Thread: Roasting venison

Roasting is an application of dry heat. Traditionally a technique used with open fires it is generally done in an oven these days. As venison is usually a very lean meat and there is little fat to help the meat retain moisture, the slower roasting techniques are not suitable for venison - the low and slow time required for a collagen-gelatin transition in say, a front shoulder, will result in a bit of dried up leather rather than a delicious falling-off-the-bone experience. These cuts should be braised instead, and venison needs to be roasted reasonably quickly.

The venison cuts that are suitable for roasting are the muscular cuts from the hindquarters - the round, rump, silverside (trimmed) and the sirloin. These should be seasoned well in advance, bought to room temp, seared in a hot pan, then popped in a hot oven with good air circulation around them at whatever temperature is suitable to cook the inside to 55⁰c (medium rare) as fast as possible without burning the exterior or drying out. 160-180⁰ seems suitable. Use of a meat thermometer ensures no disasters.

Today for lunch I prepared a rump off the small fallow buck I shot last night. First I seasoned it for some hours (as long as possible) with salt - a "dry brine" - then rinsed, dried, rubbed with olive oil and lightly seasoned.



Chucked into a hot cast iron pan to sear on all sides



Then into the oven to cook through. I pulled this one out at about 60⁰ as I wanted it slightly past medium rare for a sandwich.



Rested for a few minutes while heating some previously caramelised onions and toasting a bun in the pan



Then sliced.



And chucked in the toasted bun with mayo, gruyere, and the caramelised onions.



Moist, tender (despite being dead ~18hr) and delicious.

Damn you, now I'm hungry!

A mate whose parents were deer farmers used to lie strips of bacon over venison when roasting, basically making it self basting

Looks great. My one and only attempt at a venison roast did not end well. It was edible, just about, but may as well have cooked my leather boots.

I done venison roasts in oven bags with a bit of liquid to keep them from drying out.

A tasty looking lunch there gimp and nice beer choice.

@gimp Try this with a fallow shoulder: Prepare and pan brown as in your 1st post. Make knife point pockets for Garlic cloves.
Place enough 7-8mm slices of Kumera in an oven bag to cover the area the roast will take up. Place roast in bag on Kumera and tie off to form an almost total, but not quite closure.
Roast into cold oven and turn to 280c. When the oven temp light goes out time another half hour at 280 then turn the oven off and walk away.
If your oven looses heat quickly a lump of railway iron or some other thermal mass (brick) placed in the oven will help. Do this at lunch time and the roast will be superb at dinner time, Gelatinous moist meat . Mash the Kumera slices as a gravy base
The oven bag maintains 'positive pressure' and stops moisture escaping the meat.

You have cooked the meat with the fat still on .How does that work , does it give better flavour/ moist or ??. The reason I ask is that fat is a big no no for my stomach , it does not go well for me .

Excellent cooking tips as always @gimp.

A way round the risk of a large red deer rump ending up too dry that was very successful for me was to use the Instant Pot pressure cooker. I browned / sealed it first all round with the sauté function, then pressure cooked it for an hour in about 5mm of merlot / cab sav blend with an oxo cube. Then I chucked it in a hot oven for a short while to properly brown the outside, followed by a long rest sealed in foil. Came up perfect medium rare, tender as. Much bigger bit of meat than gimp’s and something I’ve had bother with in the past using traditional techniques, getting it to cook through without the outer meat becoming dry and tough.

To stop your Venison roast drying out lace strips of bacon fat into the surface of the meat or wrap it in bacon for first half of the cook. Works well.


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Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

@gimp ..
Roast into cold oven and turn to 280c. When the oven temp light goes out time another half hour at 280 then turn the oven off ...

So def 280C?? That's beyond what any domestic stoves can deliver. You must mean 180?

I have to disagree with the front shoulder bit. I roasted one the other week, a young red. First on the bbq low heat for an hour then in the oven covered with tin foil for a couple of hours it was fall off the bone tender!

Originally Posted by 6x47

So def 280C?? That's beyond what any domestic stoves can deliver. You must mean 180?

I have an old stove which is so good I got it completely rewired with new simmerstats etc. It cranks up to 280 c, which seems madness the first time this method is tried as it is just one click below grill ( Top element full noise ).
Trust me the method works. Rubbing the meat with oil and browning as per gimp above seals the meat to retain moisture.
If we lay bacon over the roast what does this actually do ? Bacon cannot add moisture ( water) so what is happening ? What the bacon is doing is that fat from the bacon is covering the outer surface of the roast and preventing the moisture inside escaping. Coating the meat with olive oil first is doing the same thing and with a more certain result.
If your oven cannot achieve 280 just turn it to its highest setting and add a little more time before turning the oven off.
This method was taught to me in the USA and is the way that they achieve a perfect beef roast - browned and tasty outside but still slightly pink in the centre with no blood and very moist and succulent. Forcing a roast in 2 - 21/2 hours results in dry tough meat. The high initial temp and leaving the roast to cook with heat slowly penetrating over time ( 6 hrs) gives a much better result. I ruined plenty by getting my timing wrong before I changed methods, now they are always restaurant quality.

## Make sure that the oven bag will not touch the top element when it inflates - I am writing from experience

I cook boned out front shoulder in the crockpot all the time I stuff it and roll it and then quite often put breadcrumbs on the outside cook it on low for about 4 -5 hours and it's absolutely awesome I run a wall timer & set it all up before going to work & have the roast ready bot the time it get home i have use crockpot for years & I found it always over cook stuff when you turn them on before going to work then 1 day I just clicked & tried to use a wall timer & since them i hade had really good cooking results on anything I put in there.

Any time you're covering it or adding liquid it becomes a pot roast or braising, in a technicality.

With muscular cuts the simple trick to tender and moist is monitoring internal temp and not over-cooking.

Same technique with 1+ kg round roast

In ye olde times, venison would be roasted in a cage like device, to hold it in one place, lardons of bacon skewed through to add flavour.

When I was a chef at pizza hutt ( kitchen hand) many moons ago, we would cook steaks in the pizza oven for like 3 mins ( they went at a temp of 500F iirc ).... which is about 260C
Not many people ordered steak in a pizza joint, so it wasnt worth the trouble to use the hot plate, and in my opinion the steaks were bloody good anyway. The manager and I would select the ones due to be discarded ( shelf life) and burn them for our own delight to our tastes

Enjoy your meal.
For roasting in the coals or on the "stake", methods widely used in my country, lean meats are usually rocked with bacon or while they are cooked they are usually sprinkled with brine.
Another method widely used and in which the meat is cooked evenly is in the clay oven