Tips for Handling & Cooking
Bison
Allow your Buffalo meat to come
to room temperature before cooking. Cook your meat slower and on a
lower temperature than you do with beef. We recommend rare to
medium, well done will tend to dry the meat out.
The color of Buffalo is a darker red because it is high in
myoglobin. A protein that carries oxygen to the blood. When
Buffalo is cooked to medium, it will look like rare beef.
Broiling & Grilling Buffalo:
Preheat the broiler for at least 5 min. Lower your broiler rack a
notch down from where your broiling beef. If grilling, raise your
grill a notch, and use a lower heat. Use long handled tongs to
turn your steaks. This will avoid piercing the meat and allowing
flavorful juices to escape. Cooking time is important in order not
to overcook your steaks.
· 1" Rare: 6-8 min. Medium: 10-12 min.
· 1 1/2" Rare: 10-12 min. Medium: 14-18 min.
· 2" Rare: 14-20 min. Medium: 20-25 min.
Roasting:
Most beef is roasted at 325°F, with Buffalo turn your temperature
down to 275°F. Your roast will be done in the same amount of time
as a beef roast would in the same size. We recommend using a meat
thermometer to indicate the internal temperature. Use the same
temperatures you would for beef. Cover your roast with aluminium
foil or use a roasting bag to retain the juices and moisture. For
the perfect Buffalo roast the key is low temperature and high
moisture.
Ground Buffalo & Buffalo Patties:
Buffalo burger is about 88-92% lean, so cook with caution! Again,
lower heat will be the key here. Internal temperature will be
about 160°F. Remember the thicker the patty, the juicier the
burger. We recommend rare to medium-rare for Buffalo Patties, &
medium-rare for ground Buffalo.
Bison Stroganoff
Serves: 4-6
2 lbs, Buffalo round steak
2 medium onions, diced
1/4 cup butter or margarine
3 cans tomato soup
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 6-oz cans mushrooms
2 Tbsp. mustard
Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
1 pint sour cream
Sauté onions in butter or margarine. Brown meat in separate pan.
Add tomato soup (rinse out can with 1/2-1 cup water), brown sugar,
onions, mushrooms and mustard to meat. Cook slowly for 1 hour.
Season with Worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper. Add sour
cream and cook for 15 more minutes. Serve over noodles or rice.
(Add more brown sugar and mustard if desired.)
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Roast Crab-apple Bison
5-6 lbs Buffalo roast, boneless
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 garlic clove, crushed
Marinade:
1/2 cup orange juice
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1/2 tsp all spice
Glaze:
2 Tbsp. melted butter
2 Tbsp. orange juice
1/4 cup crab-apple jelly
Season roast with salt, pepper and garlic. Tie roast with cooking
twine and place in covered baking dish. Roast in preheated oven at
275 degrees for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Combine 1/4 cup orange juice,
lemon juice and allspice to form marinade and baste meat
frequently. To make the glaze, mix melted butter,2Tbsp. orange
juice and crab-apple jelly to bowl. 30 minutes before roast is
done, uncover and brush meat with glaze and continue roasting
until desired doneness.
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Southern Fried Bison
3 lbs Buffalo steak
2 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup cooking oil
2 medium yellow onions, sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
4 bouillon cubes or can of beef broth
water
1 heaping Tbsp. Lipton's onion Soup mix
2 heaping tsp cornstarch
Mix black pepper and flour in shaker bag and coat steaks. Preheat
oil in deep skillet. Brown both sides of steak. Remove from pan
and set aside. Pour off excess oil. Return to pan and add onion,
garlic, bouillon or broth, and enough water to cover by 1 inch.
Add soup mix and stir. Add meat, then cover and simmer 1 to 1 1/2
hours or until tender. Remove bison and make gravy by mixing
cornstarch with 1 cup cold water. Stir until desired thickness.
Return steaks to gravy and serve.
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Sweet And Sour Meatballs
Serves: 4-6
1 lb. ground Bison
4 cups bread crumbs
1 egg
1 1/2 cups finely chopped onion
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
cooking oil
1 can golden mushroom soup
2 Tbsp. Vinegar
1 can stewed tomatoes
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. Soy sauce
Combine Buffalo, bread crumbs, egg. Onion and garlic. Form mixture
into balls and fry in oil until brown. Remove from heat. Combine
soup, vinegar, tomatoes, sugar and soy sauce in pan. Simmer for 20
minutes. Add meatballs, remove from heat and serve.
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Buffalo Kabobs
Serves: 4-6
2 lbs Bison, cubed
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup sherry
1/4 cup green onions, sliced
1 Tbsp. ginger, chopped
1 Tbsp. sesame seeds
1 Tbsp. sugar
3 garlic clove, crushed
dash of Tabasco
Combine all ingredients and pour over meat. Refrigerate overnight.
Skewer meat kabob-style alone or with mushrooms, onion, peppers
and tomatoes. Barbecue kabobs on grill and serve.
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Smoked/Dry Meat
(Dry meat can only be made from buffalo, moose, deer and elk).
Cut up the meat in thin slices, hang it up on a meat rack over
slightly lit smoking logs. After a full day turn over the meat to
dry and smoke evenly. Let the meat hang over the smoke for at
least 3-4 days until its completely hard and then its ready to
serve.
Pemican:
Pemican, pemmican - def. Lean
dried meat pounded fine and mixed with melted fat; used especially
by North American Indians.
To make pemican you must first roast 4-5 slices of dried meat in
the oven for approximately 20 minutes at a 375 temperature. You
would then wrap the roasted meat in canvas, pound it down between
two solid objects till it turns into coarse powder. The powder is
then mixed with the fat of the animal. This moistens the powder
and adds more flavor to the pemican. It is then ready to be eaten
either on bannock or just plainly.
To make "Pemican" that will KEEP: take jerked or dried beef strips
and pound them to a powder or pulp, mix with fat (warm) beef
tallow, sugar and raisins. Put in bladders or skins and tie up
tight, (Used extensively by Arctic and other Explorers and if kept
air tight will last for years).
Pemican is the main ingredient
in a trail stew called 'rubaboo'.
Rubaboo:
Cheadle's Journal: A
Trip Across Canada 1862- 1863 describes Rubaboo as made by
boiling a large piece of pemican or dry meat the size of one's
fist in a large quantity of water, thickened by a single handful
of flour. The chunks of pemican will fall apart. Add onions,
turnips, asparagus, parsley, sage, bullrush root, cattail heads,
dandelion root, wild parsnip, wild carrots, pine nuts, mushrooms,
daylily roots, or wild rice to make an appetizing stew.
Another source, The Great Fur
Opera by Kildare Dobbs, offers a somewhat disenchanted version of
the recipe for making pemican.
'Find some old, dried-out
ends of meat and cut off the hard outside crusts. Pound
these to dust in a mortar. Add mouldy raisins, buckshot, and
a jug of melted, rancid animal fat. Sprinkle with long black
hairs and poodle-clippings. Stir. Pour into an old
shoe and chill. After six months, a greenish fur will have
grown on the pemican. Remove and keep this: it's
pemicillin!
