The Magic of Secret Ingredients

They can be simple and they can be complicated, but I prefer the simple ones. And since I hunt–and live where I can easily and quickly get into the woods–I also prefer not-so-hard-to-get secret ingredients. And, while some people like to keep their secrets close to their hearts, my wild game cookbooks are positively littered with them. Never could keep a secret!

If you like to cook you game with recipes originating in Germany, for instance, you’ll find lingonberries and lingonberry jelly is sometimes an ingredient. That’s kinda hard to find at Bob’s Pretty Good Grocery, and lately hard to find in the bigger town north of us, but I’ve found cranberry sauce is a great substitute. Like the lingonberry jelly, it’s sweet and tart—unlike strawberry jelly for instance—and for the un-processed berries, raw cranberries will work. (Bob’s Pretty Good only carries the raw c-berry for Thanksgiving and Christmas so I buy them when available and stick them in the freezer for later.)

I’ve had a couple of secret ingredients in my spaghetti sauce for decades. The first is adding balsamic vinegar to the skillet after browning the meat and onions. I brown them separately, meat first then transferred to a bowl, onions second. For about one pound of meat and 1 whole sliced onion-sized recipe, I add ¼ cup of balsamic vinegar to the pan with the sauteed onion and let the vinegar cook down. When you tip the pan and no vinegar pools in the low spots, it’s done. Then you return the meat to the pan and add the rest of the ingredients.    

Second, we keep chunks of Parmesan cheese in the fridge—rather than using the can of pre-grated stuff—and for a richer sauce I’ll toss in a 2-3-inch chunk of Parmesan rind as I add the liquid ingredients to the skillet. As the sauce simmers 30 minutes or more, the rind melts and releases rich flavor. I used to pull it out before serving, but these days I just make sure it’s in my dish. And gobble it up. 

Between the reduced—and sweetened balsamic vinegar–and the Parmesan rind, the sauce is deeper and sweeter. Some recipes call for sugar to get that effect in spaghetti sauce, but I prefer the more nuanced flavor of reduced balsamic vinegar. 

One more thing about the Parm. John started it, but we both do it now. Instead of grating a big chunk of delicious Parmesan cheese, we shave slices off it with a sharp chef’s knife. Saves lots of time. I actually own a cheese shaving tool, but the knife is faster. And it’s already been used to slice the onions, so one less thing to wash up.

And balsamic vinegar? John buys the big bottle at Costco.com since we use it a lot. My favorite salad dressing is about ¼ cup balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp Grey Poupon mustard, with oil and pepper to taste. I only add a teaspoon or so of oil and ½ tsp black pepper.

The secret ingredient? It’s the Poupon. Mustard has emulsifiers in it, and emulsifiers keep the vinegar and oil from separating. So you just need to shake the dressing in a closed jar to mix it.

What about secrets to thicken soups, stews and chilies?

If you already have potato in the recipe, make sure you have a spare spud saved back. Then, if your soup isn’t as thick as you’d hoped it would be, grate some of the spare potato into it. Stir, let it cook 5-10 minutes. Need more? Add more, until you’re happy.  

Making a bean soup? Or chili? If you’re using canned beans, and most of us do, don’t drain and rinse the beans before adding them to the pot. That liquid they’re packed in will thicken it up right quick. In fact, you’ll have to be careful that the broth doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.

Any secrets about birds or game bird recipes?

Then there are secrets other folks have taught me. Like the pheasant hunters in North Dakota who soaked skinned breasts and legs in ice water overnight to leech out any residue blood from bruising. Then dried them with old—but clean—kitchen towels so they could vacuum seal the birds the next morning. 

And at a fundraiser dinner one night a dentist sharing our table also shared that he often is too busy to pluck his birds when he gets home from a hunt. So he freezes than whole, then takes them out one or two at a time later, letting only the outer 1/8th inch of the skin thaw before he starts plucking them. Keeping the feathers on them insulates the birds from freezer damage better than vacuum sealing. 

Then a hunter in UP Michigan showed me his delicate little gut hook. It only took a tiny cut into the abdomen to draw the guts with that thing, and that tiny hole prevented the bird’s flesh from drying out in the freezer. 

And while we age all our birds in the fridge for 5-7 days, so don’t do the frozen water soak, I do use a tiny bird gut hook, make as small a cut as possible to draw the birds, and keep the feathers on while aging, to reduce drying the birds out. Another secret, while everyone knows the easiest time to pluck birds is right when they hit the ground, the second easiest time is when they’ve aged enough to be more tender. And, checking how easy it is to pluck the bird is a tool for telling when the bird is perfectly aged. Shared all that in the Upland Game Bird Cookery book, my collection of wild game bird recipes, originally published by Ducks Unlimited. 

More secrets next time. Let’s have a recipe right now. 

Like Meredith and her pineapple. I’d already learned years ago that fresh pineapple was an uncontrollable marinating acid, and that canned pineapple wasn’t, but never used it in a meat soup. Scalloped Pineapple, yes, but that’s dessert. (It’s in Slice of the Wild.  When I said my game books have side dishes, I didn’t mean just veggies.) FYI, it was while developing marinades for pheasants, sharptails and grouse that I messed around with fresh and canned pineapple as well as Ginger Ale; I’d discovered the joys of Dr. Pepper earlier. But we’ll talk about that another time. 

Time now to try out Meredith’s secret ingredient as I did years ago, to see what it does for a fairly simple venison stew in a slow cooker.

Here’s Meredith:

Meredith’s Secret Ingredient Stew

Way back in the 1980s, Meredith Stephens ran one of the best small town bars I ever saw.  She was what my grandmother would have called a pistol: bootlegging movies off her satellite dish and renting them for a buck a day; duct-taping a Daily Trivia Question on the back bar mirror, and keeping a ‘Don’t Say *%$’ Jar just below it (everyone said it, including Meredith, but the quarters she collected paid for a yearly 4th of July party she threw for the whole town) or creating recipes with secret ingredients that have lived on long after her.  (This was the only secret she ever revealed and I still wonder if she told all.) 

On Browning for better flavor: About ½ pound of chopped up meat in a pre-heated medium to medium-hot 10-inch skillet, with hot oil, will give you more flavor. That means doing about 3 batches for this recipe. More than ½ pound at a time leads to evaporating liquids overwhelming the hot pan, resulting in a grayish foam—and mediocre taste. Ideal is no foaming, so you create the Maillard Effect and a caramelized flavor. 

Meredith’s Secret Ingredient Stew

Serves 8

Ingredients

• 2 cups beef broth
  
• 2 cups hot water
  
• 20 ounce can pineapple chunks, drained and juice saved
  
• 1/2 cup flour
  
• 1 teaspoon garlic salt
  
• 1 teaspoon white pepper
  
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  
• 1 1/2 pounds venison stew meat, cubed
  
• about 5 tablespoons oil, in all
  
• 1 teaspoon smoked Chipotle Tabasco sauce
  
• 1 large yellow onion, sliced
  
• 1 teaspoon sugar
  
• 1 pound potatoes, chopped
  
• 1 pound carrots, sliced
  

Cooking

1. Start a 3-quart slow cooker on high, and add the beef broth, water and the pineapple chunks and cover.  (Save the pineapple juice you drained off for deglazing the pan.)  In a plastic bag combine the flour, garlic salt, white and cayenne peppers, and shake.  Add the venison cubes, seal the bag and shake until the meat surfaces are lightly covered.  
   
2. Starting with 2 tablespoons of the oil, brown the meat in the oil over medium heat in 3-4 batches until golden, adding 1-2 tablespoons of oil as needed with succeeding batches, then add the pineapple juice and Tabasco sauce slowly into the hot skillet.  Scrape up the tasty bits from the bottom of the pan, and when the sauce thickens, pour the meat and sauce into the slow cooker.  
   
3. Add 2 tablespoons more oil and the sugar to the pan and start browning the onions on medium-high heat. Once they sizzle, lower the heat to medium. Continue browning the onions until they are quite soft and smell very sweet, about 15 minutes.  Add them to the slow cooker, too.  
   
4. Add the potatoes and carrots, stir them into the stew, and cover. When the pot comes to a slow simmer, reduce the heat to low.  Continue cooking 8 hours.   Serve hot with lots of attitude.