A friend was prepping venison for the grill last night and I said working with such rich red meat has been reminding me lately of tuna sushi. And that the smell of raw meat has been getting more and more appealing, too.
So he sliced off a few pieces and dosed em with a bit of S&P and olive oil and we popped em on down. Darn, it was TASTY!
I just googled “venison sashimi” (and beef) and, hey, we’re not the only ones!
The pics there just don’t do it justice, though. And this pussy-footing around with flash-frying is like doing the blackened tuna thing: it doesn’t need it. Same with marinating. Just enjoy the MEAT!
I’ll try to get my own, better pic some time. It looks just like sushi-grade tuna…
When I first started hunting and when I got my first deer, I didn’t like the smells. Now that I’m older it seems that my appreciation for the smell of venison butchering, at least, has increased greatly. It smells good now, sweet, like good food. Now, this is when I’m handing the backstraps and rear quarters. If the innards have been disturbed, it can be a different story. But even there, it all depends.
I’d say that I don’t get such a positive response when I prep beef. The venison smell is both sweeter and more savory when raw.
With fish I recall that I needed to have a gap of a couple hours between cleaning them and eating them. I haven’t pushed that question/limit lately. But who knows what might happen if I started actually catching and cleaning a lot of fish. I could see a smell appeal coming on that had a METALLIC tang to it (which right now isn’t the case).
Anyway, the same good thing happens with the venison when I defrost it and let it age in the frig and take it out for final prepping before cooking. …Only I’ve started to get the “Mmmm, sushi” sense more and more. And finally I took the plunge!
