Thread: What to do with this sika

Oven bag, cheapest bottle of red plonk you can find, and a handful of your favorite herbs and spices. Marinate for a day then cook

One of the worst things for gamey flavour is cooking in its blood.
If you slice steak then vac pac and freeze then it is imperative to mop up the blood,pat dry each steak when defosted.
I use a clean tea towel for the bulk of it and paper towels for each steak when mostly dry.
Also you will never get a good sear if its drowned in its own blood.

interesting a YOUNG sika would be gamey already......they wont be all pizzle stained,havent started rooting n roaring yet....something else going on here,sika are beautiful eating.....
you definately can defrost and make into snags...but I WOULD TRY another lot of steak before writing it off....

Originally Posted by Chelsea

Hubby got a young sika stag last week for the freezer. We decided to have a steak lastnight and it was the most gamey tasting meat I have ever tried. Very tender but VERY gamey! It was cooked in a hot well seasoned pan and finished with garlic butter.
Now I have a few steaks and roasts I’d love to make more edible if anyone of you good folk can please share your ideas and recipes to dull that strong flavour. We got bout 8kg of mince and had a crack at making some snags so I’m hoping that all tastes a bit better.
Thanks all!

I'd guess it wasn't pissed up yet. Was it an average shot or anything like that? Ask if he cut the glands with the same knife before he cut up the meat as those I find are usually the culprits to really gamey meat. Although I had one Fallow that had the most horrible gamey heart I've eaten in my entire life.

And yes buttermilk works fairly well uncle does it in Montana on Muleys that have been eating Sage brush.

I worked on a Estate in Britain that the Chef Marco Pierre White was a regular hunter on & good friend of the owner,he would cook a after hunt meal on his final hunt of the season ,he runs restaurants that specialize in game & venison in particular ,he would simply soak overnight in plain milk to reduce gaminess . In Africa the good Old School camp cooks did the same.

I guided in the US for years where they used Butter Milk to tenderize not reduce gaminess & it actually leaves a acidic taste to the meat ,they then try to hide by drowning in marinade.

Since seeing first hand Marco use milk after that l have always done the same with my Stag meat & l use a simple Old School 4 tbl spoons of salt to quart of water mix for soaking/brining all other game & offal.There was a very good article years ago where the author used every old wives tale method he had seen hunters use in the US & just plain milk came out way in front ,a camp cook at one of our Elk Camps showed it to me after l stuck up for them on using just milk & it was raised around the camp fire by the usual arm chair ex-spurts .

I saw in a hunting mag a couple of years back a way of making meat from a stag shot in the roar more palatable by marinating in Coca Cola. Haven't tried it myself but they swore it worked to reduce the gamey flavour.

Originally Posted by Chelsea

Was a week long trip, gutted right away and hung with skin on in the meat safe in the shade for 3 days and was a very cold week. Came home hung for another day, butchered and chilled. It’s all in the freezer now, I wonder if it will be ok to defrost and turn into snags and freeze again. I know that’s a big no for most though.
Iv heard coke is good to tame down wild pork so should work good.

Re defrosting and re freezing : Freezing bursts cells so that upon thawing bacteria can colonise and multiply in the thawed meat more rapidly than they can in meat that has never been frozen. Bearing that in mind when making the sausages, thaw the meat only to a point where it still has some ice crystals present and is too cold for bacteria to crank up.

Try eating it some more, If it's not a little bit gamey then you may as well just be eating tender beef

Originally Posted by Stocky

I'd guess it wasn't pissed up yet. Was it an average shot or anything like that? Ask if he cut the glands with the same knife before he cut up the meat as those I find are usually the culprits to really gamey meat. Although I had one Fallow that had the most horrible gamey heart I've eaten in my entire life.

And yes buttermilk works fairly well uncle does it in Montana on Muleys that have been eating Sage brush.

Not pissed up at all, was still in velvet and had absolutely no stink at all, I didn’t shoot it but if I remember correctly shot through the chest and out behind the shoulder. Was gutted and hung for around 4-5 days and butchered at home with clean knives.
* just adding for those who will be offended at a young stag in velvet being taken, he had a buggered front leg which was the reason for taking him for the freezer.

"and hung for around 4-5 days". Was that in refrigeration or in the bush? That's a long time to hang in the warm weather (even with cooler nights) without refrigeration. Bone taint can easily set in within a few hours during the warmer months. Even the abattoirs break the hip and knee joint to let the synovial fluid out during summer; even though they go straight into a chiller....

I try to hunt in the afternoons (locally) during the warm months so I can hang my goats etc up in the evenings (under a tree in the shade with a permanent breeze) so the nights will cool it down.

When i was still butchering we used to get so many bone tainted wild pigs in during summer. Even though they were dropped in the late afternoon/evening that they were caught. It takes a long time for heat to dissipate in warm weather. Just a thought. Cheers

Rub English mustard on the meat. Then sear it in a hot pan.

Originally Posted by 7mmwsm

What state was the buggered leg? Could have had an influence on taste.
And what sort of environment was it in? Fringe dwellers eating pasture are considerably milder to eat than animals living in hard beech country.
I've shot animals from one particular area which have a certain "taint" to their flavour. So much so that if you were to cook them and eat them without be told which animal it was from, I would be able to say that it came from that area.

Could see the front left knee had been broken and obviously not healed well. The bone was rubbing against the skin and was very close to breaking through. May have even broken through the skin when the injury originally happened as it was quiet scarred over the side of the knee. Wasn’t “lame” but very stiff at the knee, I did wonder if this may have somehow tainted the meat but to be honest I wouldn’t think so. I think we still have the leg in the freezer.. He came from thick scrubby area but theirs plenty of feed about the area.

Butter milk is when the butter is made and salted and the liquid left over from butter is classed as buttermilk

Buggered leg = high PH = dog food, or give away to relatives who pester for meat.

Originally Posted by Chelsea

Hubby got a young sika stag last week for the freezer. We decided to have a steak lastnight and it was the most gamey tasting meat I have ever tried. Very tender but VERY gamey! It was cooked in a hot well seasoned pan and finished with garlic butter.
Now I have a few steaks and roasts I’d love to make more edible if anyone of you good folk can please share your ideas and recipes to dull that strong flavour. We got bout 8kg of mince and had a crack at making some snags so I’m hoping that all tastes a bit better.

To get rid of gamey smells and testes, cooking temperature is the key as my experience. Btw, many people in Asia put lots price for that gamey flavor you know. The simple way I would recommend is you cut the meat in slice about 5mm thick, and mix them with cooking oil, salt, pepper for a while, keep cold. Using cast-iron pot fry it, just like cook a mini steak. Sika deer is the most delicious deer do `t wasted. Or, if you live in rural area, then you could dig a hole, fire it up and when temperature goes down, no flames, hang a chunk of meat in and cover it with something, slow bbq for about two hours.
cheers