Moose

Okay guys, time to take a break from all this wondrous Korean food because I made moose and it was freaking delicious.

Where did I get this mythical moose meat? Well, an Army friend of mine likes to hunt and sometime in October or November, he got himself a moose. Since he is a most generous soul, he gave me some so that I could blog about it. I am forever in his debt now and should probably bake him cake or something.

Anyway, he gave me this GIANT bag of moose steak (not sure where on the moose it came from but it was super tasty so I don’t really care) and some stew meat. I’ll make some stew another time and blog the heck out of it, promise.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to do with the moose or how it would taste and was a little concerned with how dark the meat was. My friend assured me that it was good and not gamey at all, but I was still skeptical as hell. We talked about the potential for Sous Vide-ing it and serving with caramelized onions though and I was sold on giving it a try.

So I called the Tall Friend over and gathered some ingredients and we got ourselves in business!

The plan was to make steaks, caramelized onions, garlic mashed potatoes, parmesan-roasted green beans, and moose gravy. The moose gravy didn’t really work out though so I’m not going to talk about it. I need to work on my gravy game, apparently.

I tried to time everything out so that I could serve everything at once for maximum enjoyment, so the following is the order in which I prepared everything. I made the onions early in the day, then started the moose and made the sides while the steaks were in the water bath.

Caramelized Onion Jam

This is the easiest and most delicious part of the whole meal. Seriously. I started with 2 red onions and half of a yellow onion (mostly because I had it left over from another meal and figured I might as well throw it in) and made some thin slices.

Then, I melted some butter in a pan with a little bit of olive oil over medium and tossed the onion in. I stirred them up a bit to coat everything with butter and let them cook on medium for about 20 minutes before I lowered the heat to medium low and cooked for another 20 minutes (give them a good stir every 10 minutes so that they don’t burn). After that, I threw in 1/4 cup of red wine and a spoonful of sugar, let it cook for another 10 minutes and then turned off the heat. I put the onion jam aside while everything else was prepared.

When it was time to serve the food, I seared the moose steaks in a hot pan, then deglazed it with some more red wine so that I could scrape up the fond (the brown bits that get left in the pan) and reheated the onions with all that moose-y goodness. They were amazing and this is the only way I’ll ever have caramelized onions for the rest of my life. Seriously.

Moose

Dawg, I threw those steaks in some bags and threw them into a water bath at 130° F for two hours and then seared it in a hot AF pan for a minute on each side. That was it.

Also we took off all the gristle and put some salt and pepper on the steaks before sealing them up in baggies.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes

I’m usually a fan of having as much garlic as possible in my garlic mashed potatoes, but this time I was concerned with the garlic being way too strong and not really going with the moose (and also I thought I was going to make gravy LOL), so I wanted to try and cut back on the amount of garlic I usually use (which is a lot. Like, a LOT a lot).

I still wanted a subtle garlicky flavor though, so I thought about just cutting down on the amount of raw, crushed garlic that I would normally throw into the mashed potatoes at the end. After a little bit of reading though, I decided to steep 6 whole garlic cloves in 8 ounces of half and half and then added it (garlic and all) to my boiled and drained potatoes. I mashed everything up into a soupy mess (which had me a little concerned for a second because they seemed a little too soupy) and let the potatoes set so that they would would be nice and thick for serving (hooray for potato starch!).

Parmesan Roasted Green Beans

I love green beans, you guys.

I just thought you all should know.

Anyway. I cleaned a bunch of ’em, took off the weird stem part that I don’t really like, and tossed those little green sticks in some olive oil, parmesan cheese, panko breadcrumbs, and salt and pepper, then tossed them in the oven at 425° F for 20 minutes. That was it! They were heavenly.

Also, when I pre-heated the oven, I tossed the cast-iron skillet in there so that it would be hot AF for when it was time to sear the moose steaks. I started preheating when the steaks had about 40 minutes left to sous vide and threw the beans once the oven was hot. The beans finished right as the steak did, so I lucked out on the timing.

With everything done and my gravy dreams destroyed (I think I cooked the flour too much and added too much stock at one time and it didn’t really get thick and separated into a congealed mess with some brothy stuff), I threw everything onto a plate and took a bunch of pictures of it for your viewing pleasure.

You’re welcome.

Also it was all delicious. Moose has no gamey flavor at all (I could only get a hint of gamey-ness if I tried really hard to taste it) and tastes a lot like beef. It’s just a little darker when raw.

So if someone ever offers you moose, you take that shit and make steaks because it’s wonderfully tasty and outrageously tender.

But also you could probably make cow steaks the same way and still have something delicious.

So go forth and make steak, I guess.