Elk Stew

This year at Christmas we went to a magical place called Jagerhaven. That’s German for “hunter’s haven,” and this place, as people like to say, “couldn’t be more Stearns county.” As you know if you read the blog, Stearns County is the bathtub madonna capital of the world. Very Catholic and Very German. Hunting is a big part of the culture.

Jagerhaven belongs to one of my brother-in-laws, Paul Becker, and his brothers. The property includes 15 deer stands, and I’ve seen the topological map to prove it. On hunting weekends they get up early and the master of ceremonies, complete with a gavel made out of a beer can, assigns the various stands. In the end, the family splits the large amount of venison they harvest each year.

You can’t get elk in Stearns County. For that you have to fly somewhere like Colorado or Montana. Paul went on an elk hunt this year and came back with the taxidermy head and a lot of meat. He shared some ground venison with me for a winter’s worth of chili, and also threw in a package of elk steak.

Here’s another thing I love about the blogosphere: the “game foodie blogs,” mostly from Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, or from paleo folks. When you put “elk stew recipe” into the Google, you get many things back. And none of them call for Campbell’s soup of any kind.

I had planned to make the Amy Thielen “bear and porter stew with fall spices” from the New Midwestern Table. My only issue with it was that it was all bear, no vegetables. Now I did take this to heart, sort of. If you’re going to make elk stew, or some other game stew, why not let the meat do the talking? My early memories of beef stew are that I loved the super tender, juicy chunks of roast beef, but was not all that interested in the giant pieces of carrot and potato covered in gravy. And we kind of lost interest in the leftovers of a lamb stew I made two weeks ago with the camel stew recipe once there was no more lamb in it.

So I told myself not to overdo it with the vegetables. Also, smaller pieces. But once you get a bunch of vegetables on the counter, it’s tough to hold back.

Here’s what I’ve learned about elk stew. You have to brown the meat. I don’t know why, but it’s universal. You can dredge the pieces in flour first or not. Since my elk steaks were thinner than I expected, I didn’t flour them and just browned on one side. It did throw off a fair amount of liquid.

You can use wine or beer. Dark beer is recommended, but the best I could do was amber ale. I’m sure it will be fine. I wanted it to be less bourguignon than beef stew, so chose beer. You can also use beef or chicken stock. I had chicken stock on hand.

For vegetables, onions and carrots and celery are standard and anything else is optional. I had parsnips and mushrooms (and I love stewed mushrooms) and a mix of very small potatoes (don’t they look like the last recipe’s bowl of beans?). One might even say micro tubers. I wanted to throw them in whole, so that worked fine.

The liquid should go about 3/4 up the crock pot. Low for 8 hours. In the last half hour, with the lid off and letting the stew thicken, I’ll add fresh rosemary and thyme. To start I just put in salt, pepper, and bay leaf. Garlic would also have been good.

It will be ready to eat just about the time the Colts and Patriots kick off.