Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1911-10-18
COOKING vENIsoN.
An Art Understood by Comparatively
Few Cooks.
from the Bangor Commercially

the tender, juicy steaks Of the deer and
moose, when ripened just enough to b.
fit to eat; there are more ways oil
spelling it 80 it is at only for outer soIet
to the Indian tans. When the average
man goes home with delicious supper Of
venison, his wife serves it on the table q
little later with the heart all cooked out
OF it and the inside as white as piece OF
pork, tough and leathery enough to give
a corn-fed giant dyspepsia.
Never let your wife lay profane hands on
piece OF venison if you know what's good
for you and the venison. There is only
one way to cook venison, and while it's a
great deal better for moose steaks rich,
red and juicy, tender as the tenderest beei
that ever was, it is not bad for deer meat,
as they say in some Of the advertisements
CAST IRON SPIDER.
Get an old-time cast iron spider that is
thick and big and heavy. Put it into a
blazing fire until it is white bot-not red
hot, but white-ano then place the white
hot spider on very hot stove, cut of
thick slices of round venison steak and
jab them against the blazing spider. Use
no butter or fat Of any kind-just let the
raw and cold meat lie close against the
raw and hot iron and sizzle and smoke and
burn and smell until it is crusted over
with animal charcoal quarter of an inch
deep and until it smells like an old feather
bed that is burning.
Now flop the round steak over and re-
he nm. ho of ap aide nc
which time the spider is ready for another
round. Throw the hot steak upon large
platter, scrape OF 1.-THE burned surface
slightly, score the meat deeply with .
thin knife and then pile on the butter;
heap it up until it melts and runs down
and overfows every pore and opening in
the meat and almost floats the steak away.
After this has been done there is
nothing left to do except to eat the steak,
and most any body knows how to do this
without . recipe. Beav in mind always
that there never was and never will be any
other way to cook venison steak and cook
it q ito eat.
With bear meat the method is consider
ably different. The flesh is porus and
streaked with loose fat, so it resembles
fresh pork spare rib more than anything
else. You cannot fry or smother or broil
bear meat with any satisfaction, but when
spare rib cut is taken of close to the
back bone and the bake pan is paved with
slices Of fat salt pork, with peeled onions
and halved sweet potatoes standing about
in groups to catch the fat, q man should
make q good job OF it at baking bears
meat, providing the cooking is done
slowly and the basting is performed often.
The fresh water mussels of Maine are
more valuable for their glossy shells than
they are for their pearls. In the same
way, baked BEARS meat is more priced
for the stufing and sweet potatoes and
onions that are cooked in its company
than for the intrinsic worth OF the meat,
which in old animals is coarse and fatty
aud favored with wild tastes and odors
Sach as only . man who is very hungry
can endure.
Rump steak from the back OF . three
year-old bull moose that is in good order
is the tenderest and the sweetest flesh
that mankind has ever eaten. Positively,
there is nothing to compare with it under
the sun. No matter how you cook it, you
cannot fail to he delighted. Naturally
there can be no such dish as moose soup or
baked moose, for the flesh is too precious to
be put to such uses. Cut the lean meat into
thinnish strips aud slap it on the hot
broiler and throw the butter at it. A
minute is long enough il the fire is hot.
Then take it on and eat it and call for
more and still more, until the moose is
gone. Nobody ever had enough Of broiled
moose meat to eat. A task Of this kind
is quite impossible.