Recipe: Venison Goulash

All recipes are manifestos.

Feb 07, 2024

What’s the best part of a deer to eat? I think for most, It's the backstrap or tenderloin. If a hunter owes somebody a big favor or wants to express their undying love, they will carve out these pieces, wrap them carefully, and deliver them with the unspoken pride of a housecat leaving an eviscerated lizard at your doorstep. Here, I killed for you. I like to cook the backstrap rare and slice it up into medallions, coarse salt, cracked pepper, arrange with green onions or basil leaves and drizzle with olive oil.

But that’s not my favorite part. I love shanks. That’s the foreleg, from the hoof/wrist up to the elbow. There’s not a ton of meat and that meat is densely interwoven with what butchers call silverskin and massage therapists call facia. Muscles don’t just go from point A to point B, they are held together by compartments of collagen fibers that provide compressive structure and allow muscle groups to slide around each other. The facia also creates a pathway for interstitial fluid to deliver nutrients and remove waste products. This system is called the Interstitium, some consider it an organ itself.

It's only recently that anatomists really started paying attention to the Interstitium. Previously, bodies were dissected and studied after most of the water had been drained from them. As any butcher knows, the difference between a carcass that’s been aged a few days and a fresh one is dramatic. Fresh, there’s this gossamer membrane that's sliding around on the surface of muscle groups. If you get a speck of dirt or a particle from a twig on it, it holds onto it. It looks like you can just lift it up with a fingernail, but something wet and invisible has enveloped it, and it just won’t come up. You try to rinse it off with a hose, but the membrane just gets plumper. Dry it a few days, and there’s just this slightly dry, firm surface on the muscles. No sign of any magical membrane.

What’s this got to do with shanks? Shanks have lots of little muscle groups and lots of compartments, so a high proportion of facia. Also, shanks are where the endpoints of the big anterior and posterior power chains terminate; big tendons anchored to bones, wrapped in fascia like spliced ship cables.

If you cook this for 30 minutes, it will be tough as rope. If you braise it for four hours, it will be thick, gooey collagen protein laden stew. Let it cool, and it will become gelatinous like an aspic.

Any vegetables that were in there with it will be liquified by this process so add them later if you want to experience them as separate things. I like to let onions, garlic, spices, herbs, celery, tomatoes and peppers liquify. Carrots, potatoes, or cabbage go in later.

Guajillos:

When I was a child in California, it was not uncommon to see braids of dried chiles hanging over a doorway, like mistletoe. I didn't know anyone who knew how to cook with these, and I assumed they were plastic, like fake fruit in a bowl on a dining room table. We had one that hung for years and got dusty. When it was finally time to throw it out, I was surprised to find seeds inside the desiccated peppers. Since moving to Texas, I've learned that those are usually Guajillos and you use them to make food.

I'm not Mexican, nor indigenous, nor a chef. I just watch enough youtube to be dangerous and then I experiment. I typically start off following a recipe and then go my own way halfway through. It’s a kind of attention deficit cultural appropriation. Sometimes I miss out on what the recipe was aiming for, but sometimes it really hits.

A Guajillo sauce brings intense flavor and color to the dish, amplifying the flavor of the Paprika and taking it much, much farther into pepper-world. Guajillos are really not hot if you remove the seeds, but the flavor is intense. The favors in these dried peppers range from bright to dark, bitter, sweet, chocolate, coffey, and strange notes of tannins and polyphenols the plant originally intended to deter consumption, like capsaicin. Humans ate them anyway, and evolved to depend on them. Some of these phytonutrients are strong antioxidants, now used to treat inflammation, diabetes, cancer… All food is medicine, but Guajillos are especially numinous to me.

In addition to dried Guajillos, I usually add 1 dried Ancho for umami, and a few dried Arboles if heat is desired.

Peppers:

Tear them open, discard the stem and seeds.
Toast them. They say Guajillos are done toasting when the inside tissue of the pepper turns pink, but I like to do it by smell. The aroma is bright at first and gets dark and smoky, then burnt. When they make the smell I want in my food, I pull them off.
Submerge them in a pot of almost boiling water to soften.

Spices:

I go heavy on cumin.
Mexican oregano
Garlic
Maybe a little cinnamon
Maybe some nutmeg? Clove? I know, those are christmas spices. That’s crazy! Do go light on the clove.
If this were mole, I’d be generous with a good cocoa powder. Also, I might toast a mixture of raisins and nuts to add to the blender. This is not mole, but it's tempting to blur the lines and see how it interacts with the venison. No, focus! Venison Goulash is already a hybrid idea.

Paprika… I have two kinds of Hungarian paprika in my cabinet and I'll use both for a spectrum of tang. That’s where the native American and European are going to meet, and this time, we’re all going to get along.
Take the peppers out of the water, which is now reddish brown. Put them in a blender with a cup of the water.
I add enough salt at this point to be able to taste the idea. You can always add more salt, but if it's totally absent, I find I can’t see where the thing is going.
Add the spices. Blend. You may need to add more pepper water to get a smooth consistency.
Taste. Adjust.

How about that? Strong flavor, bright color, warm umami smells. That and the remaining pepper water are your braising liquid.

Some people… fragile types who weren't allowed to play outside as children… will run this through a sieve to remove particles of pepper skin. I tried this once and found I regretted losing the tablespoon of sauce more than I appreciated the absence of tiny fragments.

Shanks:

Sear your shanks on the bottom of the pot. I find the stainless instapot pot is substantial enough to get a good brown.
Take them out, saute the onions, celery, whatever else in your mirepoix.
Add some wine, scrape the bottom with a flat wooden spoon.
Add more things from the fridge and the freezer you need to get rid of. I like to freeze Cilantro stems in little baggies. They add a lot of flavor chopped up and thrown in now. Those mushrooms are going to get slimy if you don’t do something with them. Strangely, mushrooms won’t liquify no matter what you do, so add them now. Don’t add cabbage yet.

Add everything but the shanks, stir it all up, simmer and taste. The cumin and paprika will mellow and settle into everything and get stronger later. Does it need a little more heat? I usually have grilled jalapenos in the freezer I can chop up for a quick addition, but I have to be mindful of those who would eat what I cook, if only I could learn to control myself. Did I see half a red bell pepper in the fridge? That thing will be bad tomorrow. In the goulash, it will disappear and I won’t be able to identify its flavor in the end, but I will know it contributed something, and it didn't go to waste.

They say fancy food is peasant dishes served out of season or far from their point of origin. I like to stay close to the peasant style and plan meals as refrigerator clean outs.

As long as you didn’t put the not completely cooked meat in yet, you can taste as you go. Once you have it the way you want it, add the meat and let it rip for three or four hours. I run the instapot for about 40min on high pressure.
Once that’s done, remove the shanks, pull the meat off, put the meat back in.
Add Cabbage! BOOM! You thought I forgot. No, if you add cabbage before the big cook it will fall apart. If you like it firm, just put it in there on Warm for a few minutes. Or cook it a little longer, but no pressure. Limp cabbage is a slap in the face of your ancestors. Up to now, Hungary’s main contribution was paprika, which is marginal at best because Hungarians came to Paprika via Christopher Columbus who got it from you know who: Mexicans. Cabbage, on the other hand, was domesticated before 2000BC and was a staple of the Roman Empire. So now this is finally a New World-Old World fusion dish. Cut the cabbage like noodles. The rest of the dish is a thick sauce, the cabbage should be a little bit like pasta.

From here, I like a good crusty loaf of bread with a bowl. Oh shit! Did I make it too spicy? I always do that, just serve with sour cream. I usually underdo the salt and need to add more at the end. Its good to let people determine their own salt content, but I find that if it’s not dialed in before they get it, they sometimes never get to experience what I was going for. Then again, there must always come a point at which the creator relinquishes control and gives ownership of the experience to the audience. Is it before or after seasoning? Are you reading this on a phone or a laptop? I know it's not paper, not even in my wildest fantasy. Add potatoes, garnish with cilantro or green onion or parsley or just chop up whatever you have and add all of it! There’s no rules, everything is permitted! It’s up to us to interpret our cultural heritage. Take what you need, discard what does not work, leave a better world for your children!

Ryan’s Substack

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