Making The Most Of Ground Game Meat
 | Author:
Eileen Clarke, Rifles and Recipes
Author: Rifles and Recipes |
Making the Most of Ground Game Meat
Eileen Clarke
Rifles and Recipes
I love meatloaf, whether it’s hot at the dinner table with baked potatoes and garden vegetables or lying in a hard-crusted roll dripping with cole slaw. And this is such an easy glaze. Molasses adds a nice bite, which is why it’s an essential ingredient in a lot of barbecue sauces. For the venison, any elk, antelope or deer meat works, as long as it’s pretty good tasting to start with.
Meatloaf Supreme
4-6 servings
Ingredients
For the meat
1½ pounds ground venison
½ pound ground pork roast (meat & fat both)
2 cups bread torn up or cubed (loosely measured)
⅓ cup low fat buttermilk (or milk)
2 tablespoons oil
1½ cups finely chopped onion (about 1 medium to large onion)
1½ tablespoons minced garlic
1 level tablespoon tomato paste
1 level tablespoon BTB roast beef base
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1½ teaspoons salt
¾ teaspoon coarse-ground black pepper
2 teaspoons dried thyme leaf
1 tablespoon dry leaf basil
For the glaze
½ cup ketchup
1 tablespoon molasses
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Preparation
1. In a large bowl, pour the buttermilk over the torn-up bread and roll them around together until the buttermilk is all soaked up. Let that sit while you prep the veggies.
2. In a large skillet over medium heat, add the oil and when it’s hot, sauté the onion until that sweet smell fills the kitchen--don’t go so far as to brown it though. Add the garlic to the pan and let it just start to brown on the edges. (For the onions and garlic, a total of about 7-10 minutes.) Remove from the heat, and stir the tomato paste and beef base into the onions and garlic. Let that cool.
3. Turn the oven to 350°F and lightly oil an 8x8-inch baking dish.
4. As the oven heats up, mash the milk-softened bread with a fork until it makes a paste. Add the eggs, salt, pepper, thyme and basil to the bread and buttermilk mixture. When the onions are cool to the touch, add that skillet mixture to the bread/eggs bowl as well. Stir that together until well blended.
5. Add the ground venison and pork to the seasoned bread mixture and mix well with your hands. Now transfer that mixture to the baking dish, pressing it down to an even height.
Cooking
1. Combine the ketchup, molasses and brown sugar, stir together and spread it across the top of the meatloaf. Bake about 1 hour, check the temperature. In my oven, the meat loaf will reach 150F in 1 hour; 160°F in about 70-75 minutes.
This recipe is featured with a lot of photos in the August edition of Rifle Loony News, the online magazine Eileen writes with her husband John Barsness, rifle editor at Sports Afield magazine. Rifle Loony News comes out 4x a year, for $10 online at https://www.riflesandrecipes.com. 406-521-0273
Article Images
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PhotoCredit: Eileen Clarke
Image 1 Caption: Meatloaf
Photo Credit: Eileen Clarke
