By BRENDA JOSEPHSON
Corned venison is a delicious way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day while paying tribute to a preparation style popular among Irish immigrants, but with an Alaskan twist.
Whether you have deer, moose, caribou, or elk in your freezer, brining is an excellent way to add variety to your dinner table. The salt-cured game can be served with the usual St. Patrick’s Day accompaniments of cabbage, carrots, and onions, and it also makes a wonderful Reuben sandwich. But if you want to channel your inner Sourdough, making corned venison hash with potatoes from your root cellar is a tasty way to do so.
Prior to refrigeration and modern canning techniques, people used salt to preserve food. A research paper titled Irish Corned Beef: A Culinary History discusses the popularization of corned beef, attributing its name to the crystals of salt used in the beef-curing process in seventeenth-century England, which were known as corns. While exported salted beef contributed significantly to Ireland’s economy from the 1660s to 1800, corned beef and cabbage is not a traditional Irish dish. The dish’s popularity has been attributed to nineteenth-century Irish-American immigrants, giving rise to its St. Patrick’s Day tradition.
An advantage to curing your meats is the ability to control the ingredients used in the process. Today most cured meats are prepared using a combination of salt, seasonings, and nitrates or nitrites. Nitrates and nitrites increase shelf life, enhance flavor, and give the meat a pinkish color. However, many people choose not to consume foods processed with them.
This Poison Control website discusses the safety of eating nitrates and nitrites on their website. In response to a question about whether cured meats are safe to consume, it states that, “The curing process involves the addition of nitrates and nitrites to meats. While swallowing large amounts can be dangerous, exposure to levels typically present in meats is not likely to be harmful.”
The recipe below includes the option of avoiding processed nitrates or nitrites. Although the color is not as vivid, the salted meat is tender and full-flavored, making it a delicious way to enjoy venison for any occasion.
Instead of listing the brining spices individually, the recipe suggests using prepackaged pickling spice, which can be obtained at your local grocery store, to simplify the process. Pickling spices vary by brand but usually include black peppercorn, coriander seed, mustard seed, dill seed, allspice berries, cloves, red pepper flakes, bay leaves, and cinnamon. The recipe uses a stalk of celery to provide natural nitrate, aiding in the curing process without the need for processed additives. If you prefer a vibrant pink color, substitute the celery with the optional sodium nitrite pink curing salt.
The curing process requires a week of brining the venison before cooking, but it is well worth the wait.
Corned Venison
Ingredients:
1 each 3-to-5-pound piece of deer, moose, caribou, or elk
For the brine:
2 1/2 quarts of water
3 tablespoons of pickling spice
1 tablespoon of cardamom pods (optional)
1 cup of kosher salt
1/2 cup of brown sugar, packed
1 stalk of celery, washed and cut into pieces to juice or puree (or use pink curing salt)
1 tablespoon pink curing salt, sodium nitrite (optional – do not add for nitrite free option)
For cooking the corned venison and cabbage:
1 tablespoon of pickling spice
2 bay leaves
1 head of cabbage, halved and cut into thick slices
1 large onion, sliced
3 medium carrots, sliced
Makes 8 to 12 servings depending on venison size
Preparation Time: 30 minutes active preparation time. Seven days curing time in the brine. Three to eight hours to finish after curing.
Preparation:
Curing the Venison
Place the water in a large pot; add all brining ingredients except the celery. Stir and bring to a boil. Allow the mixture to boil for a minute or two, stirring constantly to ensure the salt and sugar dissolve. Remove from the heat and place in the refrigerator to cool to room temperature.
When the brine has cooled, wash the celery stalk, ensuring that all of the ribs are soil-free, and cut it into pieces before juicing. If you don’t have a juicer, puree the celery in a blender with 1/2 to 3/4 cup water, blending until fully pureed. Strain the juice to eliminate any pulp.
Prepare the meat by rinsing and removing gristle and sinew. Then place the venison in a container that is large enough to allow it to be fully submerged in the brining solution. Add the celery juice to the container, then top it off with the brining solution to completely cover the meat. Place a cover on the brining container and place in the refrigerator.
Each day, flip the venison over to ensure even brining.
Allow the venison to brine under refrigeration for 7 days.
Cooking Corned Venison
Remove the venison from the brine and rinse under cool water. In a pot, cover the venison with one inch of water. Add pickling spice and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for three to four hours, until the corned venison is fork-tender. Alternatively, you can cook it on low in a slow cooker for approximately 8 hours.
Corned venison and cabbage
To prepare corned venison with cabbage, add the onion and carrots when you reduce the heat to a simmer. Add the cabbage approximately half an hour before removing the corned venison from the heat and cook until tender.
Serve hot and enjoy!
Brenda Josephson is a Haines resident. She holds degrees in Culinary Arts and Food Business Leadership from the Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, New York. She enjoys spending time fishing, foraging, and savoring Alaska’s abundance of natural and wild foods with her family.