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All that’s keeping you from enjoying some of the most delicious, tenderest, and perfectly cooked venison is an hour-plus of hands-free cooking—plus two other ingredients that you likely already have in your kitchen. This is a recipe for roast-beef style venison roast, and it is ideal for hind-quarter cuts of wild game from whitetail deer, mule deer, moose, elk, or, in the case, pronghorn antelope. Once you’re finished cooking, you can slice the roast thick and serve it with mashed potatoes and gravy, but we prefer to use it for sandwich meat. Pile it high between slices of bread for a cold-cut hero—or serve it warm alongside a bowl of the pan drippings for a wild French dip.

Ingredients

  • 1 pronghorn (or venison) roast
  • Garlic powder
  • 1 white onion, sliced

For the sandwich:

  • Hoagie rolls
  • Provolone cheese

Directions

  1. Take the roast out of the refrigerator and let it sit for about an hour, or until it comes to room temperature.
  2. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. (Once the oven reaches temperature, let it continue to build heat for about 20 minutes before you open the oven door to stick in the roast.)
  3. Weigh the roast on a digital scale. If you don’t have a digital scale, you should get one. They’re really handy in the kitchen.) Season the roast with a liberal coating of garlic powder. Do not use salt here, because that will cause the meat to dry out as it cooks in the oven.
  4. Lay out a sheet of aluminum foil that’ll be large enough to cover the roast. Pile about half off the onions onto the foil, then place the roast on the onions. Top the roast with the rest of the onions, then wrap it all tightly with foil.
  5. Stick the roast in the oven, and cook it at 500 degrees for 10 minutes per pound. Once the time is up, kill the heat, but keep the roast inside the oven for one hour longer. Do not—repeat, do not—open the oven door until the hour is up. Otherwise, you’ll let out all of the heat, and the meat won’t cook properly.
  6. Take the roast out of the oven, unwrap it from the foil (save the juices), and let it rest for about 15 minutes.
  7. Slice the meat as thinly as you’d like, and set it aside.
  8. Build the sandwich: Spilt the hoagie rolls, and top the bottom halves with generous piles of the meat. Add provolone to each, and finish with the top buns. Place the sandwiches under the broiler and cook until the cheese melts.
  9. Divide the collected juices from the roast into small bowls, and serve as a dipping jus for the sandwiches.