Wild Bites #75: a 5-minute read that makes you smarter about wild food and tells you what's to come on the website,
YouTube, or To The Bone. ~ Hank British fish pie with leeks is a hearty dish for colder weather. Here's what's trending on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook: - It's chili season, so here are my various recipes for America's favorite stew. I'll start with the One Ring of chili, my venison chili. It's the best there is. For vegetarians, my mushroom chili is amazing, too. I have a fantastic turkey black bean chili, too.
- It's finally cold enough for pozole! This is the classic Mexican soup with hominy, pork or chicken, and red chiles. I have a Sonoran white pozole, too.
- If you have quail, partridges, chukars, ruffed grouse or even Cornish hens, make pan-roasted partridge with a lovely winter salad.
- An oldie but a goodie: Venison loin with gin and juniper. A great way to celebrate deer season! (See below)
- It wouldn't be Wild Bites without meatballs! I'll go a little sideways this time, with Alpine canederli dumplings. They are mostly bready, but there's a little cured meat hidden in there...
- For those of you still fishing, try a hearty fish pie with
leeks. You can use lots of different kinds of fish, and it's even better if you add in some flaked, smoked fish.
Moving up the list: Love seeing my recipe for poblano
corn chowder trending! It's a fun, warming dish for cooler weather, and you can add shredded chicken or pheasant to it if you don't want it vegetarian. Love these or any of my recipes? Please rate them while you're there so people searching for recipes know they're worth clicking on! 2. Hunt Raffle Still Open!Want to win a free hunt with me? Or a fishing or foraging trip? Our raffle to win a spot is still open until December 13. If you buy a book from my shop, and use the checkout code RAFFLE, I will give you 10% off the already discounted price of the books AND you'll automatically be entered to win a spot in one of my culinary hunts in 2026, OR I can take you on a mushroom hunt or a plant foraging walk. The foraging would be in the Twin Cities area, unless you want me to come
to you -- which I will, but I'd need to have my travel expenses taken care of. Timing would be mutually agreed on between us. Here's how it will go: - Buy a book from me -- any title -- and use the code RAFFLE at checkout.
- Each book purchase counts as a ticket, so if you buy 3 books, that's 3 "tickets."
- Every book bought with the RAFFLE checkout code will
be entered to win.
- I will draw the winner at random on December 14.
Deer seasons are open in many parts of the country, and start tomorrow in Minnesota and North Dakota. There are a ton of traditional deer camp recipes, but I'll offer you up some of my favorites. Some are riffs off classics, some are just damn good and super easy to make in camp. - Start with the classic: Deer liver and onions. Before you get all squinchy, know that I don't normally like liver, either. But I do like this
recipe. Here's a secret: Use the liver from the youngest deer. It makes a difference.
- Another tradition is to cook the tenderloins right in camp. Here's how to make pan-seared tenderloin with a simple pan
sauce.
- Eating the deer heart is another classic deer camp recipe. My version is grilled or seared deer heart with peppers and onions. It's so good I put it on the cover of my venison cookbook Buck Buck Moose!
- Don't know how to prep a heart for cooking? Here is my tutorial on how to properly butcher a deer heart.
- Finally, this last recipe isn't so much what you make from your deer at camp as what to bring to deer camp: Bierocks. These are a Kansas specialty, sort of a sauerkraut hamburger enclosed in a bun. Easy to make ahead, and they are ideal for snacking in the deer stand.
4. Harrowing Fishing Tale The gales of November came early. My friend Chris and I went up to Lake Kabetogama on the Canadian border to do something few others try: Gillnetting for whitefish and tulibee. These deliciously oily cousins of salmon and trout are tough to catch with hook and line, and Minnesota allows a
short netting season in late fall and winter. So we went. It started easy enough, but when a winter storm roared in, well... read all about how we almost died in my latest story over at To the Bone. This story is free for anyone to read, but if you become a paid, annual subscriber, I will send you a signed copy of one of my latest four cookbooks for free. I go into details why
here, but the short version is this: Offering a book with a subscription shifts the balance from you strictly supporting me to us supporting each other. Mutual aid, personal connection, and community are the path forward. This is a small way I can do my bit. 5. Final Book Tour ThoughtsTalking about Borderlands on the borderlands, in Albuquerque. By the time you read this, I'll be flying to Austin, Texas, for my final book tour trip. In case you're interested and can make it tonight, it's a book signing and cocktail party at Desert Door Sotol. You can get your
ticket for that event here. After tonight, my very last public event until Pheasant Fest in Minneapolis this coming February will be in Chaska, Minnesota at the Forest Fair on December 13, where I will be doing a cooking demo and selling signed books. This is a free
event, so just show up and get a signed book! This book tour has been really hard. Everyone is tightening their belts, and spreading the word about public events has been tougher than any other book tour, going back to 2011. There just doesn't seem to be a good way to reach people anymore. We're all silo'd up in our
little bubbles, and if I don't know your bubble, I can't even find you. It has been frustrating. After every event I've done, I've had multiple people tell me they would have gone, but never heard about it... and I've basically been promoting these events on my website, on social media, with ads, some earned media, the works. I am going to try to
learn some lessons here over the winter. By the time I have a new book out, probably in two years, everything in our world could be different. Things are changing so fast it's hard to keep up. But I am trying. You here at Wild Bites and To the Bone have been great, though. I can't thank you enough for all your support. It means a
lot. Keep on buying books, making recipes, subscribing and reading and spreading the word. Hoping we all have a good holiday season. You should know that without you, I can't do this. Thank you so much. From the bottom of my heart. ~ Hank Comments?Let me know what you think about Wild Bites by emailing me at hank@huntgathercook.com. If you have a question, comment, or request, fire
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