Have never cooked Whitetail deer before so am using crockpot

[chickchoon1]

Didn't have time to research, really, and the internet seems limited on suggestions of roadkill(and have no audio so youtube didn't help) so just got it done! Heard a hit in front of property, got kill slip, and attempted to "process" deer myself. NO experience other than chicken processing so it was different. My son finally got home and I told him the parts I felt usable so he finished that part.Fortunately it was appx. 40 degrees last night and poor deer had already been pretty much gutted from impact so just put the meat we kept(with massive amounts of hair!!!!) in cooler on porch until this morning. In crock for probably 6-8 hours as I have no idea how else to make it palatable.Smells good with all of the onions,garlic,spices in it.Recipes said to use something acid based like vinegar,lemons,tomato sauce so they are all in it.

 

[MeepBeep]

The biggest thing with road kill is the damaged aka 'bruised' meat that really IMO isn't worth harvesting, and sometimes that can mean most of the deer depending on how hard it was hit...

I generally just take the tenderloins from road killed deer for me, the rest becomes dog food...

As for cooking well, just like everything there is no right or wrong way...

 

[wyoDreamer]

We ate a lot of venison growing up. We cooked it like beef, but always used a wet cooking method - venison stew, venison steaks browned and then simmered with onions and mushrooms until tender. Now that I am older and cooking up my own meals I also grind it and use it in chili (YUM!) and burgers (with an egg, diced onions, diced bacon and a single cooked and mashed potato to keep it moist). We never used an acid with our venison.

I hope your meal turns out delicious!

 

[donrae]

I always just treat venison like beef or goat. Crockpot is a great way to cook a hunk of meat. The acid is to tenderize, may or may not be needed depending on the age of the animal.

 

[wyoDreamer]

As @Meepbeep said, make sure you are not eating the bruised meat. That stuff is really nasty. One of the problems with roadkill is that it doesn't bleed out and the meat gets really gamey. If it seems too gamey, try soaking in milk to remove some of the gamey flavor or some say to use salt water to remove the excess blood.

 

[chickchoon1]

Turned out spectacular but was surprised at amount of fat. I just cooled the whole crockpot and pulled out the fat, in hardened slabs, and it is soooooo good. Great learning experience.