Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Venison along with all the recipes employing Venison presented on this site, with 79 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Venison recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Venison as a major wild food ingredient.

Venison: today, the term typically refers to the meats of members of the Cervidae (deer) family of ruminant animals. Originally, however, the term venison referred to just about any game animal that was hunted. Indeed, the term venison itself derives from the Latin vēnor (to hunt, or to pursue) and comes into English via Norman French.

The Normans used the word to described meat of any game animal killed by hunting and typically it was applied to any animal with red meat from the families Cervidae (deer), Leporidae (hares), and Suidae (wild pigs), and certain species of the genus Capra (goats and ibex).

It was the Normans who enclosed large areas of England to create hunting parks — termed fôret (forest) in Norman French and which were typically a mix of woodland and grazing land (the New Forest being the most well known of these). Indeed, it was the Normans who introduced fallow deer into Britain to supplement the native red deer population (they also introduced rabbits for hunting with hawks).

Today, in Europe and America, venison is a term most commonly applied to the meats of various deer species, most commonly red deer, elk, fallow deer, roe deer, moose and reindeer/caribou. However, in Southern Africa (where there are no native deer spices), the term venison is typically used to denote the meats of various species of antelope and gazelle instead (the ruminant artiodactyl family) a Bovidae taxon, as there are no native Cervidae in sub-Saharan Africa..

During the Middle Ages, because the best cuts of venison were always destined for the lord's table or the high table, a distinction was made between venison (the prime cuts) and noumbles the offal (particularly the intestines), which were offered to the lower orders. This is why the pie made from these meats, known as Noumble Pie, had mutated linguistically by Stuart times to 'humble pie'.

Though venison is hunted today, it is also a common farmed meat, with red deer, fallow deer and reindeer being the typical farmed species. At culling time, farmed venison can be comparatively priced to beef. However, venison is a much learner meat. Hunted venison (particularly if hung) can have a distinctly gamey note, but farmed venison is comparable to beef in taste and can be substituted for beef in many recipes, particularly for braising and stewing. If roasting venison, however, due to its leanness it is best to either lard the meat or to baste frequently with butter, fat or oil to prevent its drying. As a result, one of the best ways to cook venison is to braise the meat. This also means that venison mince is much leaner than beef mince and you need to add fat to it (bacon, suet, butter or cheese) if cooking in a similar way to beef; particularly if making burgers.

For information about roasting venison (and many other meats) to perfection, see this site's Guide to Roasting page.