By David Draper

by David Draper & Colin Kearns

From Colin: For dinner last Friday, I followed a tip from Whitetail 365 blogger Dave Hurteau and made a venison cheesesteak. The sandwich was so amazing, so damn delicious that I made another for lunch on Saturday. Here is Hurteau’s technique:

Take a hindquarter cut—bottom round, rump, what have you. Slice a couple of thin steaks off it. Pound the hell out of them with a mallet until they are very thin, just about falling apart. Get a frying pan very hot. Meanwhile prep a little onion and pepper and shred some cheese (I like pepper jack). Flash-fry the steaks so they are still a little rare, no more than a minute a side depending on how thick. While the pan is very hot, toss the peppers in and pour in a little water to deglaze. Put it all on roll with some A-1 and melt the cheese over the top in the broiler. That should do it.

By David Draper

Thank you to everyone who posted your favorite chili ingredients in our Wild Game Chili Secret Ingredient Contest a couple weeks ago. There were lots of great suggestions. Some of them made a lot of sense; others left me scratching my head.

Probably the most insightful comment came from Hil, who rightly suggested the most important chili ingredient is time. I have to agree. Like delivery pizza, chili is definitely better the second day. And even better the third. I don’t know if it gets any better after that, as it never lasts that long in my house.

Readers listed their favorite beer (including root beer!), while others, like rynodaug and db270, gave me inspiration with their addition of Kraft cheese powder and coffee. I also appreciated BWilliams and lbuhman for their suggestions of pumpkin and allspice, both of which I’ve been experimenting with lately in venison dishes.

As for the winners, I decided to pick two: one for the craziest ingredient I’ve ever heard, and the other for the best chili adaptation.

By David Draper

Here in the Nebraska Panhandle, I live smack dab in the middle of one of the original hotspots for Chronic Wasting Disease. It’s been a decade or so now since the news first hit around here, and it was a big topic of discussion back then. Nowadays, you don’t hear about it as much, though wildlife officials still ask for tissue samples when checking in deer and each year a few animals test positive.

At first, no one was sure about eating venison. We were told not to saw through bones—especially not the spine—when butchering. Though there’s no evidence of CWD jumping to humans, we were still warned to take caution. I’ve pretty much followed that for the past 10 years even though it’s meant no roasting venison bones for stock and no braised shanks. Until now.

By David Draper

by David Draper

Perhaps more so than any other dish, chili is open to endless adaptations. Every hunter has his own secret ingredient for wild game chili, as well as idea of how chili should, or shouldn’t, taste. The beans-versus-no-beans argument is well known to anyone who has talked to a Texan about chili. But what about Cincinnati chili, which forgoes any type of chili powder or peppers and is served over spaghetti? As unusual as that sounds, it’s hugely popular in its namesake city, and I’m sure darn good. Admittedly, I haven’t had the opportunity to try it, but certainly wouldn’t turn down a bowl.

Many folks have a set chili recipe they’ve perfected over the years, while others just wing it, experimenting with each batch. Some recipes are pretty standard fare, while others call for unusual ingredients. For example, in college I threw a fist full of white sugar into a batch of deer chili and have been doing it ever since. My good friend’s mother has a rather bizarre secret chili ingredient: chocolate chips. They give the chili a flavor that reminds me of Mexico. Others swear by a certain brand of beer.