Best way to age/tenderize venison

[mustoffa]

have you every pressure cook in canning jar most tender meat i have every ate.

[twitchstick]

Well I think slowbowke has it pretty good. But as dave said it can be still good with the hide off. Here in the west hunting in august it is hard cool game off when it is 90 degrees. Elk are real tuff to cool off with thier thick hides,and can spoil leaving the over night to track. If I can age mine whole I do prefer to leave the hide on,bigger yeilds that way. I do use an old refridge in the basement. I am in the process of turning my shed into a walkin. Aging the meat letting the enzimes break down the meat can make a big differance but sometimes I do have to cut meat quicker, if I have a deer and a elk down at the same time. The little fridge only holds so much. The next step is cut the grain of the meat in the right way,that can also make it tuff.

[Jeff Strubberg]

I've done it both ways and can't say I've seen a huge difference between six days at 38 degrees or cleaned immediately and packaged.

Maybe I'm cooking it wrong, but tenderloin is tenderloin.  I'd take it right off the carcass and onto the grill.

[Paul WA]

On a late season I let it hang with the hide off at least 2 weeks and cut backstrap as we need it...PR

[John Scifres]

I age steaks after cutting and freezing. I do this in my refrigerator for 10 days prior to cooking. The steaks are still wrapped in plastic coated butcher paper and in a ziploc bag. It is amazing how much fluid comes out of freshly frozen meat.
The meat turns out more tender with a richer flavor and cooks up better. This is aresult of concentrating the flavor as well as structure breakdown via enzymatic action. However, I believe a the bigger part of this is the removal of moisture.

My favorite way to cook steaks is to flash fry them in an iron skillet to medium rare or less. A dryer meat will allow a nice crust to form quickly without overcooking the interior. When non-aged steaks are cooked, that moisture inevitably cools the meat as it cooks and escapes. This makes for a less desirable, almost mushy "crust". My steaks are brown on the outside when they are properly cooked. Non-aged steaks cooked the same way will be grayish instead. To get to the brown, desired outside, it requires too much time and the inside gets overcooked.

This is only for steaks from the hindquarters and maybe shoulders on a bigger deer. Tenderloins and backstraps do not require aging. Stew or slowcook roasts do not require aging. Burger meat does benefit from aging for the same reasons, I believe, ie. moisture removal, flavor concentration adn structure breakdown.

Keep in mind a big part of this debate results from different tastes. I do it this way because it results in the tastes I like. Perhaps you don't like the same things I do and prefer your meat in a different condition. Different strokes....

[buckeye_hunter]

For stew meat...

Cut venison in cubes, fill a mason jar about 3/4 with venison cubes, add a teaspoon of salt, put on lid and then put the jar in a boiling water bath for 3 hrs.

Better and more tender than beef. Honestly.

-Charlie

[razorsharptokill]

Tightly sealed Buckeye?

[PAPA BEAR]

i get the meat off the bone fast then get it to a cooler fast.hangs two days...cut...wrapped..flashfroze ....never had a tough animal yet.thats elk not deer...dont hunt deer much..too fast,can't run'em down and them little chits can corner like a chipmunk.

[Dave Bulla]

Hey buckeye, try putting about a 1/2" thick slice of onion in the bottom and some black pepper too!!!!

A pressure cooker speeds up the process a LOT.

Razorsharp, I'm brain farting about the lids.  I'm thinking you tighten them but not a lot so the pressure can escape then when they cool, they seal tight and you can take the rings off.  Try googling home canning and you should find the correct answer.  It's all pretty much the same whether it's beans or venison.

[Don Stokes]

Here in the South it's rare to have cool enough temperatures for long enough to age properly in the hide. The one time it worked out for me, I was able to hang a young buck for about 17 days in January. On a couple of the warmer days, I lowered him to the ground and wrapped him in a tarp and covered him with leaves until the evening. It turned a lean late-season rut-weary buck into good eating.

Usually I have to resort to quartering and putting the meat in a cooler for a week or 10 days. I put a thick layer of ice on the bottom and tilt the cooler so it can drain as the ice melts, and I just add ice as needed until it's done and I'm ready for the cutting and wrapping. I put fresh ice on the top of the meat as it ages, and I've always been happy with the result. I think it doesn't matter whether the ice is in contact with the meat, as long as the meat is not sitting in standing water in the bottom of the cooler. The ice melt has to be able to drain away.

I take great pains to cool the carcass as soon as possible. If it's cool enough to hang the deer for a while in the hide, I use bags of ice in the body cavity to get it cooled down, or I wash out the body cavity with fresh water to cool the meat and clean the cavity. If there's a stream near where I field dress the deer, I like to immerse the carcass for a while to cool it immediately after field dressing. In this region, getting the meat cooled quickly is very important to good-tasting venison.

[Dave Bulla]

Don, have you ever tried using dry ice?  I did the cooler method a couple times and wasn't very happy with it.  It works but it's messy, the wet meat is halfway disgusting and did I mention it's messy?  Cutting up meat that has been wet is a lot harder than cutting up meat that has been aged "dry".  I've got one of the big white Igloo coolers that I think is 110 quart but a deer takes up a lot of space so it's hard to keep it out of the ice water.

Anyway, tried some dry ice and put the meat in the bottom of the cooler and the DI in the tray in the top above the meat.  It tried to freeze the meat but I found that if I wrapped the dry ice in several layers of newspaper, I could regulate it's cooling/freezing enough to get good results.  It's more expensive but lasts days and no mess other than some frost in the newspaper.  You can get the dry ice in either pellets or blocks.  It seems like the blocks works better for this type use.  Seems to last longer.

Anybody else ever try this?

[iacornfed]

I have read a lot of opinion giving here. Which is OK, But Slowbowke is the only one who has given the actual scientific reasons behind meet aging without going into the technical explanations. As many others I too have difficulty aging my meat due to uneven temps! I am thinking of building a small well insulated smoke house with a air conditioner built in. It will be dual purpose that way. Another thought is possibly a root cellar with an air conditioner! Oh well so many ideas and so little time.