Hunting for Dinner: Wild Game Charcuterie (and Recipes for Goose Pastrami, Pâté, and Confit) (2024)

As a hunter,one of my primary thoughts when I am out in the field or forest is: How am Igoing to use whatever I kill? One of the complaints I hear from people who huntis that they get tired of the same old ways of preparing wild game. It seemslike a lot of hunters let their wild game go to waste or give it away because theydon’t understand how versatile wild game can be. I grew up in a family thattook most of the venison we shot and turned it in to summer sausage or jerky --not very creative. We ended up giving a lot of it away because after eating thefirst 30 pieces of jerky or summer sausage sandwiches every day for a week, youlose interest and don’t want to eat either anymore.

In the mid90s I was gone in the Navy for a little over four years and didn’t hunt theentire time I was gone. When I came home and started hunting again; at the sametime, I also started to really get into cooking. The first few cookbooks Ibought had a lot of recipes for wild game, and as I experimented with some ofthese new recipes I discovered that just about every recipe can be adapted touse wild game. One of the first cookbooks I purchased was a book by EmerilLagasse called Louisiana Real and Rustic, which included a whole chapter titled “Charcuterie”.

Atthe time I had no Idea what charcuterie was, but I was interested because someof the recipes involved wild game. The first recipe that caught my eye was forduck pastrami. I had just started duck hunting again and was doing very well,so I had plenty of ducks to experiment with. My first batch of duck pastramiwas such a big hit that a lot of my friends would save all of their duckbreasts for me to make this pastrami. I didn’t know it at the time, butcharcuterie was going to become a very big part of my wild game cookingrepertoire.

Wild boar pancetta

After thepastrami turned out to be a hit, I was willing to try other kinds ofcharcuterie. Because I was having so much success duck hunting, I tried makingduck confit for the first time and also made my first batch of duck sausage andduck prosciutto. I expanded from there, using some wild boar I was given andmade wild boar pancetta and bacon. Before I knew it, I was dry-curing lonzino,which is a spice-cured wild boar loin; I also made my first attempts at venisonprosciutto. Not all of my attempts were successful, but I had more successesthan failures.

Now, I make60 to 70 pounds of sausage every year with all the different game from my huntsor from people who don’t know what to do with it. Today, I would say that Iturn about 50% of the meat I hunt into some form of charcuterie, and I neverget bored with what I eat.

Charcuterieis a French term that basically means the process of preserving meat or thepreserved meat itself. Charcuterie includes, but is not limited to: curingbacon, brining hams, and making sausages, galantines, terrines, pates, andconfit. All of these are methods of preserving meat, a process which was veryimportant before refrigeration was invented. Other than preservation, one ofthe big benefits of making charcuterie is that it is very tasty. It cantransform meat that some people would never eat into delicacies that peoplerave about. I know quite a few people who openly admitted hating duck and goose;but after eating the duck and goose pastrami that I have made, they rave abouthow good it is.From left: goose pastrami, goose confit, goose liver pâté

Charcuterieis a very large subject, and I would not possibly be able to adequatelydescribe all aspects in a single blog post. So for this post I will focus onbrining and confit. (If you are interested in learning all there is to knowabout charcuterie, I would suggest Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s book, Charcuterie. It is an incredible book and does a much better job than I could ofteaching all you need to know about charcuterie.)

Confit is amethod of preserving meats by poaching the meat, and then storing it in its ownfat. For example, you may have seen or heard of duck confit at some point; forduck or goose the primary cut of meat used is the leg and thigh portion. Astandard confit takes a couple of days to make. The first step to confit is tosalt your legs and let them sit overnight; rub a mixture of salt, thyme, bayleaf, garlic, and black pepper into the legs and then leave them to sit for upto a day. After they have sat overnight and up to 24 hours, you rinse all theremaining salt and herbs off the legs and submerge the meat in rendered duckfat. Then you poach it at very low temperature for 6-8 hours.

The processtakes time, but I assure you it is well worth it. Traditionally, after the legshave been cooked in the fat, they would be packed into containers and coveredwith the rendered fat. At room temperature, the fat becomes solid and seals themeat off from the air. Before refrigeration, this was an excellent way to keepmeat from going bad; stored this way in a cool dark area you could keep meatfor a month or longer. In the freezer, confit will last almost forever. Whenyou are ready to use the meat all you have to do is roast it in your oven for10 minutes at 425 degrees and you end up with succulent, fall-off-the-bonetender duck or goose legs. They really can’t be beat. The confit can then beeaten by itself or added to almost any dish; I like mine with a littlelingonberry jelly and some Jarlsberg cheese and a nice crusty bread.

Brining isanother method of preserving meat that involves soaking meat in a salt solutionand then cooking the meat. Ham, corned beef, and pastrami are all examples ofbrined meats. By soaking the meats in a salt solution, the salt water is absorbedinto the meat; the salt water replaces the water in the cells of the meat andprevents the meat from breaking down or going bad. When brining meat, you use aspecial salt called sodium nitrite, which is a curing salt that furtherprevents spoilage of meat. Sodium nitrite is also the reason that brined meatshave their characteristic pink color; it reacts with the meat and producesnitric oxide, which prevents iron breakdown in the fat of the meat and preventsit from going bad. For example, my duck pastrami is a form of a brined meat; Ialso brine antelope roasts to make corned antelope, and, in my opinion, it isbetter than any corned beef I have ever eaten.

When Istarted thinking about this post and what I was going to do for a recipe, Iwanted to make something that would show off some of the different charcuterie techniquesall in one meal. I wasn’t sure how to do that until I ate at Café Maude in Minneapolis. They serve a duck Bahn Mi, and it was fantastic. It usesduck confit and duck pastrami, as well as a duck liver pate, so I thought whatbetter way to showcase several techniques than to make a similar sandwich. Ididn’t have a duck in the freezer, but I did have a couple of geese that mybuddy Ben Pena had given me. Here is my version of Café Maude’s duck Bahn Mi. Itmay seem like a lot of work, but, in my opinion, good food is never too much work.

Goose Pastrami

Adapted from Emeril Lagasse’s LouisianaReal and Rustic

Ingredients

2 goose breasts with the skin on (about 1 pound each)
1 tablespoon black peppercorns, plus 2 tsp ground blackpepper to roll the brined breasts in
2 tsp dry thyme
3 bay leaves
1 tsp whole cloves
3 cloves of garlic (smashed)
2 tsp whole juniper berries plus 1 tablespoon ground juniperberries to mix with ground black pepper
4 cups water
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup kosher salt
1/10 ounce of insta cure # 1 (pink curing salt)

Instructions

1. Bring the water, brown sugar, andboth salts to a boil and heat until they dissolve completely. Then add the restof the ingredients to the brine, turn off the heat, and let stand until roomtemperature.

2. Place the goose breasts in the room-temperaturebrine and refrigerate for 48-72 hours, turning the breast over in the brineevery day.

3. After the breasts have been brined, drythem off and cover the skin sideof the breast with the black pepper and juniper mix.

4. Place in a smoker and smoke at 180degrees for 5-6 hours or until the breasts reach an internal temperature of 165degrees.

An example of pâté -- this one made of venison

Goose Liver Pâté

My own original recipe

Ingredients

12 ounces goose livers
1/10 ounce insta cure #1
2 cups port or fruity wine, I used an apple and black current wine
3 bay leaves
3 cloves
1 tsp black peppercorns
½ of a small white onion
8 ounces whipped cream cheese
1 minced garlic clove
2 tablespoons brandy
¼ tsp dry thyme
¼ tsp white pepper
A dash of nutmeg

Instructions

1. Mix the wine, salt, and spices together and add the livers. Marinate the livers for 24 hours in the refrigerator, then remove the livers from the marinade and dry completely.

2. Pan fry the livers in two tablespoons bacon fat for a couple of minutes on each side.

3. Add the livers and bacon fat to a food processor, then add onion, cream cheese, garlic, brandy, thyme, white pepper, and nutmeg. Blend until smooth and creamy. Taste and add salt, if necessary (it should be a little salty because as it cools the salt will mellow).

4. Transfer the mixture to a fine mesh sieve and press it through the mesh to get a very smooth and creamy pate. Chill before serving.

Five Spice Goose Confit

My original recipe

Ingredients

4 goose leg and thigh portions
¼ cup kosher salt
1 tablespoon Chinese five spicepowder
1 tsp garlic powder
½ tsp red pepper flakes
3 bay leaves
Enough duck fat to cover the legs

Instructions

1. Mix together the salt and spices andrub the goose legs with this mixture.Refrigerate for 24 hours.

2. After 24 hours, rinse all the salt mixture off thelegs and dry completely.

3. Place the legs in a heavy ovenproofpot and cover with duck or goose fat.

4. Place in the oven at 200 degrees for5-6 hours. You will know that the legs are done when the meat and skin havepulled away from the knuckle on the leg bone.

5. If you are going to store yourconfit, you can place the legs in a Ziploc freezer bag with some of therendered fat and put in the freezer. Or you can pack the legs into a containerand cover with remaining rendered fat.

6. When you are ready to use the legs,preheat the oven to 425 and then roast the legs for 10 to 15 minutes until theskin get crispy.

Jamie Carlsonlives in Burnsville, MN with his wife, Amanda, and their two kids Eleanor and Charlie. He works as an Rn at the Minneapolis VA hospital. He enjoys hunting, fishing, foraging, and, of course, cooking. He believes that all food can be tasty if it is prepared with care, and he writes about his adventures cooking everything from Pickled Venison Heart to Roasted Dove on his food blog,You Have to Cook it Right. Follow him at@youcookitright. His last post for SGT was What to Do With All That Offal.