Oh, Deer

Oh, Deer

FIVE CHEFS SHARE CREATIVE TAKES ON VENISON

By Jordan LaHaye

I killed my first deer on my sixteenth birthday. As the kind of kid who named caterpillars, who tamed the stray cats from our barn and cried at the sight of blood—I hadn’t previously had much interest in this particular rite of passage. My dad had always found ways to include me in the tradition, though. He’d bring me on “camera hunts,” setting up early in the morning on the deer stand, where we’d watch the forest come alive—warmed by a space heater, snacking on beef jerky and powdered donuts.

But on that January morning, something clicked. The little buck looked right at me, my dad whispered encouragements into my ear, and I surprised myself by pulling the trigger. The deer ran, straight over the nearby bluff. Quietly we climbed down from the stand and made our way down the hillside—both of us wholly prepared for a fullon tracking expedition. And then we saw it: I’d shot well and true, straight through the heart.

That day is one of my favorite memories spent with my dad. We pulled the deer up the hill together, and back at the camp he showed me how to clean it. We celebrated with lunch at The Myrtles, then went home victorious—one of the best backstrap dinners I’d ever have waiting in our future.

And just like that, I was part of it. My story joined the tapestry of first kills that in so many ways shape the individual histories— spanning generations—of growing up in this place, of harvesting and tasting, of sharing and storytelling.

When speaking recently with Chef John Folse, one of our region’s top authorities on—and proponents of—wild game cuisine, he said “When I think of myself as a Louisiana chef that brings stories around the world, the best stories I can tell are not about my restaurant in NOLA, they’re not about my catering company in Baton Rouge. They’re about the roots of our cooking. How blessed we are in this utopia of plenty in South Louisiana.”

Folse’s project, for decades, has been to encourage a return to the culinary roots that shaped Louisiana’s distinctive cuisine—a return to the land we’ve inherited. The path to encouraging more wild game cooking, he’s long held, is laden with creativity—moving past the generic ground meat and sausage typically made from deer killed today.

“Growing up as a young boy in the swamp in the 1950s, the whole animal was a treasure trove of opportunity, just a treasure trove,” he said. “There is a place on the table for all primal cuts.”

In recent years, as consumers have become more wary of industrial-scale factory farming’s environmental impacts, treatment of animals, and lack of transparency—the move to sourcing local has coincided with an uptick in hunting across the nation. Since 2020, this trend has only accelerated as Americans sought out new hobbies, particularly those that brought them outdoors.

Speaking with five chefs—who each came to the deer stand from wildly different backgrounds—we delved into the versatile world of venison cuisine. For experienced outdoorsmen and new hunters alike (as well as for generous hunters’ lucky friends), we’ve curated a collection of recipes that bring Louisiana’s prized game to the table in forms both elegant and approachable, classic and surprising.

As wild game food blogger Nathan Judice said in a recent interview: “Anyone can cook like this. You can use venison in pretty much anything you can imagine. It’s so versatile, and it’s so healthy. The possibilities are endless.”

Stacy Landers

Chef John Folse

When John Folse speaks of his childhood, he describes the St. James Parish bayous he grew up in as “the swamp floor pantry” and a “storeroom of plenty”. “We never, ever thought about food, because there was so much,” he said. “It was all over the place.”

At as early as six years old, Folse remembers being let out of school for the holidays and heading straight for the swamp with his cousins. “We’d go into a little family camp that was very very simple, and we’d stay there for two weeks or a month by ourselves, deer hunting. We just had to be home for Christmas, our mama said.”

Eating exclusively what they grew, farmed, and killed, Folse said that his family never wasted a single piece of any animal. There were family recipes designed to cater to each part of the deer—they’d braise the tough cuts, throw the kidneys in a stew, sautée the brain for breakfast.

As a chef in an increasingly-mass produced world, Folse said he still craves those dishes of his childhood. “But unless I killed the deer myself, those parts were hard to find. People just throw them away.”

Kimberly Meadowlark

He shared many of these recipes in his wildly-popular 2007 cookbook After the Hunt: Louisiana’s Authoritative Collection of Wild Game & Game Fish Cookery. “The game book has absolutely been the most sought after book of mine,” he said. “It was the story I wanted to make sure we brought into generations to come. This is the foundation we stand on in Louisiana cooking.”

His Deer Bombs recipe, created for a group of firemen in search of an easy, quick way to use their game, is now a regional favorite and can even be found as an appetizer on local menus. “You just pound out some cuts of meat—the best of the venison, pounded out, tender—and wrap it up in bacon with vegetables or cheese, all the things we love. It’s so simple, a little nothing recipe that really at the end of the day is what our cooking is all about: taking what we have in the moment and deciding how to eat it.”

For a surprisingly simple, showstopping dish, Folse recommends roasting a rack of venison. “You have a small rack of tenderloin with the bones in, just roasted whole. I would serve that to a king.”

And then of course, there’s the heart. “The heart is so underutilized,” he said. “People either throw it away or into a stew.” Since his book’s release, he said, his Stuffed Venison Heart has become one of the most popular dishes he makes. “You stuff the heart with a spicy venison sausage, then braise it in a cast iron skillet—it doesn’t get better than that.” jfolse.com.

Sausage-stuffed Venison Heart

Prep Time: 2½–3 Hours

Yields: 4–6 Servings

Ingredients:

2 venison hearts

1 pound Italian sausage

4 tbsps butter

½ cup minced onions

¼ cup minced celery

¼ cup minced bell pepper

2 tbsps minced garlic

½ cup seasoned Italian bread crumbs

¼ cup chopped parsley

Salt and black pepper to taste

Granulated garlic to taste

¼ cup olive oil

1 red onion, peeled and thinly sliced

1 stalk celery, chopped

4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed

1 quart beef stock

2 slices bacon

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F. Cut heart open by placing a sharp knife blade parallel to the cutting board and slicing ⅓ of the way into the heart. Clean by removing veins and arteries. Rinse with cold running water and set aside. In a sauté pan, melt butter over medium-high heat then add minced onions, celery, bell pepper and minced garlic. Sauté 3–5 minutes or until vegetables are wilted. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and allow to cool slightly. When cool, add sausage, bread crumbs and parsley. Season lightly with salt, pepper and granulated garlic. Remember that the sausage is pre-seasoned. Stuff a generous portion of the sausage stuffing into each of the prepared cavities cut into the hearts. Secure and close tightly using toothpicks or skewers then tie tightly with kitchen string. This should close the stuffing firmly into the heart and keep it from falling out during cooking. If any additional stuffing remains, roll into golf ball-sized meatballs and set aside. In a large Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Season hearts lightly with salt, pepper and granulated garlic and brown thoroughly on each side. Surround the hearts with red onion slices, chopped celery and smashed garlic. Add stock, bring to a rolling boil, cover and bake approximately 2 hours or until tender. Additional stock or water may be necessary to retain volume. When hearts are tender, drop raw meatballs, if any, into the gravy and allow to bake 10–15 minutes or until done. To serve, slice and top with natural juices. This dish is great served with dirty rice or mashed potatoes.

Recipe from Chef John Folse’s After the Hunt: Louisiana’s Authoritative Collection of Wild Game & Game Fish Cookery

Chef Victoria Loomis

For Victoria Loomis, a private chef working in the Natchez area, deer hunting is a spiritual experience. Though she grew up in a hunting family, it wasn’t until her mid-twenties, during a difficult stage of her life, that she really embraced the lifestyle.

“I kind of had to rebuild my life in a sense,” she said. She started with duck hunting as an outlet for her black lab. “She led me into that world,” she said of her dog Ellie. And the prospect of clean, ethical meat-consumption kept here there, eventually leading her into a deer stand.

“I found a home in deer hunting,” she said. “It was very healing for me during that time. I would just sit in the deer stand and spend eight hours at a time, thinking ‘I’m never leaving here. This is it.’ In a way, I went from being prey to predator. I grew to feel more secure in my skin than I ever had in my entire life.”

These experiences coincided with Loomis’s training at the Louisiana Culinary Institute and lent a renewed sense of reverence to her approach to food.

“I think it’s safe to say that a lot of America suffers from careless eating, not truly appreciating their food,” she said. “There’s no thought put into it, just munch munch munch. The difference with hunting and harvesting your own animal and putting the work in—the mental work, the physical work. To spend the time breaking down an animal and to see every part of it. It calls me to be more mindful than I ever have been in my life.”

When Loomis is preparing deer, she emphasizes the value of retaining as many of the meat’s nutrients as possible. “Basically, the least processed, the more raw, the better,” she said. “I’m not against frying deer meat, but it’s the last thing you’ll ever see me do. Like only if a customer really wants it.”

While Loomis is known for her innovative takes on game (During our conversation, she hinted at a Venison King Cake)—when it comes to deer, she tends to best love the prized fare: the tenderloin and the backstrap. Prepared with blackberries and a coffee rub, her recipe “exists for celebrations and camaraderie” of a hunt ended in harvest. thegatheringirl.com

Venison Backstrap

Ingredients:

1 lb backstrap cut into 2 pieces (This works really well with the end pieces.)

Coarse kosher salt

Blackberries or dewberries (fresh or frozen)

2 tbsp whole butter

Olive oil

3 tsp Spiceology Cowboy Crust Coffee Rub

Stacy Landers

Method:

When ready to cook, lightly salt steaks on each side. Allow meat to sit out long enough to come to room temperature. If preparing in a skillet, heat oil in the skillet to medium-high heat. For grill preparation, when the grate is hot, add meat. While the skillet is heating, coat the steaks in Cowboy Crust. Cook for about three minutes on each side. Add one Tbsp of butter before removing from skillet, with a quick flip on each piece. Set aside and let rest for at least ten minutes. Hold berries in hand and smash them, then top your steak with them.

Chef Kim Kringlie

Kim Kringlie, like many Louisiana chefs, grew up hunting deer—but not in a deer stand. A Grand Forks, North Dakota native, Kringlie remembers hunting with his father and brothers before school—his hunting clothes layered over his school uniform for an easy transition. “We’d hunt everything,” he said. “Duck, antelope, deer, bear.” Hunting deer in the Midwest is a totally different art form than it is in South Louisiana, and often revolves around “shelterbelts”—lines of trees the United States Forest Service planted around the perimeters of farms during the 1930s as a response to the soil erosion and drought of the Dust Bowl.

“We would walk both sides of the shelterbelts, which were usually two hundred to three hundred yards wide, using walkie talkies,” said Kringlie. “The deer would be hanging out there, and we’d kind of scare them out, get them moving, then shoot.”

Kimberly Meadowlark

Since moving to Louisiana in 1983 he’s settled his way into the more sit-back-and-wait style of hunting practiced here, while also mastering the nuances of Louisiana cuisine. His Covington establishment The Dakota Restaurant has presided over the Northshore as a fine dining classic for over thirty years now.

One of his favorite ways to prepare venison is “au Huitres du Bienville”. “You either sautée or roast your venison, and serve with oysters in a Bienville sauce. It’s a way to introduce that classic Louisiana style to wild game, which I’m a big fan of.”

The best thing about being a hunter in Louisiana, according to a North Dakotian chef? “They eat everything down here!” thedakotarestaurant.com

Venison au Huitres du Bienville

Ingredients

6 one-oz. medallions of venison loin

6 fresh, medium sized oysters

3 oz. green onions 2

oz. muscadet wine 1

/2 oz. chopped garlic

6 oz. heavy whipping cream

2 cups flour

2 oz. parmesan cheese

1 tsp. lemon juice

1 oz. demi-glace

1 oz. oyster liquor

1 pinch thyme

1 tsp. chopped parsley

salt, white pepper, and cayenne pepper

Method

Pound medallions of venison until they are thin. Place each medallion and season with salt, white pepper, and cayenne, and a pinch of green onions. Roll tightly, dust lightly in flour on both sides in a hot skillet. Remove venison and drain. Add garlic and green onions, and deglaze with muscadet wine. Add oyster liquor, demi-glaze, cream, lemon juice, chopped parsley, and seasonings. Reduce by half, add cheese and sprinkle a pinch of cheese on top of each medallion. Brown under broiler. Layer sauce on plate and then top with venison medallions.

Chef Dalton Prince

A recent graduate of the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University, Dalton Prince has been eating venison since he was a child growing up in Labadieville. “Ever since I could hold a gun, I was shooting small game—rabbits, squirrels, birds,” he said. “Then I got into deer and duck. We’ve always been the kind of family that kind of lives off the land.” Prince killed his first deer with his grandfather, at age twelve. “The first one is always the best,” he recalled. But the harvest that impacted him most deeply came later, at age seventeen.

“For that one, I had started to really hunt on my own, do all of the work myself—the whole nine yards. Doing everything I could to get that perfect hunt.” That deer, said the chef, “was the most satisfying meal of my entire life. I had put all the work in, from beginning to end. The purity of it, you can’t get that anywhere else.”

While attending culinary school, Prince enjoyed applying the lessons he was learning to the wild game he’d kill. “It really rounded it all out and helped me to evolve, to add new flavors, new techniques,” he said. “It was really fun to bring those to the camp, or when cooking with the family.”

These days, Prince dedicates at least one cut of every deer he kills to experimentation. Still, when cooking with friends he often turns back to that most satisfying meal: “I took the backstrap,” he said. “I sliced it really thin, marinated it in Mexican spices—cumin, garlic, onions, pepper. It was like this fajita-Philly cheesesteak sandwich. I don’t even really know, but it was fantastic.”

Venison Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich

Ingredients

3 garlic gloves, minced

1/4 cup Worcestershire

1/2 cup Italian dressing

1 tsp. cumin

3 tsp. salt

2 tsp. black pepper

1 1/2 tsp. Cajun seasoning

2-3 lbs. of venison loin, sliced thin

1 yellow onion, sliced

1/2 any bell pepper, sliced

5 button mushrooms, sliced

1 tbsp unsalted butter

2 cups mayonnaise 1

tbsp. Louisiana Pepper Exchange Chipotle Purée

2 6” French bread loaves

4 slices smoked provolone cheese

Method

Make a marinade using the first seven ingredients, marinate venison for at least two hours. Sauté vegetables in unsalted butter until tender, and set aside. Grill venison on medium high heat on each side for no more than one minute. Toast French bread in unsalted butter. Mix together mayonnaise and Chipotle Purée, then spread on both sides of bread. Melt smoked provolone, and build sandwich, topping with sautéed vegetables.

Venison Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich, prepared by Chef Dalton Prince.

Photo by Kimberly Meadowlark.

Nathan Judice

About five years ago, Nathan Judice was shopping at the grocery store, staring at the rows and rows of cellophane-packaged meat. The environmental consultant couldn’t get the thoughts out of his head: “How many people, how many machines, have touched this meat?” The epiphany drove him to shop more exclusively from local butchers, and to get involved in the Red Stick Farmers Market in Baton Rouge. And eventually, to return to the woods. “I decided, you know, I’m just going to start public land deer hunting—trying to get more of my own meat from what I catch or kill. It was this goal I had.”

A hobby chef, Judice started documenting his journey on Instagram, drawing an enthusiastic following on his account @recreationalchef, which includes photographs of plates boasting dishes like “Basic Bitch Venison Meatloaf,” Venison Heart Pizza, and Venison Chops and Zoodles.

“One thing that motivated me to cook wild game was the challenge of preparing it the way it should be cooked, not just turning everything into ground meat,” he said. “Being able to break down an animal into the different cuts of meat and figuring out what to do with them.”

During the fall, he said that one of his favorite venison meals to make is a venison shank with sweet potatoe grits. “Most people grind the shank up,” he said. “It takes longer to cook, you have to braise it. It’s similar to osso bucco, but not as large—you can typically braise the whole shank.”

For more adventurous eaters, Judice said that he’s made a venison tartar. “Venison is such good protein, and so low in fat,” he said. “And like beef, you can eat it raw in some cases. You take some pieces of backstrap or top sirloin, dice that up really fine, and make a tartar. And it’s actually really, really wonderful.” raisedonwild.com

Venison Caesar Tartare

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients:

Caesar Dressing:

2 oz. can of anchovy fillets, drained

2 egg yolk

½ cup fresh grated parmesan

½ cup olive oil

1 lemon, zest and juice

1 tbsp. Dijon mustard

2 cloves of roasted garlic

1 pinch of fresh ground black pepper

Tartare:

1 cup diced backstrap

2 tbsp. minced shallots

½ jalapeno, seeded and minced

2 tbsp. minced cherry tomatoes

2 tbsp. capers

2 tbsp. of prepared Caesar dressing

½ avocado, sliced

1 tbsp. minced parsley

1 pinch flakey smoked sea salt

1 tsp. lemon zest

Method:

For the caesar dressing, combine the ingredients in a food process until emulsified/thick and creamy. Set the caesar dressing in the refrigerator to chill until needed for the tartare. Remove all silver skin from the backstrap and dice into ¼” or smaller cubes and return to the refrigerator. It is important to keep the meat cold until serving. Mince the shallots, jalapeno, and cherry tomatoes into 1/8” or smaller size pieces. Combine the backstrap, shallots, jalapeno, cherry tomatoes, capers, and caesar dressing. Mix well until combined. Once combined, plate the tartare on top of a slice of avocado and sprinkle with the smoked sea salt, parsley, and lemon zest. Serve the tartare with crostinis or toast points.

Venison Caesar Tartare

Photo by Nathan Judice