Passport to Texas

Jesse Griffiths working with wild game on the grill

Do-It-Yourself Venison Processing Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

I love to cook and I love venison. So I attended a Venison Do-It-Yourself class taught by Jesse Griffiths, a hunter and professional chef in Austin, who says it pays to process your own deer.

:29—You know, there’s just a lot of reasons why doing it yourself is so much better… because, you don’t know what they’re mixing it with. Maybe you’re not even getting your own deer back. Maybe the people that they’re mixing your deer with –they didn’t take very good care of their deer. Maybe they did the whole, carry it around on the top of their Suburban in some hot weather for awhile. So, you don’t really know. And by putting it in your own hands, it’s really going to do everybody a little more good.

Chef Griffiths advocates using all of this perfect protein cooking.

:12—We’re going to use the liver and the kidneys and the bones, and the neck—everything today. I just want to show people how good that stuff is and if you’re taking the time to kill it, then take the time to enjoy every little bit of it, too.

Throughout the class we watched as Chef carved the venison into familiar cuts of meat: loins, ribs, cutlets, roasts, and flank steaks. After cutting came the cooking.

:05—I want to get people beyond the bacon, jalapeno situation that most game cooking is in.

Tomorrow: how to maximize the flavor of venison. You can also read about, and see pictures from, my Venison Do-It-Yourself experience in the October issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

That’s our show…with support from the Sport fish and Wildlife Restoration program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.