Wild Game Recipes: Better Marinades
If you manage to fill your freezer with wild game this summer, making sure it's tasty and nutritious should be a top priority.
Here are some wild game recipes for better marinades.
Brining
Salt is both a preservative and flavor enhancer. When putting together wild game recipes, you can use brining techniques to keep meat fresher and help flavors pop.
- Pickling: the most common brining marinades have much in common with pickling spices and techniques. For wild game recipes, you must calculate the ratio of salinity in relation to other spices you use. More pronounced wild game meats like venison, wild boar, and bear often benefit from lower salinity, but higher ratios of potent flavors like peppercorn, sage, rosemary, and garlic. Milder wild game meats like elk, moose, and antelope can handle more salt but often need less seasoning.
- Salt Bath: another popular wild game brining technique is known as salt bathing. In this technique, meat is soaked for prolonged periods in a salt solution. After soaking the wild game for several days, the meat is removed from the bath and left to dry out. Once the meat is dry, it can be frozen, vacuum packed, and/or dry-rubbed with other seasonings.
Glazing
If you're hoping to grill, broil, or panfry wild game, creating a marinade glaze can create unique flavor profiles and textures.
- Caramelization: when sugar reacts with heat, it creates both texture and flavor. You can create a marinade glaze for your wild glaze that adds crunch and delivers a balanced flavor profile. Begin by selecting your sugar. For more complex flavors and crunch, few sugars are better than dark brown sugar. However, if you're looking for a lighter flavor and less caramelization, white sugar or honey might be better options. When creating your glaze, it's important to aim for balance. This means using enough, salt, spice, and/or acidity to counterbalance the sweetness of the sugar. Although you can find many recipes on wild game recipe blogs, it's important to test and experiment before you use a glaze for the majority of your meat. When experimenting, domestic meats like chicken breasts and ground beef provide a blank slate to try out your glazes. Adjusting your sugar and salt ratio is the most important part of developing the perfect glaze for wild game.
- Barbecue: if you're planning on barbecuing your wild game, using a dry rub glaze can sometimes be preferable. To prevent your glaze from burning, be sure to spray your grill with cooking spray before putting down your meat.
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