring to over time.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: Is there anything like that?
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to think there's there's books out there that
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: talk a lot about more venu or restaurant than younts
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: like that. I can't think off the top of my
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: head about like a conceptual approach more for the home cook.
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry, you know, that's okay. I think the Hogbook
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: I don't talk about this with a laser focus so much,
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: but a lot of these ideas are presented in there,
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: and I talk about you know, packaging and pre looking,
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: like how things can just be cooked the day ahead
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: or a couple of days ahead and then reheat it.
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: And but I think, you know, it's it is an
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: essential thing, you know. And sorry, I might have to
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: loot back with an answer, but I can't think of anything.
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: Well, well, that's okay.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: I've just found myself over and over again hearing you
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: and thinking myself, jeez, I wish that I knew some
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: of these simple things that probably seems so simple and
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: you don't even think about to yourself, but the average
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: everyday person out there is like, oh yeah, simple but
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense and makes my life a
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: lot easier to make my u you know, the final
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: product probably a lot better. And I guess that's a
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: perfect way to kind of wrap this up, because what
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do, and I was going to leave
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: with this, but now we'll end with it instead is
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: I do want to talk foundational principles, but we're going
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: to zoom out away from the holidays and just talk
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: about veniceon in particular, since most folks listening to this
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: that's probably their number one and I would just love
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: to hear to kind of close up our discussion here today.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: The three commandments for preparing venison from Jesse Griffiths. If
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: you had like three hard fast rules or pillars, key
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: things that you must never you know, forget, what would
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: those three things be?
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: Jesse? Yeah, okay, I mean yeah, I'm gonna have to
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: think of these off the top of my head. The
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: number one field care. You know, everybody says, you know,
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: like how you know that it's true. It is really true.
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: I think that the transition of life to food has
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: to be monitored as best as possible. But it's also
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: got so many of the variables. You know. I'm here
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: in Texas. You know, the day I shot that dough,
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: it was eighty two degrees, and that's common, that could
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: happen in February. So I'm in a way different situation
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: than somebody in Wisconsin, you know. But after the fact,
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: after that hide is off or to lead the high hot,
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: let's just after the gods are out for me. The
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: key thing is cold and dry, like keeping that animal
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: obviously as cold as it possibly can get, but also
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: as dry as possible. Like down here, we tend to
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: throw things into coolers full of ice to quote unquote
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: bleed them, and I think it's pretty detrimental to the
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: how the meat turns out. No other meat industry in
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: the world does that, you know, you know, kill uh,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: you know, commercial bee for domestic pork and then put
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: them in an ice bath. It doesn't happen. They keep
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: everything cold and dry for the reason. So I think
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: keeping stuff as cold and dry as possible, making minimal
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: cuts until it's time to butcher, you know, allowing rigor
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: mortis process to go all the way through. But that's
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: defined by the size of your cooler and a lot
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: of other things. You know, these are optimal, you know things.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: I understand that the real world situations get weird and
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: you get bad shots. Just like there's a bullet, it's
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: a spine, it goes down and it Nike's the stomach.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: You know, it's just like you gotta rense it off,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: you know. You know, let's just we'll just work through that.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: But as as a rent, well keep it cold and.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: Dry before you go any further, sorry, before you go
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: any further than that. One one quick follow up on
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: that note, speaking of like real world situations, right, I know,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: the perfect situation would be able to have a walk
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: in cooler or somewhere where you could keep that deer
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: hung at a consistent temperature.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: But in the real world, a lot of us have
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: to hang our deer.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: If we're not you know, if we're gonna keep it
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: around for a while and not gonna deal with it
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: right away, we're gonna hang it up, you know, on
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: the back deck, or hang it up on a tree
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: in the backyard, or maybe you have somewhere you can
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: hang it in your garage, But temperatures are fluctuating. So
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: even now when I know it's gonna be cold enough here,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: but it might get really cold, like it might be
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: five and that deer is going to freeze all the
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: way through. But then if I want to leave it
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: hanging for a while, then a week later and it
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: warms up to thirty eight or forty two, well now
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: it's gonna thaw. But then it's gonna drop back down
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: to ten. I'm freezing, I'm thawing, I'm moving around. Is
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: that Is that okay to do that for a while,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: to keep it hanging or would you say if it's
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: not gonna be consistent, you should you should deal with
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: it some other way.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: I think that you know, you're you're forced into that.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: You know, like there's not much that the that I
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: can offer because that's the situation you're in. You know,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: our situation down here is so different. You're like, you
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: have to hang it. I'm like, we we can't do that.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: We can. We can hang things overnight sometimes, you know,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: but I mean, it's it's rare for the temperatures here
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: to be uh, for to go four days you know
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: where the temperatures aren't going to get over forty pretty rare.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: Yeh.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: So I'm trying to craft like a really blanket answer
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: to that. I think again, you know, Lloyd bliping back
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: to the very start of the conversation as far as
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: like stress and how much we put on ourselves. You know,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: if when you're dealing with it, that's usually the best thing.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: You know. It's just like if it's going to freeze solid,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: you're going to experience a lot of the cellular structure
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: of all those muscles. It's going to burst a little bit,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: and you're gonna have some moisture loss, and you're going
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: to freeze and thaw and maybe freeze and thaw again.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: Is it optimal? No, But we're this is a real
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: world situation. So I would say it's fine. And it's
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: working for you as well. So there's a real key
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: point there. It's like you still like eating deer. You're
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: you're eating deer safely and it's not affecting your your
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: venison consumption experience. Therefore, I would it is not broke,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: don't don't change it. So walletill here that we have
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: to store things in coolers almost universe unless you have
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: a walk in I don't, and so I have to
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: store things in coolers. And so I'm in a totally
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: different situation of keeping things cold until butchery day. And
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: you know, people was like, well, how how far until
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: butchery day? And I'm like, well again, you know, you
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: got a job. You know you might not be able
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: to butcher for a week, or you might be forced
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: into butcher in the next day, and like, well what's best?
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, listen again, will stress yourself out. You
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: got to do what you got to do. If you
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: have to butcher, you dear twenty four hours after your
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: skin and gut it. None. By that, I mean cut
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: it into all the cuts that's going to that are
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: gonna be packaged. You got to do it. But to
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: loot back, I mean I think the core tenet here
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: is cold and dry. You're definitely maintaining that. Yeah, cold
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: to an extreme? Yes, Okay, wow? God is that airflow?
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: And I think that airflow is key for us. It's
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: it's this battle of keeping things dry and an iced
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: cooler where we're dealing with not only compensation and things
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: like that. I use food great bags to wrap deer
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: and then keep them in one hundred and sixty core
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: cooler packed is as much ice as I possibly can get,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: and that's how I achieve success with the Can we
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: move on?
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, particularly you're grilling cuts trying to get a
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: little age on them. You know, if you are processing,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: you know, within twenty four to forty eight hours of
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: that animal dyeing and it's going right into the freezer
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: and then coming out and going on the grill as
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: soon as it's thought gonna be good, you know. But
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: what's really good as if you can put a little
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: bit of let's call it dry age, refrigerated age onto
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: venison cuts, particularly grilling cuts, so your backstraps, any of
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: your leg steaks, tenderlines, things like that. If you can
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: get well tender one is not so much you're said there,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: but a little bit of age on there, it can
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: be exceptional. And what it does just really gets the
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: more tender and I think that you'll it's really like
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: peak experience with with vedicin is when you have a
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: backstrap or if you're if you're not worried about CWD
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: and you can cut like bone in steaks like a
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: big porterhouse where you've got some tenderline and the backstrap
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: on one steak. I've aged up to four weeks. I've
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: eaten medicon that you know, I joke about this is
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: I don't know if the guy forgot about it or
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: if he purposely aged it for six months, a whole
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: leg in a refrigerator, refrigerator, oxidized and black on the outside.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: I trimmed all that off, and then what we had
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: were these describably tender leg steaks that were not They
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: were not cheesy, they were not like strongly flavored gaming.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: None of those worked beautiful, absolutely in the tenderness of
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: i'd say tendeel on their backstrap. So if you can
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: get a little bit of age on it and by
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: put it on a plate and your refrigerator for two
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: days before you grill it and just kind of pat
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: it dry, that's that's a start, you know, That's that's
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: you know, key, you know, and.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: I think you're a deal.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: Hmm. I really enjoyed the U twenty eight day age venison,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: and I did it in my refrigerator again. I you know,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: I live in a little rental house and I don't
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: have I've got I do have a freezer, and I
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: have a home refrigerator, so I just had a plate
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: with a little rack on it that I you know,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: had a couple back straps and all my porterhouses cut
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: and I just age those for as long as I could.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: It just kind of experimental and twenty.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: So there's there's nothing that can go wrong with that.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: I can go wrong. But you know, somebody had a
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: friend text me yesterday and he said, mere, this happened
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: so much. Can I eat this? It's it's a hog,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: you know, there's a little bit of some a little
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: bit of green happening. And I'm like, how does it smell?
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: He's like, smells fine, It's fine. I'm gonna really regret
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: that if I if I could afford ley have a
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: lawyer like what do you call? You know, hoone call
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: or whatever, and he would be like, dude, don't don't
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: say that. But you will really know in almost all
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: food cases when you should not eat it, your brain
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: is like no, no, non oxidation, and that black out
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: exterior that that will happen from just aging casually in
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: a refrigerator. Once you get that off and you look
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: at the inside of it, and you'd be like, looks great.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: In fact, you smile it and you're like, I really
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: want to eat this, you know. I think you'll know.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: But I would say, you know, the twenty eight might
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 4: be a little extreme. Maybe seven days, maybe four days,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: you know, just to get a little dry on it
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: and start that process of aging, and then you'll really
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: notice like some different I just think the flavor is
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: so much better, and then the textures gets a lot
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: better too.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: I've heard some people say something similar about being able
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: to get a little bit of age in the freezer
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: and mention that man like a backstrap that's been the
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: freezer for three years. You know, as long as you
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: don't have some freezer, as long as you trim off
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: the freezer burm, that can maybe be better too.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: Is there anything to that.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: I can't speak to that I could see that happening? Again,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: I don't even I wouldn't even be to define what
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: the scientific process of that happening. But there is basically
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: a degradation happening. So with dry agent, you've got these
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: enzymes that are naturally present in the meat kind of
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: working on itself. You stop that clock when you go
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: into the freezer. So something different would be happening, and
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: I couldn't find what that would be. To kind of
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: circle back to the freezing comment I made earlier, It
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: might have something to do with the molecular but the
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: cell breakdown of as those freezing causes things to expand.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: As those things break over time, you might just have
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: the protein structures breaking down a little bit more. That's
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: a guess. I can see it anyway, when you have
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: successes like that. And I love the challenge of it too,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: because some people say you can't eat meat that's been
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: present more than so when it's like, oh, hey, you
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: haven't had you haven't eaten venison until you've eaten three
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: year old freezer burn venison. And I'm like, I'm like,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: that's cool. I mean, that's why I was doing this.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: It's like and you're always leving things and challenging, and
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: you know you shouldn't take everything that I say to
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: be in the gospel either. You know. It's like, these
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: are my experiences, and I do love hearing success around
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: it because what again back to my core pillar of enjoyment.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 4: What it means is people are interested and excited about
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: eating game and if they're busting out that three year
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: old backstrap and being like that was really good. I'm like, cheers, man,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: we're winning here. You're enjoying it. You're still enjoying it.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: You're in the game.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah all right.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: So so last venison, tenant, last last suggestion? Do you
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: have any final one?
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Cut it like you want, you know. I I
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: butcher my own dear. I teach classes on it. You know,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: butcher is a real is a real thing. People sometimes
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: like they'll be like, oh, you must, you know, do
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: all these crazy cuts, and I'm like, no, not really.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: You know. I was talking to friend the other day
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: and he was just like, yeah, that's just that's grind pile.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, why do we Why do we say
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: it like that? You know, why you spice? We want
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 4: the grind pile like it's that is not I mean
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: to me. I mean, I love breakfast sausage, particularly made
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: with venison. I love burgers, like cheese burgers, particularly with venison.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: And I think that you know, we've attached some you know,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: within the subculture, a little bit of embarrassment around the
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 4: grind pile or what it is that we enjoy, or
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 4: if you have kids, like are they going to be
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: most inclined to eat you know, a quick pasta sauce
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: made with some ground venison or pants sausage. And the
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: answer is probably yes. Or if are you able to
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 4: kind of sarititiously replace beef with then in this form
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: or that form and get people to eat game, which
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: is just a win win, then that's what you should do.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: And so like a lot of times, I'm breaking down
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: a deer and it is backstraps. We eat a lot
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: of cutlets. So the I round top around bottom round
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: gets sliced down and pounded because I love that and
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: my daughter loves that and that's what she really wants
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 4: to eat the most. And that's how I win in
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: this situation. And I don't feel bad about it. You know. Yeah,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: the grind pile when I'm on my back porch cutting
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: up a dough is it's going to be large and yeah,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 4: so yeah, I don't think you're gonna put that little
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: bit of stink on grind pile, you know, on their prase.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh no, I own it. It's cool, it's fine,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: you know, if you want to grind the whole deer,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: I don't care if you're going to eat the whole deer.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: That's cool, you know. So you know, again that's kind
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: of falls into the enjoyment category. But you know, cut
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 4: for yourself. You know, cut it and portion it and
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: sizes that work for you. That's also important. You know.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: It's like if you if you're dining alone, then portionate
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: and single servings. If you're feeding eight people, then portion it,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 4: you know, subsequently like that, and so that'll make your
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: life a lot easier. So when you're cutting your own deer,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 4: do it for yourself and don't be like, oh, I
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: have to cut a bunch of steaks off this because
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: I saw on Instagram, you know, this whole array of steaks,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 4: and you know, but I really, you know, I just
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: like breakfast sausage and make thirty pounds of breakfast sausage.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 4: It's cool, you know, it's good.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, the grind pile gets a lot of action.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: To my family with a five year old and a
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: seven year old boy, there is a lot of ground
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: and we eat the back out of it.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because it's good.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, So Jesse, Uh, there's so much that you
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: have to share. I mean, you've you've shared a lot
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: just in an hour. But I know, you've got a
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: lot more great books. I own two of them. I
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: probably need to get the third one.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: I don't.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: I don't get many hog hunting opportunities, but one of
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: these days I will. And then don't have a good
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: reason to dig into the Hogbook, but you do amazing work.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: Folks need to need to see it if they are
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: not already, where can they go to connect with you
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: to pick up a copy of any of your books
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: or see anything else you're working on.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So the Turkey Book and the Hogbook, you know,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: lead self published and distribute. You can get them through
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: meat Eater, so that they are probably the only other
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 4: online outlet to get the Hogbook and the Turkey Book.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: And then the rest of the Hogbook and the Turkey
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 4: Book are also available on our website, which is the
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: Wildbooks dot com. And I also have a subscription platform
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 4: that it's pretty heavy on hog butchery. It's got a
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: little bit of turkey and blue crab and dove as
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: well content on there. So it's a subscription but it's
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: got hours of video on there, and we're about to
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: add a bunch more of hog butchery, so we will
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: have the entirety of basically a companion to the Hogbook,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: so four different hog butchery situations plus recipes and essays
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 4: and things like that on there, and that's called the
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: Pedernal Projects. So it's the p E D E r
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: n a Lproject dot com. You can also get there
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: through my Instagram page and so forth. But it's a
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: subscription and it allows people to watch the videos that
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 4: are kind of run parallel to that in the Hog
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: Book and in the restaurants here in Austin to di
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: do it. We serve a lot of paral hog. We
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 4: serve some odd ad and some nil guy antelope and
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: then things like that, as well as all kind of
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: delicious vegetables and other meats. Yeah, if you're ever in Austin,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: you got to come do that because when you come
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: to Texas to hunt pigs, you're gonna want to come
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: to Austin and do that. So, but you definitely need
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: to come help us with that problem. We do not
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: the state of Texas does not charge non resident hunters
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: for any type of license to come hunting. You need
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: no documentation whatsoever. Opportunity, Yeah, and the limit is all
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: of them. So whenever you're ready, get down here and
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: help us out. They are absolutely delicious and available.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: So yeah, well you need to make that happen. Jesse,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: and I just want to thank you again.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: Really really enjoyed our chat. I have appreciated all of
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: your work over the years.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: I have learned a lot in the past now again today,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: So thank.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: You and keep with the good work.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it too.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: All right, and that's a wrap. Thanks for being here.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: Best of luck with your upcoming hunts as we kind
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: of round.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: Out this year.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: Best of luck with the upcoming big feast that I'm
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: sure you're preparing now after this chat, hopefully you're emboldened
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: to try some new things, to step out, step up,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: and elevate your wild game cooking this holiday season.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: Enjoy it.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: Like Jesse said, the key thing is to enjoy this process,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: to have fun with it.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: That's been the theme all year.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: I guess we've talked about that for years now as
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: I've been recentering much of my focus on that, and
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: it makes sense that the same thing should be the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: case in the kitchen.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: So enjoy it.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: Enjoy the holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year's and until
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: next time, stay wired to hunt.