Scenario: you went out with the couple from your neighborhood, you stepped away from free range pork and got adventurous with a shared plate of bison sliders paired with a delightful Pinot Noir; they were to die for. The following week you picked up bison meat because it’s hard to find at times, and now you’re entertaining guests in a couple days. You’re admittedly clueless about this meat and it’s starting to cause actual kitchen nightmares.
If this sounds like an exaggeration, it’s not terribly far off. Cooking game meat isn’t something most people do in their own kitchens on a regular basis. It requires certain different considerations that can be overlooked even with free range pork, grass fed beef, and wild caught Alaskan salmon. Fortunately, once you’ve learned to properly prepare bison, similar strategies can be applied to a range of different wild game meats.
Enough of the introduction to Bison Meat, you have guests to serve so let’s get started.
Lean with it
Hold up there, Gordon Ramsay, don’t go slapping that bison steak on the grill just yet. A three-ounce bison steak serving boasts a lean 122 calories with a whopping 24.2 grams of protein. It’s a fabulous alternative to cooking beef, but it is not beef and shouldn’t be cooked like it. Beef is raised into having fatty, marbled meat (even grass fed steaks). In the wild, there’s no such regulation and the result is much leaner meat that cooks a lot faster. If you cook bison like a free range pork chop or your favorite beef cut, you might over cook the protein.
Slow and low wins with bison. The same theory can be applied to several other wild game meats.
Mind the flavor
Our palates are used to pretty specific flavors. While bison is incredibly delicious, the flavor is mildly different. More intense in comparison with domesticated animal meat, many people love the flavor and find everything else boring, while others find it overpowering our Bison is delicious and you’ll love it. A way to ease yourself and your guests into it is a ground mixture of bison and beef. Sometimes putting bison meat into dishes with other bold flavors helps to blend intensities. Different is delicious, but the process should be considered before plating an entire dinner party.
Don’t fear the wild, you’ve got the chops to lay down five stars at your game dinner. Fortune flavors the bold and with bison, you’ve got all of that and more.