Our very first venture cooking dinner with canned venison: "Deer stroganoff"

A few nights ago, we tried out making dinner with canned venison for the first time! In the past, my husband has always ground and frozen the deer he harvested; he canned two of them this year. He asked his brother for his venison stroganoff recipe, and we set to work experimenting with making it more "homemade" :)

Star of the show!

My brother in law's recipe, verbatim

The division of labor, we decided, was that I would make the sauce and rice, and he would saute the mushrooms and prep the meat. (It's been ages since we cooked a meal together like that, so that part was fun!)

First, the sauce. My Betty Crocker and Southern Living cookbooks have slightly different versions of basic brown sauce, so I mishmashed them together and quadrupled it. I melted a stick of butter on low heat and added some onion slices, then let them simmer away. Betty said the onion would turn brown and Southern Living said the butter would turn brown….hmmm….well, I figured, I'd just cook it until something browned :)

Can you go wrong with any recipe starting with onions in butter?

I use my Keurig to get hot water to make beef broth with bouillon. (Always double check that somebody hasn't left a coffee pod in it!) I was originally going to make 4 cups of beef broth, but changed my mind and made 2 cups, added extra beef bouillon and filled up the rest of the measuring cup with milk, so the sauce would be creamy.

While the onions simmered (which took forever, by the way) I got the rice ready, and my husband chopped up more onion. (If I had known he was going to do that, I wouldn't have bothered with that step on the sauce!) Then he chopped up 1-1.5 cups of fresh mushrooms. (Have I mentioned he never measures anything?) He heated a skillet with olive oil, sauteed the mushrooms and onion with salt and pepper, decided to throw in some minced garlic….opened a bottle of wine for us to drink, and decided to pour some of that into the skillet too….

Fresh goodness

Can't skip this step

Hey, why not?

Cooked until the wine was reduced/absorbed

Well, this was looking interesting. Especially since the only wine we had was sweet red, not dry. He's definitely the type to wing it while cooking.

Meanwhile the dang sauce skillet was finally starting to brown (Southern Living was right, it was the butter). I took the onions out and added them to my husband's saute skillet (why waste delicious butter-soaked onions after all?) Then I added half a cup of flour and whisked it until it was smooth and bubbly.

Brown butter at last!

Add the flour

Whisk till smooth and bubbly

Took the pan off the heat, and added the milky broth. Now to return it to the heat and whisk the sauce (gravy?) until it thickened and boiled.

My husband helpfully whisked it while I gradually poured in the liquid

Good thing rice is low maintenance, since I pretty much ignored it other than making sure it didn't dry up.

While I cooked the gravy, my husband took the metal lid off the quart jar of venison, microwaved it for a minute and poured off the juice. Then we added the mushroom mixture to the thickened gravy, then the venison, and let it simmer for 15 minutes. It smelled so wonderful!!

Adding the mushroom mixture

mmm, venison!

Simmering to blend all those flavors

I wish I had a prettier picture (than the one at the top of this article) of the final product with a garnish, but rest assured it was amazingly delicious COMFORT FOOD! We will definitely make this again.

Just for fun, a chef selfie

Lessons learned?
Well, next time I'll skip the whole simmering-onion part of making brown sauce, and just make creamy beef gravy starting with a basic roux, since sauteeing onions with the mushrooms worked out fine. I also think I'd make 3 cups of gravy instead of 4. Finally, I want to use dry wine next time, and see how the taste changes. It turned out fine with sweet wine, but I think dry would be even better.

ENJOY! Thank you for reading, and have a great day!