Hi -

Welcome to Wild Bites #9 from Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, a brief biweekly newsletter designed to make you smarter about your wild food. We'll also tell you what we're up to right now - a taste of what's to come on our website, podcast, YouTube, or To The Bone.

 ~ Hank (the chef) and Holly (the photographer)

1. What's Hot Now

2. The News You've Been Waiting For! 

You have been asking us to do more instructional video for ages, and now we've finally found the perfect partner. Hank has teamed up with OutdoorClass, the Masterclass-style platform for the outdoors, to do online video courses! Thanks go out to our friend Randy Newberg, who put Hank on to them.

Hank's first course is Venison 101, a 13-unit video course that takes you from butchering to cooking to preserving. Classes include some nifty tips and tricks on butchering, how to make stocks and stews, the ins and outs of grinding your own venison, how to prep and cook offal so you'll actually love it, as well as some of Hank's signature dishes like steak Diane and barbacoa. 

The cool thing about OutdoorClass is that $99 gets you full access to the whole shebang. Not just Hank's class, but also classes from Randy Newberg, Remi Warren, Brian Call and more. Most are about how to get your game, but there are other cooks involved, too, like our friend Bri Van Scotter. 

Hank's class goes live next month, and we'll let you know when it drops. But you can sign up right now for the existing courses to whet your appetite. If you use the code SHAW at checkout, you will save $20 off the cost of a membership.

3. Smart Take: Nurturing Animals, Hunting Animals

Holly recently found herself in the seemingly odd position of working to save a flightless baby dove that had fallen from its nest prematurely, literally days before she'd go out to hunt the dove opener.

"I went through this both deeply aware of, and entirely comfortable with, the bifurcation in my mind about saving one bird as I planned to kill more than a dozen of his brethren," she writes in a free post on To The Bone.

"Both acts - nurturing defenseless young and hunting to feed myself - were hard-wired into our ancestors long before we became human. The very act of living creates unintended ripples of destruction, especially human living. We build mental walls that allow us to accept all of this killing, even as we declare other forms of killing off-limits. The only question is whether we choose to delude ourselves about it.

"Hunting, for me, ripped away that delusion. But its loss didn’t cause me to abandon acts of kindness; it made me appreciate them even more, knowing they are part of the balance and beauty of our world."

4. What We're Up To

Hank has been filling his curing chamber with dry-cured sausages. On the left in the photo below is Spanish fuet, which is a long, thin dry sausage that's very simple - just pork, garlic and white pepper. The center is super weird: stangkorv, a Swedish barley and offal and pork sausage that's fermented and dried for only a week or two. Hank thought it sounded gnarly, but world-famous chef Magnus Nilsson likes them, so why not? We tried them on Thursday, and they are tangy and delicious! The sausages on the right are a simple venison salami flavored with garlic and wild black sage. We're sure this one will be good, as Hank has made similar sausages before.

When all these Hanksperiments are done, we'll post the recipes on the website, but if you're itching to crank up your sausage grinder before then, we've got plenty of charcuterie recipes to keep you busy.

Holly just got back from the 2022 Wyoming Chicken Chase, a six-day quest from Cheyenne to Jackson to hunt all four grouse species in the state: sharp-tailed, dusky (blue), sage and ruffed. This is the hunt she'd been training for all summer, and the preparation paid off: She hunted hard to the very end, keeping up with a group of men who've been chasing birds together for decades, and completing the Wyoming grouse slam.

She brought home a mix of light meat (four duskies, four ruffed) and dark meat (two sage grouse, two sharpies), so you know what that means: Hank will be adding more grouse recipes to the website. And Holly's story - filled with struggle, lightning, serendipity, and a random bikini - will appear soon on To The Bone.

5. New Video: Chile Colorado

Yep, Hank has a YouTube channel, and he posts mostly "hands and pans" how-to videos of some of his most popular recipes. This week's post is chile colorado, which is one of his favorite Southwest recipes.

Beef, lamb, venison, or pork or even wild turkey legs are simmered in a chile-rich sauce until tender. It's great in burritos, or with rice, or potatoes. You can also pressure-can chile colorado to have handy on weeknights. 

If you like the video, we'd be grateful if you subscribed to the channel. Here's more detail on the recipe. 

Comments?