Goodbye Gamey Taste: Marinated venison steak

This is the first of a series of posts on cooking venison, aka deer meat. In particular the deer that my husband got while hunting a few weeks ago. I'll post one recipe a week and then rank that recipe on how well it got rid of that wild game taste that so often accompanies, well, wild game. I'm not a fan.

That said, venison is a very lean meat and because of that is a great alternative to beef. There's also something to be said for using the meat that comes from a successful hunt. On the other hand, I admit it would have been better had I not seen Bambi before he was taken in for processing.


But I must make the best of it and find ways to cook the meat. And surprisingly, so far, so good.

We have many, many pounds of venison in our freezer. Check it out:

Sausage, steaks, ground meat and roasts, all vacuum-sealed and taking over the
only freezer space I have. We'll share, but it's still a lot of meat!

The first recipe I found and tried was a marinade because much of the meat above is in the form of steaks. I chose this marinade at allrecipes.com: Marinated Venison Steaks <--Click to see recipe

This recipe required:

• white vinegar
• ketchup
• vegetable oil
• garlic cloves (I used garlic powder)
• worcestershire sauce
• salt
• pepper 
• ground mustard 

Almost every recipe I've tried has had ground mustard. There must be something about ground mustard that complements wild venison.

After draining the marinade from the steaks, I broiled them about 4 or so inches from the heat for about 4 minutes. I basted with the remaining marinade, turned the steaks and put them back in for 4 more minutes. It took me a little longer than the recipe called for to get the steaks to a safe temperature to eat. I found conflicting reports online, but both of our steaks were in the mid-150s to 160, or about medium.

And the result, shown below with broccoli and mashed potatoes, was surprisingly tender and did taste great but was still a little gamey.

Introducing a new feature for those of you who want to cook venison, but aren't crazy about wild game ...  Game-O-Meter (1 to 10, 10 being more gamey tasting, 1 being less): 5