Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for
Speaker 1: every hunt, First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, All right,
Speaker 1: everybody joined today by h Wild Hog apologist Jesse Griffith's
Speaker 1: perfect I love it. That title stuck. Dude. Uh, we
Speaker 1: didn't have you wild Hog at your restaurant there night,
Speaker 1: But when I took my my wife and daughter to
Speaker 1: your restaurant in Austin, Texas, died du way, holy ship,
Speaker 1: was it good man? My wife said it was the
Speaker 1: best meal. I'm not kidding. Unprompted, she said it was
Speaker 1: the best meal she had had in years and years,
Speaker 1: which I shouldn't really point that out because I cooked
Speaker 1: dinner every night. She I'm sure she made a restaurant meal.
Speaker 1: I know that's what mean. Yeah. I didn't think about
Speaker 1: it now, but it was like a dig. She's making
Speaker 1: a dig, Emmy. It wasn't building you up, dude, does
Speaker 1: knocking me down And I didn't even realize it. No.
Speaker 1: I think there's it's there's it's categories. You know, you've
Speaker 1: you've got your at home meals, and you've got your
Speaker 1: dining ups and we we we must have excelled that.
Speaker 1: I'll take you sell in the dining up. Well, my
Speaker 1: brother Danny Um, he'll he'll often say that when he
Speaker 1: eats at someone's house or whatever, he likes it. He says,
Speaker 1: because it just doesn't taste like something I made. Well,
Speaker 1: it's like the whole sandwich role. You know, like if
Speaker 1: somebody else makes you a sandwich, it's better than if
Speaker 1: you made yourself a sa So good, we had your
Speaker 1: nil guy, we had the tartar? Right, what is that exactly?
Speaker 1: I mean, I know what it is, but like what
Speaker 1: like tell people what the preparation is. It changes a lot,
Speaker 1: like like act like you're gonna do it with a
Speaker 1: deer or something like that, a deer or whatever. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think, I mean, it's all pretty much.
Speaker 1: If you can eat it raw, it's pretty interchangeable. And
Speaker 1: I prefer the tender loin or a muscle off the
Speaker 1: leg um if it's a If it's a tartar, then
Speaker 1: we'll we'll finally dice it and then we'll give it
Speaker 1: a nice hand chop with a real heavy sharp knife.
Speaker 1: And then so each piece of meat is how big, Well,
Speaker 1: they start off like smaller, you know, probably like a
Speaker 1: one centimeter dice, and then it gets hand chopped until
Speaker 1: you get that perfect like not ground but consistency. So
Speaker 1: you make a little cube, you slice a little cube correct,
Speaker 1: and then you that's the noise it makes. It's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what ex Yeah, and yeah, just go over
Speaker 1: it until it's nice and fine, and then sky's limit.
Speaker 1: There you get creative and add something, you know, you
Speaker 1: want to put something maybe a cidc in there, uh,
Speaker 1: something textural, whether that's a rugula or or an onion
Speaker 1: or a caper or something like that. Something bright like
Speaker 1: lemon salt obviously, and he's and heeds a lot of salt.
Speaker 1: I always feel like it's one of those things like
Speaker 1: avocados and potatoes that's relying on having the right amount
Speaker 1: of salt on it. And then what um, I mean
Speaker 1: you can go traditional put the egg. I want you
Speaker 1: to tell me, I mean, I know you weren't there,
Speaker 1: but want you tell me what I ate the other night?
Speaker 1: In all honesty, I don't know what the current set
Speaker 1: is because she might have changed it so that Jeney's
Speaker 1: the chef at the restaurant and and she, uh if
Speaker 1: I recall correctly right now, it was there's a piece
Speaker 1: of grilled bread, okay, arugula yep, and it's okay, and
Speaker 1: then a fermented sofrido vinaigrette. Does that sound familiar. We're
Speaker 1: just gonna We're just gonna nod say yes at this
Speaker 1: point because this is borderline embarrassing that I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. Well, I only you weren't there, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, So what we've got there is those
Speaker 1: those same components. You know, you've got uh texture, especially
Speaker 1: the grilled bread being slightly warm, you know, a little
Speaker 1: bit of smoke, so you know, a nice texture there,
Speaker 1: arugula texture, and then the fer minute so frito which
Speaker 1: sounds kind of, you know, slightly fancy. It's basically just
Speaker 1: our way of preserving summertime vegetables and so frito form,
Speaker 1: which would be onion, garlic, tomato, pepper um for using
Speaker 1: as a cooking base. I mean, it's a very traditional
Speaker 1: way to like start a lot of dishes. And since
Speaker 1: we're reliant on having stuff out of season because we
Speaker 1: don't know source anything that's not available. What we'll do
Speaker 1: is we'll make a a liquid out of that, will
Speaker 1: pure that to a paste and then at salt and
Speaker 1: then ferment that and so we have a year round
Speaker 1: and it's correct. Yes, you know what, you didn't take
Speaker 1: my advice on here we go. I'll tell you. I
Speaker 1: knew you were gonna tell me when I ate here. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're when I ate the restaurant. I think last time
Speaker 1: I was in there, I got to notice in that
Speaker 1: in the fine print at the bottom of the menu,
Speaker 1: right like where someone would normally right ship like parties
Speaker 1: of six or more, we'll have an automatic gratuity or
Speaker 1: whatever bullshit in the bottom of menu and super no
Speaker 1: one ever in a million years would read right you
Speaker 1: have down there? That I love. The wording is wonderful.
Speaker 1: It says almost everything is from around here, correct. We
Speaker 1: had to change that that caveat almost because it used
Speaker 1: to be everything. And then there's a couple of ingredients
Speaker 1: kind of snuck in, like what what's snuck in? We get?
Speaker 1: We get organic potatoes from Colorado for It's almost like
Speaker 1: it's just really funny because it always comes out it's
Speaker 1: like the restaurant's probably that locally sourced. But for some reason,
Speaker 1: that one per cent that I'm a little bashful about
Speaker 1: always rises to the because because because yeah, because well
Speaker 1: it says like almost everything, it says almost but I
Speaker 1: would have that in big gass letters at the top
Speaker 1: of the menu. Right, Well, I think, well, first off,
Speaker 1: I think subtlety goes a long way. And then the
Speaker 1: server's job is to explain that. You know, if you
Speaker 1: ask about you know, a limit, I pressed, I pressed
Speaker 1: around it, and when pressing around it, she was saying, like, well,
Speaker 1: there might be a situation where we'd have something I
Speaker 1: can't remember what it was. Something would be from New Mexico. Well,
Speaker 1: we from New Mexico. We get uh pastachios, and uh
Speaker 1: we do occasionally source one of our sparkling wines from there.
Speaker 1: I forget about that. And that's probably to my You said,
Speaker 1: the reason you guys don't have a cocktail program, it's
Speaker 1: because it's too difficult to get it all from Texas, right, yes,
Speaker 1: because it's like the citrus and ship continuous. It would
Speaker 1: be it wouldn't be impossible, but it would be it
Speaker 1: would be onerous, you know, it would yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be tough. It would be easier now that there's more
Speaker 1: spirits coming out of Texas to which has changed since
Speaker 1: we opened eight years ago. That's been drastic. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, specifically speaking of citrus, you know, and we're
Speaker 1: down here in South Texas and I got the text,
Speaker 1: you know, don't come back without seventy pounds of lemons
Speaker 1: because that's this is where they are. Like if if
Speaker 1: we want lemons, I have to like put them in
Speaker 1: my truck and bring them to Austin. And I just
Speaker 1: hope that everybody appreciate those limits because they could have
Speaker 1: gonna go on a ride, you know. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's you know, almost everything is the I felt like
Speaker 1: the best way to put that. That's so good man.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you liked it. I mean to be clear too,
Speaker 1: we did have Farrell Hog on the menu. Ye're not
Speaker 1: didn't get it right? I got that big as pork chop.
Speaker 1: I love our pork chop. Yeah. So the ranch that
Speaker 1: we do our classes that is actually a domestic pig
Speaker 1: farm also, so I mean he's got um thousands of
Speaker 1: acres and part of it is an all outdoor operation
Speaker 1: where he's raising these just beautiful, gorgeous domestic pigs. And uh,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's step one is just having the
Speaker 1: best possible pork and it is just a gorgeous product.
Speaker 1: Goes into a brine olive oil, honey um after it
Speaker 1: comes out of brine, and then we grow it over
Speaker 1: post oak and then we put salt from Padreal and
Speaker 1: so far South Texas, like the hyper Saline Bay down there.
Speaker 1: They they make salt harvest salt. That's where we get
Speaker 1: some of ourselves, you know, for our for like finishing
Speaker 1: steaks and pork chops and so forth. Uh, And then
Speaker 1: it just gets a sprinkle of that on top and
Speaker 1: that's it. Oh that's good man, it's a good one.
Speaker 1: I like a lot. How much would we say, and
Speaker 1: you guys go through because you cook over would yeah
Speaker 1: about a quarter to post oake every probably five days
Speaker 1: or so. Yeah, that blows my mind. Yeah, we burned
Speaker 1: a lot in the smoker and then the two girls,
Speaker 1: you know, those things are going, you know, burning hot
Speaker 1: for many hours a day because I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: when I sell wood, might be typical for a family
Speaker 1: to buy four or five chords to heat their house
Speaker 1: for the winter, right, Yeah, we're yeah. I mean if
Speaker 1: you do the math, you know that you know, a
Speaker 1: log is you know, maybe a dollar or maybe more,
Speaker 1: and so you just you're literally burning money. But that uh,
Speaker 1: it tastes good, you know, and it's it's part of it,
Speaker 1: you know, just that that heart, the heart of the
Speaker 1: hearth there, uh you know, and and so much of
Speaker 1: the things that come out of that kitchen are cooked
Speaker 1: over that wood. So you know, you were talking about
Speaker 1: the difference like for cooking woods, talk about your favorite
Speaker 1: would well for he's post oak. That's true, yes, well,
Speaker 1: I mean in Texas too, it's very regional um as
Speaker 1: far as what the predominant fuel wood or not fuel wood,
Speaker 1: but um cooking wood would be. And so in Central
Speaker 1: Texas we have oaks. Um. In South Texas where we're
Speaker 1: at right now, it's Mesquite. You know, Mesquite is king
Speaker 1: down here. But I mean what's notable too is that
Speaker 1: that changes a lot of cooking techniques. So, like like
Speaker 1: barbecue in Central Texas is this offset like slow heat
Speaker 1: where when you move south into Mesquite country, it starts
Speaker 1: to become it's a hotter wood, and so things are
Speaker 1: grilled hotter, there's not as much smoking going on down here,
Speaker 1: and that's because of the wood, you know, So that
Speaker 1: the slower burn on oak in Central Texas makes barbecue,
Speaker 1: but the South Texas mesquite fire air, which is hotter
Speaker 1: kind of that's that makes vehitous, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And so I find that to be fascinating. But you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're right on the border between the post Stokes
Speaker 1: and the mesquites. And you know we have plenty of
Speaker 1: mesquites in Central Texas as well. But I would give
Speaker 1: the edge in my preference, uh for grilling to mesquite.
Speaker 1: I love it it just it burns very hot. It
Speaker 1: has a very distinct flavor to it um. But mostly
Speaker 1: what I enjoy is that that constant heat. Once that
Speaker 1: thing burns down to coals like a nice cured mesquite
Speaker 1: log burns to like red hot coals. You've got it
Speaker 1: for a long time and it puts out a ton
Speaker 1: of heat for quick cooking and searing for smoking. I
Speaker 1: don't love it as much. I prefer postoke or pecan.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with the measurement like I used to
Speaker 1: sell wood in this measurement a rick? No? I never
Speaker 1: heard of them. Have you ever heard of a face cord. Nope,
Speaker 1: So a cord of wood is four by four by eight.
Speaker 1: So that's what Dight used to know. This real well
Speaker 1: hunterd cubic feet um sixteen inches, so it's it's in
Speaker 1: Firewood is traditionally caught at sixteen inch lengths. So three
Speaker 1: logs stacked end to end, it's forty eight inches. The
Speaker 1: stack goes forty eight inches high and it's eight ft long.
Speaker 1: And that's a cord of wood. But we used to
Speaker 1: sell a rick, and that was a face cord, meaning
Speaker 1: one log wide. So sixteen inches wide, four ft high,
Speaker 1: eight ft long, a third of a chord, third of
Speaker 1: a chord a rick. The third of a chord is
Speaker 1: a rick. But you never heard that measurement. Now, if
Speaker 1: you need as much wood as you need, why do
Speaker 1: you not just have a staff wood chopper, a woodsman,
Speaker 1: a woods person. Um, that's a that's a great question.
Speaker 1: But um, that would delve into the kind of the
Speaker 1: boring topic of modern staffing issues. I'm telling you it's
Speaker 1: it's hard enough to find a lot of line cook wi. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I think you need to have an ad in the
Speaker 1: paper that says wanted staff wood chopper, be like dude,
Speaker 1: here's your job. Here's like a truck. We're gonna put
Speaker 1: some beef springs on it, We're gonna build some sidewalls.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be able to carry five thousand pounds. We're
Speaker 1: gonna put a quarter of wood in there. And your
Speaker 1: job is I want that sum bits and truck here
Speaker 1: full three times a week. I don't care how you
Speaker 1: do it. I'm gonna get the weirdest messages now from
Speaker 1: people be like, I heard you're looking for a woodsman.
Speaker 1: I would like to send in my resume to like, well,
Speaker 1: listen if you look. Can we say is this fair
Speaker 1: to say if these if someone's listening and they live
Speaker 1: in Austin and they have like a great wood supply
Speaker 1: and they want to sell some wood, is fair to
Speaker 1: say they be getting ahold of you? Possibly when we
Speaker 1: try to we try to foster relate a consistent relationship
Speaker 1: with with do you want dude just dropping off straight loads? No?
Speaker 1: Because yeah, we need it when we need it, and
Speaker 1: uh what what the the goal is to have somebody
Speaker 1: that's out there bringing you quality would consistently like a
Speaker 1: staff or right right, I mean it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the the grass fed grass fed beef producers. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of times you'll you'll will be contacted by someone
Speaker 1: who raises grass fed beef and they'll say, hey, we
Speaker 1: we can, we would love to supply the restaurant. It's
Speaker 1: like okay, and it's like, well, we'll have one cow
Speaker 1: available every five weeks. And it's like, well that doesn't
Speaker 1: that doesn't help us, Like we can't really do much
Speaker 1: with that. And then you know, like the thought of
Speaker 1: like aggregating multiple vendors together to try to make that
Speaker 1: happen is is it's just not gonna happen. It would be.
Speaker 1: I might have told my wife a lie. I'm not
Speaker 1: just gonna tell everybody lie. Now. When we're sitting there,
Speaker 1: I was telling my wife, I said, man, sometimes people
Speaker 1: just show up with with people will show up with
Speaker 1: produce and ship and he's got and these guys can
Speaker 1: just buy it and serve it. Yes, that's different. Or
Speaker 1: my favorite was, Uh, this guy A knocks on the
Speaker 1: back door and he asks for me. He's got dreadlocks
Speaker 1: and he's he wants to talk to me and he's
Speaker 1: got something in his car to show me. And I
Speaker 1: was like I could not I'll take it. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I gotta see what's in the car, and it turns
Speaker 1: out it was. It was like a Honda and the
Speaker 1: whole the whole back area, like the cargo area in
Speaker 1: the back, just loaded with chantrells. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I'll take it. I'll take it and tell all your
Speaker 1: friends that sometimes it does work out. It's the guy
Speaker 1: that's like, hey, can I drop some some hogs off
Speaker 1: and you're like, knock, I can't do that. That's a
Speaker 1: that's not how we do it here. Yeah. Yeah, uh oh,
Speaker 1: remember I got I got to talk about a couple
Speaker 1: of things real quick. Uh. And it's not like a
Speaker 1: horrible it's a it won't be It will seem like
Speaker 1: a rough segue to people who weren't privy to our
Speaker 1: conversation before we started recording, because we're talking about what
Speaker 1: making a lot of noise last night? Foxes? No owl Nope, coyotes?
Speaker 1: Well no, that that that that that gets into the problem.
Speaker 1: Not a problem. Guy rolled in. He's got this question.
Speaker 1: He says, he has a potential discussion point that I
Speaker 1: would love to hear the opinion regarding the pronunciation of
Speaker 1: the word coyote. How do you say it? Jesse? Uh
Speaker 1: I'll say coyote, but I mean down here he would
Speaker 1: be just his app are likely to hear coyote. M
Speaker 1: This guy says, I grew up in rural area of Kansas,
Speaker 1: where the word kyote was pronounced in the two syllables
Speaker 1: form coyote. I would only hear the three syllabl pronunciation
Speaker 1: of coyote from television or media. You know what, he
Speaker 1: already has his answer. He already has his answer, he
Speaker 1: just doesn't realize it yet. I always made the inference
Speaker 1: that the three syllable pronunciation was used in urban areas
Speaker 1: by people who did not hunt trapper otherwise interact with
Speaker 1: the animal in any way. To be honest, I would
Speaker 1: internally discredit anyone who used the three syllable pronunciation as
Speaker 1: a city slicker that only new coyotes from Saturday Morning cartoons.
Speaker 1: That was me. However, recently I have to question my
Speaker 1: previous dogma. As an avid listener to the Meter podcast,
Speaker 1: I've heard on several occasions both the crew and guests
Speaker 1: using both the two and three syllable pronunciation. Not me,
Speaker 1: That was me. I was editorializing when I said, not me.
Speaker 1: These are people that are much closer to the land
Speaker 1: than I spend more time outdoors of whom I respect
Speaker 1: your opinions. He wants to know about how the proper pronunciation.
Speaker 1: Can I address this? Yeah, but I'm gonna do it too.
Speaker 1: If you want to start, that's fine, I'm gonna start. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the Spanish word, like I said earlier, it's coyote.
Speaker 1: And I think that just like in Texas, you're going
Speaker 1: to have these uh mispronunciations of Spanish words. But you're
Speaker 1: gonna kind of see a segue between the Spanish word
Speaker 1: and then where we're gonna say coyote, which is where
Speaker 1: we're pronouncing that e. But then if you looked at
Speaker 1: it from from an English language standpoint, that e would
Speaker 1: be silent and make the oh hard oh sounds. So
Speaker 1: be a coyote. So I think that, you know, the
Speaker 1: closer you get to the origin of the word Spanish
Speaker 1: down here, and I mean, you know, we we go
Speaker 1: to the rodeo, you know, we we eat a burrito,
Speaker 1: you know, but all these words are slight americanizations, are
Speaker 1: you know, English pronunciations of Spanish words. And I think
Speaker 1: coyote adding the e on there and then further north
Speaker 1: you get you're probably gonna get more into a linguistic
Speaker 1: version that's reflective of of English. Yeah, I have never
Speaker 1: heard in my life someone who has killed a coyote
Speaker 1: called a coyote. What about where you've spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time meeting those folks who have. Now we put
Speaker 1: this question to Dan Flores, who is the author of
Speaker 1: what he would call coyote America I would call kyo
Speaker 1: America UM. And I threw it to him and he's
Speaker 1: basically either or he's like he says, probably first English
Speaker 1: speaking people that encountered that word would have been mountain
Speaker 1: men trapping around in New Mexico and Taos. I think
Speaker 1: I'm getting this right about what his history was. They
Speaker 1: were hearing it from Spanish speakers, they were English speakers.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, you can see how they would
Speaker 1: have run off of that in various directions, Um, from coyote,
Speaker 1: that it would just travel its own little path. But
Speaker 1: I think the person is right that you do like
Speaker 1: in media it's always coyote mhm in in like vernacular
Speaker 1: of people of the land. Seems to me it's always kyote,
Speaker 1: like who chases the roadrunner, wile coyote? It's not wild
Speaker 1: kayot here. Here's it. Can I hit you with the
Speaker 1: Chatticott question? That's attiquette? Okay? Why did you call it
Speaker 1: Chatticott because our guy Chester? Yeah. Um, we're interested in
Speaker 1: pursuing a project where Chester round chatkot Chester round etiquette
Speaker 1: just for sure to be Chettikott. Okay, here's a guy,
Speaker 1: as self declared late on set, Hunter recently moved from
Speaker 1: the Seattle area to Richmond Williamsburg area of Virginia. Big change.
Speaker 1: What's that? That's a big change, big change. I run
Speaker 1: a small farm that's talked about one quarter mile back
Speaker 1: off a rural road. This is a great question. The
Speaker 1: property on either side of the driveway is owned by
Speaker 1: a hunting club. So let's get this. He's got a
Speaker 1: quarter match. He's got a quarter mile driveway that ends
Speaker 1: at his farm. But as he's going down zone driveway,
Speaker 1: hunt club owns either side. Long story short, he says,
Speaker 1: if there are turkeys on said driveway, do you feel
Speaker 1: like they would be fair game for me to shoot?
Speaker 1: As long as I'm respecting all other rules, including proximity
Speaker 1: to actual road and buildings, et cetera, I do hunt
Speaker 1: the actual forty three acre farm property. As I like
Speaker 1: the act and process of hunting and thoroughly missed going
Speaker 1: out in the cascades for days chasing out. But there's
Speaker 1: still a lot to learn. Wouldn't mind an easy harvest
Speaker 1: from time to time. There's only one way you're gonna
Speaker 1: get the right answer to this, I'll tell you. In
Speaker 1: my mind, like I'm not standing there, and I don't
Speaker 1: really I can't see the land of land and all that.
Speaker 1: In my mind, it would just be a matter of
Speaker 1: like is it illegal or not? Right? It sounds legal
Speaker 1: to me. And then there's what you call trespass with
Speaker 1: projectile to so, meaning that the uh rifle, bullet or
Speaker 1: more likely shotgun, like not a single palette could trespass.
Speaker 1: Over the problem different like different states have such different
Speaker 1: attitudes toward that stuff. And you know, think about it, man,
Speaker 1: Let's say you're hunting squirrels. Let's say you've got twenty
Speaker 1: aes and you're hunting squirrels and you take a shot
Speaker 1: at a squirrel up in a tree. You've just trespassed
Speaker 1: and you missed them. I mean there's like, of course
Speaker 1: you projectile just trespassed, like no one you know, well,
Speaker 1: I mean here, that's what the issue I think would
Speaker 1: be but on your road your turkey. Well, what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would I feel like it's probably okay,
Speaker 1: but there's only one way you're ever going to really
Speaker 1: feel comfortable doing it. If you're like, oh, if you
Speaker 1: want to be like a totally law buying dude, call
Speaker 1: your game warden. Just be like, I got a question.
Speaker 1: But then I would advise this, this is not a
Speaker 1: hack on game wardens. Um If if you find someone
Speaker 1: who would indulge you and they tell you know, press
Speaker 1: them on why they're telling you, know, are they saying
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like a good idea or is it
Speaker 1: actually because that's what that's your decision to make. Are
Speaker 1: they telling you it doesn't seem like a good idea?
Speaker 1: Are are they telling you it is illegal? I've had
Speaker 1: I one time asked the game moren't a question like this,
Speaker 1: and they turned back to me like, why do you
Speaker 1: feel that you would need to ask about it? Like
Speaker 1: pressing me to see if I somehow felt funny about
Speaker 1: the situation. It's sure, but I'd be like, that's not
Speaker 1: what I'm here to talk about. What I'm here to
Speaker 1: talk about is am I breaking a law? I'm trying
Speaker 1: to understand. I'm not talking about what it feels like.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, is it breaking a law to hunt a
Speaker 1: turkey on this road? Not like, is this really the
Speaker 1: kind of hunt you want? Yeah, contact the game warden.
Speaker 1: It's not a cop out. But let me hear you
Speaker 1: with another turkey thing. I don't know. I haven't contacted
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody that has contacted Michigan to find
Speaker 1: out why in the world they're doing this. Michigan allowed
Speaker 1: this pass fall. Speaking of turkeys, Michigan allowed the unlimited
Speaker 1: take of fall turkeys this passphat. You could shoot a turkey,
Speaker 1: go get another tag, shoot another, and so on until
Speaker 1: there were no tags left. Meanwhile, they only allowed one
Speaker 1: time in the Spring Wow of those guys who killed
Speaker 1: multiple gobblers this fall legally, not to mention how many
Speaker 1: hens oh hands as well. Yeah, I think it's like, like,
Speaker 1: I haven't heard the logic on it. That ship is
Speaker 1: ridiculous statewide. Yeah, well it's in his in his in
Speaker 1: his zone in the South. I haven't heard the reasoning.
Speaker 1: But let me tell you, like, like, there are so
Speaker 1: many places that you've got good turkey numbers and they
Speaker 1: take that ship for granted, and then you don't. There
Speaker 1: is no if go on all the other ship you
Speaker 1: can hunt in the fall, right. I would be hard
Speaker 1: pressed to think of a of an instance where you
Speaker 1: just have too many turkeys. No, someone might think they do,
Speaker 1: but it ain't. Hunters I don't understand, Like, you get
Speaker 1: a tom turkey in the spring, and turkeys are for
Speaker 1: spring hunting, right, It's like if if if God didn't
Speaker 1: want you to hunt turkeys in the spring, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have made spring. And to have it be that you're
Speaker 1: just wailing like you can get one in the spring season,
Speaker 1: but in the fall you can just pile up hens.
Speaker 1: It's like you're you're you're, you're taking your you're taking
Speaker 1: your situation for granted. I wonder how many hunters like
Speaker 1: took advantage of that, Like folks who typically pursue in
Speaker 1: the spring, we're like, well I'll just bag them all,
Speaker 1: or you know, didn't or kind of respected like the
Speaker 1: how much is attacked that I know, I mean very
Speaker 1: cheap for residents, probably eight or ten bucks, you know,
Speaker 1: I would like, yeah, I mean I having some level
Speaker 1: of fall hunting like that you could get a turkey
Speaker 1: in the fall and okay, like i'd like, I really
Speaker 1: think I would really think that states would would not
Speaker 1: regard having good turkey numbers as just a given right
Speaker 1: after all the reintroduction that were you know, starting a
Speaker 1: lot of places, but in that area in the Upper Midwest,
Speaker 1: all those turkey reintroductions that really took off in the nineties, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not gonna last, right, having it's not gonna last.
Speaker 1: And if you just take it, if you just shooting
Speaker 1: shiploads of hands off all, I don't think it's just
Speaker 1: not smart. Man. There's not that much to hunt in
Speaker 1: the spring, So protect the spring hunt. I just increase
Speaker 1: the tag net with like, let everybody shoot four in
Speaker 1: the spring. Well too, two is a great number of turkeys.
Speaker 1: It's great when you get more, but like two is
Speaker 1: a great number for turkeys. I think if a steak
Speaker 1: could sit there and say, man, we were like our
Speaker 1: residents can across the board get a couple of turkeys
Speaker 1: a piece in the spring, I would view that as
Speaker 1: a wonderful turkey policy and protect the spring hunts, go
Speaker 1: on something different in the fall. Save your savior turkeys
Speaker 1: for spring. I wonder when they'll have population data, like
Speaker 1: next year, you know, you know, I'm sure someone will
Speaker 1: write in, and I look forward to hearing. I look
Speaker 1: forward to hearing. What do you know? It's one of
Speaker 1: the person that wrote and we're not going to cover
Speaker 1: his letter right now, but his name is Anders Chippendale.
Speaker 1: I wonder if he's the original. Um uh tells that
Speaker 1: Tom about writing in. Got distracted when I saw that. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure someone will write in and explain why they
Speaker 1: think it's a good idea to kill to let people
Speaker 1: just waylay tons of hens in the fall. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that begs the question, Uh, should we start way land
Speaker 1: tons of hens in the spring? Yeah? What's the difference?
Speaker 1: They're they're laying eggs, that's who lays the eggs. In general,
Speaker 1: it's like the hand. Doesn't you kill the hand whenever
Speaker 1: you want. You're still preventing. It's like you're you're removing
Speaker 1: your reproductive females, like killing it the fall, isn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like it's a little more round about. You could
Speaker 1: be like, well, I don't know if you should have
Speaker 1: been alive in the spring, but like I'm normally all four.
Speaker 1: If there's like a species and there's a human desire
Speaker 1: to harvest it and it's a sustainable species. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like, let people harvest the resource if it's sustainable.
Speaker 1: But I don't think places should be doing this. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess the insinuation would be that that if if
Speaker 1: there's an overabundance of them, they have to have some
Speaker 1: sort of negative impact. No, I mean, that's just what
Speaker 1: I'm asking. What could possibly be the negative impact of
Speaker 1: too many turkeys on the ground? What are they eating?
Speaker 1: It's not crop depredation, I mean maybe slightly, but they
Speaker 1: scratch around, I'm just playing my house. They chase my dog. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean here in Texas, the major criticism I hear
Speaker 1: about turkeys is they'll eat all the corn at a feeder.
Speaker 1: They'll come in and hoover it all up. Um. And
Speaker 1: that's about as bad as they get as like impactful
Speaker 1: as as an abundance of turkeys can be here to
Speaker 1: my recollection, I can't remember if anybody ever saying anything otherwise.
Speaker 1: And then that instance doesn't even exist in most other states.
Speaker 1: And so what could it possibly have been for them
Speaker 1: to decide that other than like we're going to provide
Speaker 1: our hunters with something more there? I mean, what could
Speaker 1: the impact be to make them make that choice. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm sure we'll find out. If I was
Speaker 1: doing a good job, I would have found out before
Speaker 1: I brought it up. But here's my thing. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm ainty percent sure. I'm sure that when I hear
Speaker 1: the rationalization for it, I'll say, uh, I'll say that's
Speaker 1: not a good idea. Saved it for spring. Have they
Speaker 1: ever done this before? Well, a lot of places have.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of states have fall turkey hunts,
Speaker 1: and when states turkey numbers look like they're going down,
Speaker 1: it's kind of the first thing you do, is you
Speaker 1: It's like, when turkey numbers are great, one of the
Speaker 1: first things that seems states do is they start killing
Speaker 1: them in the fall. When turkey numbers start going down,
Speaker 1: they tend to not want to kill him in the fall.
Speaker 1: But the idea of having that an individual could just
Speaker 1: keep renewing and renewing and renewing until they consume up
Speaker 1: a certain pool of tags you're gonna create like fall
Speaker 1: turkey killing specialists m HM. And the potential waste that
Speaker 1: would come from that. People that might just enjoy the
Speaker 1: hunting of them and the breasting of the mouth and hands.
Speaker 1: I mean because then you also you're yield is what
Speaker 1: it would be on a tomb instead of just like
Speaker 1: even even worse. But then the impact of you're killing
Speaker 1: a dozen at a time every time you take out
Speaker 1: a hand, and that's just for the next season. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, potential turkeys. That's it's stunning. That's stunning to me.
Speaker 1: Another thing that happens like, uh, in some states, in Montana,
Speaker 1: in the fall, you can kill him with a rifle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kill him here with the rifle. He kill him with
Speaker 1: a rifle in the spring. Here one while you can
Speaker 1: kill with the rifle in the spring. I know a
Speaker 1: guy that they hunt him sculpt in the they hunt
Speaker 1: spring turkeys. They hunt spring turkeys with the a r
Speaker 1: on a bipod, which isn't isn't that kind of blown
Speaker 1: to smither rings you can precis I mean, the thing
Speaker 1: is trying to precision shoot him in the head. I
Speaker 1: certainly shot turkeys. I'm sorry, but I've I've shot him
Speaker 1: with a rifle, and because at that time I valued
Speaker 1: turkey meat more than the spring hunt. But now I
Speaker 1: am fully on board with the spring hut. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: want to I want to be extra careful here and
Speaker 1: explain it where I'm at on this. It's like hate
Speaker 1: the game, not the player, Okay, And I don't even
Speaker 1: hate like I don't. I'm not saying I hate the game.
Speaker 1: If I thought that you could just always have shiploads turkeys,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, yeah, untam and spring home in the
Speaker 1: fall or whatever. Right. To make my point clear, I
Speaker 1: think that people are making them a steak of of
Speaker 1: thinking that they're in a static situation with turkey numbers.
Speaker 1: But then you go look at what's happening in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: what's happening in the Missouri, what's happening to some other
Speaker 1: places that where it's like those the good old days
Speaker 1: of the nineties, the good old days of the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's ain't here anymore. The turkey numbers, and then
Speaker 1: everybody's sitting around lamenting the loss of turkeys, questioning the
Speaker 1: lost of turkeys. What happened to the turkeys? It's the meat.
Speaker 1: It's like mid midsized predators. It's avian influenza. It's killing
Speaker 1: shiploads in the fall. It just isn't. I think you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think about what you'd say. It's not
Speaker 1: cutting off your nose. Despite your face, you're dicking yourself over.
Speaker 1: You're dicking yourself of over. Proved me wrong. In the future,
Speaker 1: I'll be like I told you, talk about how you
Speaker 1: cook those ducks, Jesse, talk about your ducks and how
Speaker 1: you make them. Those are so good, a wonderful ducks
Speaker 1: that came out great. Jesse's gonna tell you. Jesse's gonna
Speaker 1: tell you how to make the best. And don't be
Speaker 1: all wishy washy like with the with the tartar. What's
Speaker 1: watching like? Get in there like you're talking to a
Speaker 1: five year old. Okay, like you're talking to a five
Speaker 1: year old. O ten year old, you're talking to a
Speaker 1: ten year old. Here's how to cook your ducks. Here's
Speaker 1: how I cook the ducks. The other day we shot, uh,
Speaker 1: we were we were really knocking down some hen spoon ees.
Speaker 1: Uh for some reason, not even a single drake in
Speaker 1: the bunch. It was. I think we had five or six.
Speaker 1: I wasn't part of this, but one wigeon. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: well it doesn't really matter. Uh. We plucked them and
Speaker 1: we dry plucked him. I think you better get into
Speaker 1: talk about the northern shoveler. The northern shoveler is duck
Speaker 1: often maligned duck. Let me back up, and uh, we
Speaker 1: did a we did a private class years ago and
Speaker 1: what we we We aligned it on this weekend where
Speaker 1: turkey it was fall uh season, quail, dove, and duck
Speaker 1: were all in season, and we kind of did this
Speaker 1: almost scavenger hunt for the clients where they would just
Speaker 1: go out and you know, on a certain day would
Speaker 1: be like today is duck day. You guys go out
Speaker 1: and shoot some ducks, and then we would do a
Speaker 1: little class and then we would cook them. We did
Speaker 1: a blind tasting between a model duck, which is I
Speaker 1: would say pretty close to a mallard as far as flavor.
Speaker 1: Uh they're smaller, probably less fat, and then also a
Speaker 1: spooney a shoveler, and we blind taste them. We brined
Speaker 1: them and then grilled them medium rare sliced and put
Speaker 1: them on a plate labeled to A and B and
Speaker 1: between probably about the ten people that tried them, the
Speaker 1: universally preferred the shoveler over the model duck, and both
Speaker 1: for good. But I think that you know, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things and I could probably talk for hours
Speaker 1: about all the things that are maligned or where you've
Speaker 1: been told they're not good. You know, wild pigs being
Speaker 1: one of them. Everything on the every wild game item
Speaker 1: with a couple exceptions, someone's gonna tell you how it's
Speaker 1: no good, right. And a shoveler, but that said, I've
Speaker 1: had them before where they were pretty strong. Uh so
Speaker 1: we we dry plucked them um instead of I want
Speaker 1: to stay a couple more things about um. Spoon bills
Speaker 1: and northern shovelers. It's we're taught. It's two words for
Speaker 1: the same thing. But they have like a bit I
Speaker 1: mean they're bill look is shaped like a spoon, goes
Speaker 1: out narrow and has this wide sort of thing on it.
Speaker 1: And if you ever watch them feeding, they sit on
Speaker 1: the surface and they basically sieve out. They sieve stuff
Speaker 1: off the surface of the ponds and there they catch
Speaker 1: a lot of larvae, insect larva, other invertebrates. And a
Speaker 1: general thing this is like speaking very generally. A general
Speaker 1: thing is that things that eat a lot of ant
Speaker 1: ducks and waterfowl eat a lot of animal matter. They
Speaker 1: don't taste as good as ones to eat a lot
Speaker 1: of plant matter. With the pinnacle of like universal acceptability
Speaker 1: being Ducks that are feeding on grain would be if
Speaker 1: you ask people, like, what's a great duck? Would be
Speaker 1: like a mallard feeding on barley, A goose feeding on
Speaker 1: mallard feeding on corn, right, like lots of fat, mild flavor. Um,
Speaker 1: a mallard in an estuary in saltheast Alaska feeding on invertebrates.
Speaker 1: I'll stand there at night. It tastes like the locknest
Speaker 1: monster if you could get a steak off him. Uh.
Speaker 1: And spooneys have that that that like animal matter. Ducky
Speaker 1: can have that animal matter taste, which is how would
Speaker 1: you describe it mud, mud, muck musty Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: I obviously I'm gonna avoid the gaming because it's just
Speaker 1: a ridiculous term for describing game. Um. Well, you know
Speaker 1: what's funny is we used to describe like any like
Speaker 1: of that kind of muddy flavor, maybe like a big bore.
Speaker 1: We used to describe it as spooney. Yeah, so you're
Speaker 1: using the spoonbills because sometimes they can be pretty strong.
Speaker 1: And I want to I want to be really clear
Speaker 1: that I don't think that my preparation conquered that I
Speaker 1: think that these also happened to be on the good
Speaker 1: I think they were good spoon ees. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: I will say that the first duck I cleaned was
Speaker 1: the legion, and then cleaning it, holding it in my hand,
Speaker 1: opening up and having the organs in my hands was
Speaker 1: different than when we clean the spoon ees. They. I
Speaker 1: was like, that's spoony like that. I could smell them
Speaker 1: like they were. They smelled stronger there, guts smelled stronger,
Speaker 1: everything right, And so I my anticipation of cooking them
Speaker 1: was like, well this, you know, I'm gonna do it,
Speaker 1: but I don't know how well it's going to turn out.
Speaker 1: But I do think that, um, if we're ready to
Speaker 1: move on to that first step is the the pre
Speaker 1: seasoning step, and that's either going to be a A
Speaker 1: A dry your head yourself. No, you don't talk about
Speaker 1: you didn't explain how you cleaned them. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we dry plucked him. I brought some wax down, but
Speaker 1: I feel like, for it was six or seven birds,
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to fire up the waxing pot for
Speaker 1: that and it would have taken too much time. So
Speaker 1: we just sat out and dry plucked them and it
Speaker 1: worked really well. I mean you walk out into a
Speaker 1: field and plug it. Correct. You know, we we plugged
Speaker 1: them all the way. It took spend a lot of time,
Speaker 1: and then we saved all the hearts and livers, clean
Speaker 1: the gizzards. Uh, they look pretty good. You know, there's
Speaker 1: some pin feathers on there. But you know a lot
Speaker 1: of times I just ignore this, like I'm not super
Speaker 1: like like fastidious about getting in there and getting those
Speaker 1: little pin feathers off sometimes or just burn them off. Um.
Speaker 1: The wax works great, though, if you have the time.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen wax stucks, I have, but like
Speaker 1: you said, it's got to be a pile of them, yeah.
Speaker 1: Before It's just there's so much, like there's so much
Speaker 1: goes into it that sometimes by time you do it
Speaker 1: and then clean up, you could just done it or
Speaker 1: like not even you could have done it by the
Speaker 1: time you get it going, do it clean up like
Speaker 1: I would. I would have had him done in the
Speaker 1: third of as the much time. It's like making sausage.
Speaker 1: It's better with an organization and a team. So like
Speaker 1: if you're on your way back from a duck hunt,
Speaker 1: like we are at some of these at the classes
Speaker 1: that we're doing like I'll be back at the processing shed.
Speaker 1: And the guy that took the clients out to duck
Speaker 1: hunt that morning called me forty five minutes and I
Speaker 1: turned the burner on and I'm waiting there with three
Speaker 1: pairs of bird shears. When they show up and they
Speaker 1: just start going into the into the wax, and I
Speaker 1: think that's obviously that's very efficient, and you're just using
Speaker 1: paraffin a specific blend. My friend Jonathan from Black Duck Revival,
Speaker 1: he turned me onto this, uh this specific blend wax.
Speaker 1: I cannot remember the brand of it right now. I
Speaker 1: would I would, well, I think it's TROUB t R
Speaker 1: a U B supply. I think that's the one he recommended,
Speaker 1: but I'd have to go back and look and see
Speaker 1: what he specifically recommended, because that was the best duck
Speaker 1: wax and it was a blend of paraffin and another
Speaker 1: type of wax. Not familiar with the waxes. Uh So
Speaker 1: we plucked them, we uh let them cool um in
Speaker 1: the refrigerator, uncovered, got them a little dry, and then
Speaker 1: I have to them by taking the breastbones out, you know,
Speaker 1: come down on either side of the breastbone, crack through
Speaker 1: it with a heavy knife, so then you've got a
Speaker 1: half duck. I know a lot of times you like
Speaker 1: to cut the breast off and the leg. Give a
Speaker 1: little feedback about that. Yeah, just still having the rib
Speaker 1: bones on there. Yeah, yeah, unsightly, I'll take that. The
Speaker 1: reason I do that is I need that structure otherwise
Speaker 1: they're going to fall apart during the process that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk about next. So I need those I need
Speaker 1: those rib bones in there to keep them. I mean,
Speaker 1: they could be removed after cooking. But um, if it
Speaker 1: was just the boneless breast attached to the bone in
Speaker 1: leg quarter, which is your preference, I do believe they
Speaker 1: would have fallen apart. Are the potential for falling apart
Speaker 1: could have been there, So next up would be I disagree.
Speaker 1: If there's a good layer of fat and skin, it
Speaker 1: holds everything together. If it's if the skin is real thin,
Speaker 1: then I agree with what you're saying. Well, you're just
Speaker 1: taking these when you're when you're cooking like that, you're
Speaker 1: typically just taking them from raw straight to the grill
Speaker 1: or the broiler. You know. I'm saying, if you've got
Speaker 1: a good heavy hide on it, you can slow cook it.
Speaker 1: You can do like what you were talking about and
Speaker 1: wind up with and intact peace. If it's got a
Speaker 1: good heavy hide on it, that that that's neither hear
Speaker 1: nor there. So next up would be the preseasoning. And
Speaker 1: I feel like this is probably where you're massaging some
Speaker 1: of that that more intense labor out of these ducks,
Speaker 1: and that's going to either be in a brine or
Speaker 1: a dry cure, which is these days known as a
Speaker 1: euphemistically known as a dry brine, which I think is
Speaker 1: pretty funny, um, because the brine is a liquid. Oh well,
Speaker 1: you know where where I use that term, We'll be like,
Speaker 1: let's say you're doing fish and you just pack it
Speaker 1: and salt and sugar. In a couple of minutes or
Speaker 1: a couple of hours, you have a liquid brine because
Speaker 1: it's existing. Well, that's known as I mean, technically that's
Speaker 1: a cure. No, I'm with you, but I think that
Speaker 1: that's why I think of it, because in the end
Speaker 1: when you dig them out of there, when all that more,
Speaker 1: when you dig them out of there, it is a
Speaker 1: liquid certainly, but yeah, you're you're right, that's a funny term.
Speaker 1: Dry Brian. I just felt like it ephemistically became about
Speaker 1: a few years back. And remember the first few times
Speaker 1: I heard it, I'm like, dry dry brine. That sounds
Speaker 1: almost exactly like dry water pre seasoning, yeah, or or
Speaker 1: dry rub or a cure like it's there's we already
Speaker 1: had all of that these terms for it. But either way,
Speaker 1: I chose uh the I chose the dry brine technique
Speaker 1: for these yes, um and uh just you know, going
Speaker 1: through the cabinet, uh, and I found some of our
Speaker 1: coffee cure that we sell at the restaurant here, and
Speaker 1: I used that. I was like, I mean, why not?
Speaker 1: So I hit him with a little bit of that,
Speaker 1: which has got some coffee, salt, sugar, few spices in there,
Speaker 1: um season on both sides and let them sit for
Speaker 1: about four hours, which for that size duck I thought
Speaker 1: was appropriate. And then they went into uh pork fat
Speaker 1: like rendered lard over very low heat. I melted the
Speaker 1: lard and put them in there to make essentially this
Speaker 1: is a cold feet. The whole process is called feet,
Speaker 1: where you're adding salt kind of lightly curing it and
Speaker 1: then slowly and gently cooking it in fat. I want
Speaker 1: people to understand what he's saying. He just said slowly
Speaker 1: and gently cooking it in fat and covered in fat,
Speaker 1: so a copious amount of fat. So I'm afraid people
Speaker 1: are gonna be like, here it and they're gonna be like,
Speaker 1: oh that sounds it's not. And then you can reuse
Speaker 1: the fat as well. So even from a cost perspective,
Speaker 1: it's not as as bad as as as you might think.
Speaker 1: It's not like and if you're well yeah, And also
Speaker 1: people are still on a thing that like fat's bad,
Speaker 1: it's gonna do something bad to him. It's not. It's not.
Speaker 1: It's not absorbing. So I mean traditionally a confi was
Speaker 1: a preservative, so you would you would use more salt,
Speaker 1: and you would salt it for longer, so it was
Speaker 1: the salt was preserving it. And then you would create
Speaker 1: this indelible layer of cooled fat on top. So even
Speaker 1: the word larder is a cool place where lard would
Speaker 1: be congealed, you make an anaerobic environment in fat exactly,
Speaker 1: so it's salted boss full of your larder was full
Speaker 1: of meat, packed and large, correct, and if it was
Speaker 1: cool enough, just where the large would congeal and set,
Speaker 1: which probably would happen, and I'd say that maybe the
Speaker 1: fifty degree mark, you know, it just is cool enough
Speaker 1: to where it was becomes a solid. Uh, then you're
Speaker 1: protecting that meat under there. So it's a it's a
Speaker 1: very old preservation from oxygen. And it's also an incredibly
Speaker 1: useful technique for cooking game because it it's a very slow,
Speaker 1: gentle heat that adds in a little bit of fat.
Speaker 1: But then once you achieve that tenderness. So let me
Speaker 1: go back and say I came up short on large two.
Speaker 1: I brought a quarter of rendered larde with me, and
Speaker 1: for those ten halves of ducks, I guess it was
Speaker 1: five by my math um, I was barely able to
Speaker 1: get them covered. So I threw a couple of sticks
Speaker 1: of butter in there because I had to, and that's
Speaker 1: and it worked. Of course. I just have a question
Speaker 1: of out the salt in there? Is there any kind
Speaker 1: of in this cooking process, like uh, pulling out the
Speaker 1: mucky flavor um? Or is it that the slow cook
Speaker 1: is having with the salt, the coffee, the sugar, the
Speaker 1: spices permeating the fat and the flesh of the bird.
Speaker 1: So is it kind of a going in versus pulling
Speaker 1: out if we're if we're eliminating or reducing the mucky flavor.
Speaker 1: That is an excellent question. I think that I don't.
Speaker 1: I will be real honest and say I don't know
Speaker 1: how the magic really works. But what I what I
Speaker 1: do know is the whole spice trade hundreds of years
Speaker 1: ago was based on covering up the flavor of rancid
Speaker 1: or spoiled meats pre refrigeration. And so you know, you've
Speaker 1: got people traveling to China mainly to bring back these
Speaker 1: things that are going to help their food taste a
Speaker 1: little bit, not necessarily because they were refining their palates.
Speaker 1: So the clothes and the cinnamon and the star Annis
Speaker 1: and all these things, I always say, uh. In the
Speaker 1: context of Ferrell hogs, I've always said it this way,
Speaker 1: is like the gaminess of a ferreal hog when you
Speaker 1: put it into a brine and we use a we
Speaker 1: use a star Annis brine, like very specifically salt sugar
Speaker 1: Bay and star Annis in water for Ferrell hogs, although
Speaker 1: that said it works great for ducks as well. But
Speaker 1: the star Annis would be like if if the pig
Speaker 1: if a big bore, kind of stinky and a little
Speaker 1: bit musky and gaming was a piece of plywood. That
Speaker 1: the star annis is a fine, great sandpaper that comes
Speaker 1: in and just rubs it down a little bit, and
Speaker 1: there's something about that flavor where it rounds it, it
Speaker 1: meets that gaminess and massages it to where it's it's
Speaker 1: way more palatable for some reason. Kind of it somewhere
Speaker 1: on if you were like looking at a chart in
Speaker 1: the spectrum of flavors, the annis or the cloth of
Speaker 1: the cinnamon inhabits the same spectral area I think as
Speaker 1: these muddy flavors, and so it's really helpful in that way.
Speaker 1: As a side note, have you heard of like the
Speaker 1: Chinese I don't know if it's really technical term, but
Speaker 1: my friend Um, who's a Chinese chef, mentioned to me
Speaker 1: this like Chinese meat washing technique, which which does use
Speaker 1: actually all of or most of these spices. So Um,
Speaker 1: I had old elk in the freezer from a friend.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was like three years old, and I'm not
Speaker 1: really sure how well the process it was to begin with,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to waste it, and she told
Speaker 1: me that I should uh in a pot ginger cloves
Speaker 1: star a niece um cinnamon kind of I guess brown
Speaker 1: brown the meat and then add water and bring it
Speaker 1: to a slow boil, uh, and then dump everything out.
Speaker 1: You know that the blood if it hasn't bled well,
Speaker 1: that like foamy kind of bubbly comes to the top.
Speaker 1: Instead of skimming it, dump everything out and then do
Speaker 1: that process again. And you can do that process as
Speaker 1: many times as you want, and that the impurities are
Speaker 1: I guess sucked out and you're and you're just dumping
Speaker 1: that out. You're not really using the flavor of that
Speaker 1: broth to start with. And then you braize and you
Speaker 1: add and you add, you know, and I'm telling you
Speaker 1: it didn't taste it tasted fresh. You would not have
Speaker 1: known because that meat, it had a funk to it
Speaker 1: when it was defrosted, you know. Um. And she'll she'll
Speaker 1: do that with a lot of um meat that she
Speaker 1: feels even you know, meat from the grocery store, like
Speaker 1: if it just hasn't bled out enough. And with wild game,
Speaker 1: um often cases, you know, the blood is still in there.
Speaker 1: If you feel dress cut apart and then kind of
Speaker 1: package or freeze instantly, maybe it hasn't dried out, it
Speaker 1: hasn't hung for long enough. There's the blood is still
Speaker 1: in the flesh. So I'd like to hear of a
Speaker 1: remedy for when you got when you left fish and
Speaker 1: your freezer a little too long, like a fatty fish
Speaker 1: and it gets that kind of skanky. Oh, I just
Speaker 1: eat it because I'm like the fat going ransomd It
Speaker 1: happens on feral hogs as well, Like as they sit
Speaker 1: in the freezer for too long, the fat starts to
Speaker 1: They could be way stronger. You can make a sausage
Speaker 1: and then he like a year later, it's totally changed
Speaker 1: in the freezer. It's it's the fat. Yeah, here's a
Speaker 1: red alert for people that have had bad bear meat
Speaker 1: bear meat. You if you want to freeze bear meat,
Speaker 1: you gotta get all the fat off the bear meat.
Speaker 1: The fat comes off the bear meat. Do you want
Speaker 1: to make lard? Render it now? Because the lard's good
Speaker 1: putting your freezer in can or whatever, But don't freeze
Speaker 1: that ship with fat on it, because the fat spoils
Speaker 1: right right, same with pigs in the freezer. But I
Speaker 1: want to get back to these darks some people. I
Speaker 1: want people to really understand this. Jesse has taken his spooners,
Speaker 1: he's plucked him, cut him in a half improperly cut
Speaker 1: them in half properly, caught him in half. Oay, ripped
Speaker 1: bones sticking out of bones, just jabbing out everywhere. Put
Speaker 1: a coffee kere on them. Yeah, it could have been anything.
Speaker 1: It could have been. You know what I would a
Speaker 1: component I would really want to have in there would
Speaker 1: be a little bit of sugar into the cure. Are
Speaker 1: the dry brind, a little bit of sweetness in there
Speaker 1: um and then some sort of spice. But in this case,
Speaker 1: I just saw the coffee care up there, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: coffee duck, Sure it was from your restaurant? It out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Then he put in the fridge four hours, four hours
Speaker 1: in the fridge. Then he took it out. Did not
Speaker 1: rinse it correct now, not with without going off on
Speaker 1: a tangent too far, But traditionally can fee would be
Speaker 1: a heavier salting, like a very heavy salting. And so
Speaker 1: when it comes out of the cure and it's about
Speaker 1: to go into the fat, oftentimes you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: rinse the excess for a short term cure, for a
Speaker 1: non preserving cure. For caling fee season two quote unquote
Speaker 1: taste like season it like you would if you were
Speaker 1: about to throw it on the grill. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: just you're a buying the amount of seasoning that you
Speaker 1: actually want. Now, if you're going to go for something
Speaker 1: where you want to come back to it in four months,
Speaker 1: I would go a little bit heavier, cure it very well,
Speaker 1: and then possibly remove some of that excess salt once
Speaker 1: it has absorbed into the meat. But in this case,
Speaker 1: we were going straight into the pot, So I just
Speaker 1: seasoned it to taste and then put it in the
Speaker 1: melted lard and butter. And if you're if you're intimidated
Speaker 1: about its whole large thing, I'm talking to listeners, not you.
Speaker 1: I was just doing this as a little research project. Uh,
Speaker 1: listening intently, but while while listening, I did a research project.
Speaker 1: Um you know. I mean if you don't, if you
Speaker 1: can't find it, or you're kind of intimidated by the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I mean, I just I went to Amazon
Speaker 1: and typed in, Yeah, you can buy the ship on
Speaker 1: Amazon pork lard, but beef lard, pork lard. It's like
Speaker 1: it's not hard to find. People often ask about I
Speaker 1: see you guys sell it at your restaurant, which we
Speaker 1: sure do. It's probably if you're an Austin. Just go
Speaker 1: buy from that's right. Yeah, we sell tallow and lard. Uh.
Speaker 1: I would say large and duck fat pretty interchangeable for
Speaker 1: making a con fee with duck. Uh, we're using large
Speaker 1: because that's what we got. So right now, forty two
Speaker 1: ounces of um forty two ounces a hog lard bucks.
Speaker 1: There's another place where it's USDA organic pork lard fourteen
Speaker 1: ounces for twenty three bucks. I'll say we're gonna beat
Speaker 1: those prices down there at die d and twenty four
Speaker 1: or six Manor Road in Austin, Texas. You can go
Speaker 1: down there and get a I don't remember what the
Speaker 1: volume is now, but it's gonna be cheaper than that
Speaker 1: way goo beef tallow forty two ounces, so two and
Speaker 1: a half pounds, third box. But that's, you know, way
Speaker 1: a good beef towel. Let's go on. Okay, so then
Speaker 1: uh in a low hat with one more deal, one
Speaker 1: more deal, let's beef towel. Let me know if this
Speaker 1: beat your price is jesse, Yeah, twenty four pounds, twenty
Speaker 1: four pounds of beef towel nine bucks. I don't. I
Speaker 1: can't do that math. I'm so sorry. Well, let's take
Speaker 1: it through, think it through. Let's say it was twenty
Speaker 1: five pounds for a hundred bucks. I got that at
Speaker 1: about four bucks a pound. That's cheap. Lets you say
Speaker 1: it's not as good as yours, it's definitely not as
Speaker 1: good as so head down to Jesse's restaurant and by
Speaker 1: is large right? Well, you can often find large two
Speaker 1: in Mexican and Central American. Uh, specialty, not even specialty,
Speaker 1: but like grocery stores. Why haven't you got into that
Speaker 1: the little man take no? Well, yes, So personally I
Speaker 1: would advise that you avoid shelf stable large at all
Speaker 1: costs because it's hydrogenated. Yeah, and it's it's as bad
Speaker 1: as shortening as for you um, and get the freshly
Speaker 1: rendered stuff that's at the at the at the meat market,
Speaker 1: which will typically be room tempt sitting on top of
Speaker 1: the counter. But I will say also that the rendering
Speaker 1: process is really important with large, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times I find that the lard there might be a
Speaker 1: little hard cooked, and the more brown that you when
Speaker 1: you cook it, the more you actually fry it, and
Speaker 1: the more color that comes out of it, the stronger
Speaker 1: the pork flavor is. And so when we're rendering lard
Speaker 1: where our goal is neutrality. We really wanted to be
Speaker 1: as mildly flavored as possible, and so we're not taking
Speaker 1: it to a deep golden brown. We're taking it very
Speaker 1: gently until it's would always tell people it's like a
Speaker 1: straw color. It looks like a light beer. It's got
Speaker 1: tiny bubbles in it, and it looks like you poured
Speaker 1: a Miller light into a glass. It should be kind
Speaker 1: of that color with the tiny bubbles, and they're indicating
Speaker 1: that all the moisture is cooked out. I want to
Speaker 1: point out that a lot of these products I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a non hydrogen hydrogenated. Yeah, they'll be refrigerated. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and say, just do not get
Speaker 1: shelf stable large. It is hydrogenated, and it is it's
Speaker 1: quite bad for you, so we are let's do it.
Speaker 1: It's killing me. It's killing me. I didn't know that
Speaker 1: you could go on Amazon for nine and buy a
Speaker 1: nine pound bucket of bacon grease, which would work great. Also,
Speaker 1: all the people throwing out their bacon grease doing it.
Speaker 1: These people thrown into a bucket and they sell it
Speaker 1: for fifty three bucks. Bacon fat would work, would work equally. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just a bucket that says bacon up, bacon grease. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's great man. All right, we're going into the oven now,
Speaker 1: so ye hold me back up. He's plucked the ducks.
Speaker 1: Oh my, sluck the ducks. We have them there. They've
Speaker 1: been seasoned, they've for four hours. Now they're in. They
Speaker 1: went on Amazon. He bought fat. I bought the fat.
Speaker 1: I layered the half ducks into the fat, made sure
Speaker 1: they're covered, and then put that into a pretty low oven.
Speaker 1: I put it in a two seventy just so that
Speaker 1: they very gently cook. So um. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna slow cook something, typically it's going to be browned
Speaker 1: and then and slow cooked. So there's gonna be like
Speaker 1: two distinct phases, like the crisping phase and then the
Speaker 1: slow cooking phase. And you can do that in either order.
Speaker 1: You can slow cook and then brown, or you can
Speaker 1: brown and slow cook, which is typically a braize, or
Speaker 1: you can cook something until it's tender and then put
Speaker 1: it on a grill or put it under a broiler
Speaker 1: or something like that at the end after it's under
Speaker 1: And that's what we're doing here. So we cooked those
Speaker 1: ducks until they were tender but not falling apart. But
Speaker 1: I wanted them to be intact, intact, you know, And
Speaker 1: that's why I left those rib bones on there. And
Speaker 1: I want to point out this is a tricky part
Speaker 1: for people cooking, right is slow cooking can like when
Speaker 1: you're doing this, it can feel like, oh, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter. I can let it go for a bazillion years.
Speaker 1: There is a long window of doneness, but it's not
Speaker 1: an infinite window of doneness. That's so well put. This
Speaker 1: is how I guess it's okay. I always feel bad
Speaker 1: about going off on a tangent, but I talked to
Speaker 1: you Ela this tenure. I do it. I do it
Speaker 1: kind of a challenge for my employees every month, and
Speaker 1: it's it's I send them what I call him a mission.
Speaker 1: And then this year there are this month being well,
Speaker 1: this is December at the time of the recording, My my,
Speaker 1: my project for them all this is all the back
Speaker 1: of the house employees at the restaurant was to come
Speaker 1: up with three uh the like food ghosts, so past, present,
Speaker 1: future and so it's like a memory, something they're excited
Speaker 1: about now and a goal for the future. Um and
Speaker 1: I kicked it off by telling them my stories. And
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into depth here, but what
Speaker 1: you just said it's very appropriate because my my current
Speaker 1: focus and what I'm really trying to do is in
Speaker 1: slow cooking, nail the texture of something that's been slow
Speaker 1: cooked with the attention that I would give a steak,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, I want to have
Speaker 1: it come out perfectly where it's not shredding and falling apart,
Speaker 1: but it's quote unquote fork tender where you where it's
Speaker 1: just right. I screw this up all very easy because
Speaker 1: of what you just said. But the thing is is
Speaker 1: when it goes too far U especially a braise or
Speaker 1: a stew or something like that, and it's just like,
Speaker 1: well that's okay, you know, but if it's not far enough,
Speaker 1: obviously it's tough. So absolutely we cooked these ducks. Um.
Speaker 1: I would say about four hours and four hours of
Speaker 1: two and it would be intact enough. You can grab
Speaker 1: the end of a drumstick and hoist the duck out
Speaker 1: lightly with gently tenderly where you would you would. Okay,
Speaker 1: hoists might not be the hoist, No, it's definitely implies
Speaker 1: like pulling out with the truck or something. Yes, um
Speaker 1: I think you, well, just going in with a knife
Speaker 1: and if it goes through with with no resistance, wiggling
Speaker 1: that that leg and seeing that it's starting to be
Speaker 1: it's it's tender, but it's not falling apart. But knowing
Speaker 1: also that there's still a little bit of a cooking process.
Speaker 1: Um I. In this case, I cooled the ducks in
Speaker 1: the fat, which I think really helps them because it
Speaker 1: gives them kind of a kind of coast out of
Speaker 1: that heat, and the fat congealed all around them, and
Speaker 1: I put them in the refrigerator and let them sit overnight.
Speaker 1: Now you could pull them out immediately and go onto
Speaker 1: this next process, but my preference and what timing wise,
Speaker 1: I wasn't serving it that day. I was serving it
Speaker 1: the next day. I just threw the pot. I let
Speaker 1: it cool down a little bit and through it in
Speaker 1: the refrigerator where it covered them and congealed and fat.
Speaker 1: The next day, come back and very gently because you
Speaker 1: don't want to fry them, you know, it very gently
Speaker 1: melted the fat and remove the ducks and let them
Speaker 1: kind of drain most of their fat off. And then
Speaker 1: let's address the fat. Because we've gone extensively into rendered
Speaker 1: fat prices and it's not cheap, right, and so we
Speaker 1: don't want to discard this fat. And so here's what
Speaker 1: you do with that? And oh, I will say, I'm
Speaker 1: making note something that I've never done before. I took
Speaker 1: two heads of garlic, cut them in half, and threw
Speaker 1: them in the fat and essentially made like garlic corn
Speaker 1: feet along with it. And that was awesome. I mean
Speaker 1: you could just smell just like this beautiful, like really
Speaker 1: slow cooked garlic infusing into them as well. And so
Speaker 1: now my fat is infused with that garlic. So I
Speaker 1: strained the fat out, uh, not boiling hot, but you know,
Speaker 1: let it cool off a little bit where it's still liquid,
Speaker 1: and I strained it into Um. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to put this a container that one could easily scoop
Speaker 1: the congealed fat out of, So don't put it in
Speaker 1: a mason jar that has a a neck on it.
Speaker 1: Put it in something that's either straight sided or cong facts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that you can have beaker, But the other way,
Speaker 1: like the lip is wider than the base, correct, and
Speaker 1: so and then I put that in the refrigerator. So
Speaker 1: what you're gonna have now is your your fat's gonna
Speaker 1: your pure fat because I strained it. Your pure fat
Speaker 1: is gonna rise to the surface and congeal. And then
Speaker 1: at the bottom you are going to have a bit
Speaker 1: of this kind of seasoned gelatinous liquid that has come
Speaker 1: off of the ducks. Um. And then at some point
Speaker 1: after it's been totally cooled, you're gonna want to go
Speaker 1: in and scoop the whole thing out and scrape the
Speaker 1: gelatinous liquid off the bottom, and that will at that
Speaker 1: point that fat is good for years. And then you
Speaker 1: can take that little bit of liquid that it's like
Speaker 1: a highly concentrated gelatinous stock. It's highly seasoned also, and
Speaker 1: you can use that in small amounts in a sup
Speaker 1: or something like that. You could you could add that
Speaker 1: into something. There would be probably from this project, we
Speaker 1: probably would yield about half a cup of this gelatinous
Speaker 1: liquid at the bottom. That's gonna be like kind of
Speaker 1: concentrated cured duck flavor. You know what. H I have
Speaker 1: a little witch's hat with those filters that you can
Speaker 1: pour it through. Yes, to pull a bunch of the
Speaker 1: ship out of this, you still get the layer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have it no matter what. UM. And then
Speaker 1: that that fat is going to be good to go
Speaker 1: for several more rounds if you treat it the same
Speaker 1: way every time. Um, and then so that that that
Speaker 1: initial investment will be diffused by being able to re
Speaker 1: use it. Okay, so now you got your ducks. Your
Speaker 1: duck havels have been put for four hours submerged in
Speaker 1: pork lard degrees. The listener has pulled his ducks out
Speaker 1: and he's finding here's you're finding that they're intact. You
Speaker 1: can gently lift the half of the dog. It's not
Speaker 1: falling apart. It's not like how my mother used to
Speaker 1: cook squirrels in a crock pot and cream of mushroom soup,
Speaker 1: where when she was done there was a layer of
Speaker 1: bones in the bottom and and everything else floating on top.
Speaker 1: They're intact, and here we are, here we are. I
Speaker 1: put them on a little sheet tray er baking sheet,
Speaker 1: and then I started a very gentle mesquite fire, because
Speaker 1: I don't want to grill them over really high heat.
Speaker 1: But what I just want to do is just I
Speaker 1: want to let I'm kind of cool off a little bit,
Speaker 1: and then I just want to cook them skin side
Speaker 1: down on a grill. Oh and only on the skin side.
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna flip them to that cut side ever, never, never,
Speaker 1: And I just want to gently crisp up the skin
Speaker 1: and to give them a little bit of smoke um
Speaker 1: and like the nice, beautiful like charcoal burning wood flavor. Um.
Speaker 1: So that SSS should take about twenty minutes, Like the
Speaker 1: fire is that gentle under him or there's that much space. However,
Speaker 1: you're going to achieve that just a few coals. You
Speaker 1: put them down, and they're going to make just a
Speaker 1: little bit of a sizzling sound, and you want them
Speaker 1: to kind of gently brown up from there and just
Speaker 1: get that skin crisp. And I I did a little
Speaker 1: glaze just because the Brad, the guy that owns this place,
Speaker 1: he was cleaning out a cabinet and he was like,
Speaker 1: there's some pepper jelly and I was like, perfect good.
Speaker 1: So a little bit of something sweet, uh, just like
Speaker 1: brushed that on the skin after the fact and does
Speaker 1: it upper jelly? Pepper jelly? And it could be anything.
Speaker 1: It could be a mix of vinegar and honey, which
Speaker 1: is classically my favorite, like literally just a fifty mix
Speaker 1: of any vinegar and honey. Um. I mean, it could
Speaker 1: be rice, wine, veneer of balsamic apple, cider, white, white vinegar,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. Sherry vinegar very good. Um, something
Speaker 1: sweet that together. Uh yeah, glaze, that's a good glaze.
Speaker 1: That's a good like. I don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: available things or really just anything sweet and anything like.
Speaker 1: Oh I'll have God is the juice out of a
Speaker 1: jar of pickled halapenias and some BlackBerry jam. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: not advocating that specifically as saying it's my favorite. But
Speaker 1: if that's what you got, you're probably gonna make that work.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's probably gonna be good. It's sweet and
Speaker 1: it's sour, you know, just find something, you know, I've
Speaker 1: got a lime and coconut. You've you've got a lime
Speaker 1: and uh some molasses. I'm mean again, I'm not advocating
Speaker 1: that specifically, but that's the that's the general idea. And
Speaker 1: then a little bit of a glaze on them. Vinegar
Speaker 1: and honey. Vinegar and honey is beautiful, I mean, and
Speaker 1: you can embellish that, you know, like garlic. It's very
Speaker 1: good in there. Um, and then you can put spices
Speaker 1: in there. My preferences rush on ducks, birds quail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I can't remember which book I have.
Speaker 1: Oh that's in it's in my in a field. There's
Speaker 1: a glaze and it's fifty fifty honey and vinegar with
Speaker 1: a little bit of aniseed and um in garlic, and
Speaker 1: it's it's a wonderful glaze that sounds so good. It
Speaker 1: works really well, especially with sherry vinegar for some reason. Um.
Speaker 1: And that was it. And then we served the ducks
Speaker 1: and you know, for you know, it's a little like
Speaker 1: these are gonna be. And then I cheated tore a
Speaker 1: little piece off and I was like, I kind of
Speaker 1: nailed that one. Was good. It was good. You nail everything. Man. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't, well, that's that's super kind of you. But
Speaker 1: I don't. Um, you know, there's there's failures out there,
Speaker 1: but I think that just I like to try to
Speaker 1: make Spinney's taste good. I like to give him a chance.
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta kill him, you know, let's just
Speaker 1: let's just treat him with with an ideal that they're
Speaker 1: gonna be great, you know, and now and then it
Speaker 1: just comes down to tricks. And then when we draw
Speaker 1: out the cooking process over forty minutes, I hope people
Speaker 1: aren't intimidated. But it's really not that hard if you
Speaker 1: if you distilled this down, let me do a quick version.
Speaker 1: There you go, Okay, pluck your ducks. Caught him in
Speaker 1: a half ah, put some seasoning on them, let him
Speaker 1: sit a few hours, get a big pottle lard, pork lard.
Speaker 1: Stick the ducks in there, putting in your album for
Speaker 1: a few hours at two seventy five, four hours at
Speaker 1: two seventy five, pull them out, smoke him for a while,
Speaker 1: throw a glaze on. How's that? I love it? That's perfect.
Speaker 1: Or you can listen everything else we just talk about.
Speaker 1: Just scroll back and listen to my voice over and over. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they turned out great, and they would. It would apply
Speaker 1: to other ducks and you can do the same process.
Speaker 1: We we use this caned fee and grill process extensively
Speaker 1: at the restaurant. We do chicken hearts that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've I've stole that from you, so I mean just
Speaker 1: to look at that for duck hearts. The how useful
Speaker 1: it is, Like the two main things that we do
Speaker 1: in that manner at the restaurant would be chicken hearts
Speaker 1: and beef ribs. So like a three or four pound
Speaker 1: full cut beef rib that is cured and then slowly cooked,
Speaker 1: in this case in beef fat until it's tender and
Speaker 1: then grilled at the end. And that's our way of
Speaker 1: achieving tenderness. And then when the order comes in, we
Speaker 1: can cook the beef rib over the grill and it
Speaker 1: can get that you're you're you're getting it tender first
Speaker 1: and then you're coming back later and getting the smoke,
Speaker 1: the char and the texture. Now that's my favorite venison
Speaker 1: rib preparation. But I haven't done it in the lard.
Speaker 1: It would be quite good. You do it in water. Water.
Speaker 1: Part of the thing is this, I'll be curious to
Speaker 1: get your take on this. Part of what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do when I do it in water is I'm
Speaker 1: trying if it's a real fatty deer, that's great, a
Speaker 1: lot more meat. I'm trying to get all that dear
Speaker 1: fat out of the meat right, So I slow cook
Speaker 1: it right, and then when you set it, when you
Speaker 1: get it up to set it and let it cool,
Speaker 1: all that fat it's tallow right, doesn't taste that it's
Speaker 1: it's super waxy, unpleasant. So I'm trying to get all
Speaker 1: that waxy fat out of there, and it floats up
Speaker 1: to the surface of water. A thing I might be
Speaker 1: afraid of, or maybe it wouldn't matter. As if I
Speaker 1: took my little deer ribs and imagine you got like
Speaker 1: just listeners. Like imagine you got a deer staying in
Speaker 1: there and he had all its ribs. In the end,
Speaker 1: I like cut the ribs off. I take a saws
Speaker 1: on and run them into slip strip cut them into strips. Uh,
Speaker 1: so that I got chunks of three inch rib because
Speaker 1: so I'm going against the grain of the ribs with
Speaker 1: my saws all and I'm just cutting the ribs slab
Speaker 1: into three strips. And then I take a few bones,
Speaker 1: cut it, a few bones cut it, and I got
Speaker 1: like if you went to a restaurant and ordered pork
Speaker 1: ribs two or three ribs per peace, the ribs are
Speaker 1: not three. Maybe the ribs are four or five inches tall. Uh.
Speaker 1: I cook them till tender in water. Are you seizing
Speaker 1: the water? No? I season after I'm done. I would
Speaker 1: because I want all that dear fat to liquefy and
Speaker 1: go away. Then I do a dry rub, then I
Speaker 1: grill them. But here's my question to you. Let's say
Speaker 1: I had cooked them down, I tend to rise them
Speaker 1: in pork lard. Uh it would probably uh diffuse carry
Speaker 1: away the deer fat wax nous. My feeling is yes,
Speaker 1: it probably would. It would probably serve the same exact
Speaker 1: purpose as the water, but it would incorporate but it
Speaker 1: couldn't incorporate some less waxy fat back in that's would
Speaker 1: then have wax. Your other fat would have waxy fat
Speaker 1: integrated into it. Is my theory that is also true.
Speaker 1: But probably such trace and mountain it doesn't matter. I
Speaker 1: mean two full full disclosure. I also cooked the venison
Speaker 1: ribs like this in water. But what I like to
Speaker 1: do is highly seasoned the water so that I'm getting
Speaker 1: because my what I've always found is that when you
Speaker 1: when you cook them, you've got you've got the outside seasoned.
Speaker 1: Only in the insides tends to be run a little bland.
Speaker 1: So I will season it with you know, bay leaves
Speaker 1: and garlic and onion, and they'll be some salt in
Speaker 1: the water. Or if you do have time before they
Speaker 1: go into the water, season them at that point, like
Speaker 1: so dry brine them and then go into the water,
Speaker 1: and so that that that there's they're fully seasoned, and
Speaker 1: then when they come out, you don't have just like
Speaker 1: that outer layer that's got the nice seasoning on it,
Speaker 1: but they're season throughout the correct And that's and that's
Speaker 1: my fifty honey vinegar glaz that's we we we do
Speaker 1: this very often. It's make venison venice and ribs like that,
Speaker 1: exactly like you're saying, you know, park cook um and
Speaker 1: then based on the grill with that vinegar and honey
Speaker 1: mixed is uh what I like to base them without
Speaker 1: my grill Cider, vinegar, mustard, Oh, mustard, Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: slap him in that. My kids it's so weird. I
Speaker 1: mean they love it that. They like to have a
Speaker 1: little dipping bowls of it too. Cider, vinegar and mustard
Speaker 1: brushed down the ribs you can brush from barbecue sauce.
Speaker 1: But it tastes like every damn thing in barbecue sauce.
Speaker 1: We we we eat no shortage barbecue sauce in my house.
Speaker 1: It's just like such a like, oh the hell we're
Speaker 1: gonna do with these leftovers? Well, I'm gonna mash them up,
Speaker 1: put barbecue sauce and put it on sandwiches. Uh, we
Speaker 1: made for Thanksgiving this year, we made a big Italian
Speaker 1: mixed boil. Yeah, bleed to me stone. In the end,
Speaker 1: I we just got so sick of the leftovers. In
Speaker 1: the end, I just wanted up all on barbecue, sauce,
Speaker 1: on sandwiches, all the shanks and everything, you know what
Speaker 1: went into it? What did I do? The bl bleetle
Speaker 1: me sto. I did. Uh A friend of mine and
Speaker 1: raised his cattle, gave me some beef tongue. Nice. My
Speaker 1: kid's buddy, Uh, his family raised his chickens. So I
Speaker 1: had a chicken. And then I realized I needed another chicken,
Speaker 1: so that I had to buy a chicken. I had
Speaker 1: a moose brisket. This is like a classic composition right
Speaker 1: here at breasket. Had a chicken piglet a wild piglet
Speaker 1: shoulder from Hawaii, so the whole pig shoulder. I had
Speaker 1: a couple of antelope shoulders that I corned where I
Speaker 1: just saw as all the whole antelope leg into three
Speaker 1: pieces and corned it. I had pronghorn shanks that were
Speaker 1: just braised. What else they're put in there? And then
Speaker 1: like Rudabaga's turn ups, white beats taters isn't it. Can
Speaker 1: we talk about this? Yeah, like for a minute, you
Speaker 1: don't like it? No, I I really I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: this topic. And there's there's a couple time I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you questions now, um and going back
Speaker 1: to the well, let's let's start here. Um poached or
Speaker 1: well it says it's it's a mixed boil, and that's
Speaker 1: what it translates, not boiled. It's poached. Well, yes, you're not.
Speaker 1: You're not in the process had a rip and boil. Now,
Speaker 1: if I had the if I had really devoted my
Speaker 1: brain to it and had the large enough vessel and
Speaker 1: really sat and looked at everything and thought it out,
Speaker 1: I could have been like, Okay, i'm putting we're gonna
Speaker 1: eat at six, I'm putting that in it nine am.
Speaker 1: I'm putting that in at ten am. It putting that
Speaker 1: in at five pm. But I didn't do it that
Speaker 1: way because I was too lazy to think about it
Speaker 1: all because I wanted I was going to get there
Speaker 1: in a second. But a few things going right, I
Speaker 1: had a few things going they all got combined in
Speaker 1: the end. Okay, okay, because the staging was going to
Speaker 1: be my second question, my first being more not really
Speaker 1: a question but more of an observation, is that like
Speaker 1: poached or meats that are slow cooked in water, not
Speaker 1: widely accepted here like we we really crave, I think,
Speaker 1: in in this country, in many other countries, uh, the
Speaker 1: texture of a seer from a grill or or being
Speaker 1: fried or put under a broiler. But I love things
Speaker 1: like that, like a poached chicken or a poached shank
Speaker 1: or a tongue or something like that. I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of value to it. And how how do
Speaker 1: we go about normalizing that as a preparation because it's
Speaker 1: really cool. I think it's really to defeed it to
Speaker 1: your kids when they're young, and if everybody did that
Speaker 1: in a generation or two, the problem would be over.
Speaker 1: But what if you're an adult and you're like boiled meat?
Speaker 1: Who eats that? I don't even care. It's like I
Speaker 1: don't care. I used to, I used to years ago
Speaker 1: care about all this stuff. You know, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I just don't care. I don't want to hear about
Speaker 1: it anymore. Don't. We're trying to we're trying to convince
Speaker 1: people to eat mixed boils. Yeah, I just kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, I just don't I don't need to hear
Speaker 1: about what you don't want to eat. It's just like,
Speaker 1: don't don't come over. So if you work. Next question,
Speaker 1: let me heat with a quote from a front of mine.
Speaker 1: So my wife for meeting new people, my wife will
Speaker 1: often uh, if their kids are coming over, my wife
Speaker 1: will off and be like, just so you know, we
Speaker 1: have guns in the house. They're locked up, but we
Speaker 1: have guns in the house, you know. Uh. She just
Speaker 1: feels this is a curtis because there's some you know whatever.
Speaker 1: She doesn't apologize about it, She's just letting them know.
Speaker 1: I think she's been asked enough. Maybe. But a friend
Speaker 1: of mine is like, uh, if they don't like it,
Speaker 1: don't come to my house. And I just a little
Speaker 1: bit like what I what. I can't even I just
Speaker 1: can't all the people that don't want to eat all
Speaker 1: the stuff, I just I can't argue with them anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm right there. But I do think that educating,
Speaker 1: educating and opening some minds. But there's still time, and
Speaker 1: people listen. They listen to what you have to say.
Speaker 1: They listen. They're interesting in the fact that you had
Speaker 1: the mixed boil for Thanksgiving. I've talked about three times.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's I think that's amazing. I
Speaker 1: love that. My wife was a little miffed, but in
Speaker 1: the end she conceded that it was better than what
Speaker 1: you normally eat it Thanksgiving. If you were to kind
Speaker 1: of get onto my technical question, if you were to
Speaker 1: stage it, did you cook it in the same broth?
Speaker 1: In the end? No, I had a few things going on.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and ask you questions, unless you want me
Speaker 1: to elaborate. Let's say, hypothetically, you've got a big pot, Well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna cook everything. How would you have how would
Speaker 1: you have staged? What order would you have? I would
Speaker 1: have woke up in the morning and I would have
Speaker 1: gotten my uncured raw asked shanks in there. Um, let's
Speaker 1: say I'm eating. Let's say we're gonna eat at six.
Speaker 1: I would have uh, I would have gotten my pot
Speaker 1: because I wouldn't want to sit there and keeping an
Speaker 1: eye on it. I would have just put it in
Speaker 1: my oven at a certain town and put my shanks
Speaker 1: in there. Then I would have gone my corned meats.
Speaker 1: Oh you know what else I put in there? I
Speaker 1: forgot about this. I made a bunch of venison garlic
Speaker 1: sausages and few a dozen of them in there. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry the sausages are going in this early. No no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: I've forgotten my big what all was in there? That
Speaker 1: was in there? They went in late. I would have
Speaker 1: done my raw ass uncured shanks. Then later I would
Speaker 1: have put my corned in my corn and I corned
Speaker 1: my moose brisket, and I corned some of the uh
Speaker 1: bone in venison pieces. I would have waited a while.
Speaker 1: My tongue was already you know, it's not a raw tongue.
Speaker 1: My tongue had already been smoked. Because so it's just
Speaker 1: vac sealed. I made it. I made three saved one
Speaker 1: for Thanksgiving. It a vac bag. So it's like recipe ready.
Speaker 1: It just needs to be warmed up like you could have.
Speaker 1: It's just ready eats as I thought it out. So
Speaker 1: I would have waited and then at probably like uh
Speaker 1: four o'clock maybe out to put my tongue in there.
Speaker 1: Five o'clock I would have got my harder to like
Speaker 1: big beats, big white beats, turnips and radishes would have
Speaker 1: got them. And then to make sure that they were ready.
Speaker 1: Know what, I'm sorry to Vegas got it at five
Speaker 1: thirty five. I would have done my chicken and my sausages.
Speaker 1: And by now the broth is just it's phenomenal. So
Speaker 1: I'd say, you know, when I was all done the
Speaker 1: next day, because I strained it off. When it was
Speaker 1: all done the next day, I jarred it all in
Speaker 1: my pressure canners. Now I got that ship on my
Speaker 1: shelf and cannon jars. So the meats are coming out,
Speaker 1: they're getting sliced. Yeah, A little bit part of the
Speaker 1: appeal is it's some caveman looking business. I bought two
Speaker 1: giant platters on Amazon on with pumpkins and stuff on them,
Speaker 1: because like, none of turkeys and pumpkins, and because when
Speaker 1: I'm having any of that stuff, and so I was
Speaker 1: like it was a little throw to people that were
Speaker 1: all miffed, certain unnamed family members that were like, where
Speaker 1: did the turkey duffy? It's right there and on the
Speaker 1: corner copes. Look, you'll notice all trade there on the
Speaker 1: edge of the my giant platters. And I don't know what,
Speaker 1: you know, where I'm gonna put them until next Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1: And I made two mountains mountains of boiled assorted meats
Speaker 1: and root vegetables, in a lot of carrots, uncut carrots. Oh,
Speaker 1: just whole carrots with the biggest, nastiest carrots you can find.
Speaker 1: Whole ass carrots. Got it? And then what what is uh?
Speaker 1: Did you do? Condiments or moostata, which I just bought
Speaker 1: a few, went like full on traditional with yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm twenty percent Italian, two percent North African, and then
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of Western Europe. I was digging into
Speaker 1: my Italian. I bought mustarda um, and then we made
Speaker 1: to a red sauce and a green sauce. It's like
Speaker 1: a raw green herb sauce. All right, this is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: And I had a couple of little salt tubs laid
Speaker 1: out any special salt or just some coach sea salt
Speaker 1: like he see salt. Then now, if you really want
Speaker 1: to know, then I made a horse radish sauce creamy.
Speaker 1: Yeah he nailed this, Yeah I got. I got my
Speaker 1: own horse radish patch too. I'll point out so which
Speaker 1: is frozen and locked under dirt. But I had cured,
Speaker 1: you know, I had made some of vinegar and all that,
Speaker 1: and that was for the corned meats phenomenal. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: answer are your questions? It did? It did? I'm really
Speaker 1: glad we took a turn down that route. This is
Speaker 1: a food episode. Okay, yeah, good anything else you need? No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean we can, we can move on. But I,
Speaker 1: like I said, I think that this is this is
Speaker 1: a topic that really needs normalizing. We had a guest
Speaker 1: on It's about boiled meat. We had a guest on
Speaker 1: Seth Cantner. He was raised um outside of cots Abu.
Speaker 1: He's brought up in a side igloo, living off the land,
Speaker 1: dirt floor, side iglu sled dogs, feeding them off Cariboo.
Speaker 1: He's an author. He wrote Shopping for Porcupine. He wrote
Speaker 1: Ordinary Wolves. He wrote a Thousand Trails Home about Caribou.
Speaker 1: Reading his book about Cariboo, like they eat a lot
Speaker 1: of lot of boiled like that style of cooking which
Speaker 1: is like very influenced by a new pat culture and stuff.
Speaker 1: But they eat a lot of just like a moose knees.
Speaker 1: You butcher your mouse, you get the big chunks off,
Speaker 1: the big muscle groups off, and then then they take
Speaker 1: the knee joint and they just boil it and they
Speaker 1: eat all that tending gelatinous stuff. Yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: boiled meat. You'd have people over and it would just
Speaker 1: be like the like the pelvis, Okay, so you butcher
Speaker 1: a caribou, you take that whole pelvis whatever, just any
Speaker 1: chunks of anything that like, you'd normally be like, hey,
Speaker 1: it's clean. Like let's say you butcher elk out in
Speaker 1: the mountains. All the ship that's laying there when you
Speaker 1: walk away with your backpack full of meat, bonus meat
Speaker 1: or quarters or whatever. Everything's laying there. They would saw
Speaker 1: up and boil and serve that. And you're going there
Speaker 1: to go to the pot and you grab out a
Speaker 1: moose knee and you sit down and pick it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything down to the everything down to the bone makes sense.
Speaker 1: And reading that it's like, man, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: salt and boiled joints. So they have it very much.
Speaker 1: So an appreciation for just that boiled meat. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think many cultures, do you know, I mean just soups
Speaker 1: and fuh you know, or you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: France has its own version of of that. I mean
Speaker 1: Italy famously so, but I particularly enjoy it, especially when
Speaker 1: you play with all the condiments and it's like a
Speaker 1: choose your own adventure over there, and you've got these
Speaker 1: like sharp, bright condiment instead of going with this kind
Speaker 1: of like stodgy, almost unidimensional preparation. It's delicious but still,
Speaker 1: and then you get the sauces really make it right.
Speaker 1: Then we started fruit fun yeah, and that jelly inside.
Speaker 1: Then we started all that stuff really makes it. He
Speaker 1: could probably explain it mustard fruit, but there's no mustard
Speaker 1: in it. There should be mustard seeds and okay, yeah, sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: we mustard being like one of the most preservative of
Speaker 1: the spices. I mean, it lasts almost indefinitely. And som
Speaker 1: start to uh is an Italian like sweet condiment that's
Speaker 1: also gotten a bit of spice to it. So picture
Speaker 1: of marachino cherry, yeah, because it'll have some of those
Speaker 1: in it. But you've made a picture that you've made
Speaker 1: marachino cherries out of Kiwi's cherries, oranges, pair slices, and
Speaker 1: then it's packed and how do you describe what it's
Speaker 1: packed in. It's a it's a a jelly or a syrup.
Speaker 1: It's expensive as ship and it could be made with
Speaker 1: any fruit. It's kind of it's I would say it's
Speaker 1: in the Chottney family. And I don't worry. I gotta
Speaker 1: point out, man, I got no, I don't work at Amazon. Um,
Speaker 1: I bought mine off Amazon because you get it from Italian.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's like you know with Montana, it's
Speaker 1: hard to find some stuff. Sure, if you were in
Speaker 1: New York, you just go down and probably go to
Speaker 1: like eighteen stores within five blocks and buy. And we
Speaker 1: started a fruit. But I wouldn't know where to begin.
Speaker 1: I just ordered and it comes from It's like all
Speaker 1: made in Italy, and I just buy the jars on Amazon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably a better way to do it, but that's
Speaker 1: just how I do it. But you could make it
Speaker 1: would be a fun It would be a project that
Speaker 1: Canda making jam or jelly anything like that, or a
Speaker 1: Chattney where you could can it um and you could
Speaker 1: use whatever fruit it is. I mean, you could make
Speaker 1: a choke cherry well starta or something like that, or
Speaker 1: an apple in the start. You know, they're being dumb asses.
Speaker 1: But my kids do not like it. They do not
Speaker 1: like it. They like the look of it. Sure, you're
Speaker 1: like white claw. A kid can look at a can
Speaker 1: of white claw across the room and they are in huh,
Speaker 1: everything about it, the color of the can, the size
Speaker 1: of the cann It's like they see that and they
Speaker 1: think I would like that beverage from a hundred yards away.
Speaker 1: They know they're gonna they like everything about the presentation.
Speaker 1: You bring a jar and we started in the home
Speaker 1: and they're fired up, like what could you know? What
Speaker 1: could be more exciting than what's in that jar? And
Speaker 1: they taste and they're just out. It's like they're like
Speaker 1: someone ruined. Its spicy, But it's a great wild game
Speaker 1: accompaniment across the board man on duck, Yeah, it's phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Does it have a kind of vinegar in it as well?
Speaker 1: Is there a sour element or is there a fruit
Speaker 1: that's sour that's in it, like like a tang? Is
Speaker 1: it there? Is there always a tang? Or it's not
Speaker 1: quite from the fruit and then a copious amount of
Speaker 1: mustard t A r d A. It will be like FRUITA.
Speaker 1: It's an Italian, it will be fruita mastarta. I love
Speaker 1: to try it one day when you're searching up beefat
Speaker 1: you search up that, get yourself a jar heading over,
Speaker 1: prepare to pay for it, right, I mean I think
Speaker 1: chutt needs to or you know, again a universal condiment
Speaker 1: and like, uh, there's I put a chuttney recipe in
Speaker 1: the hog book, and I feel like you can put
Speaker 1: anything in there, from an apple to a zucchini. It's
Speaker 1: gonna come out great. It's just it's it's a method
Speaker 1: which is always appealing to me. It's just to like
Speaker 1: put out methods rather than strict recipes. And so but
Speaker 1: what at the end of the day, what it is,
Speaker 1: It's that it's it's sweet and it's sour, and like,
Speaker 1: there's that those two flavors go so far with like
Speaker 1: enlivening game because it's just that richness. It's the the
Speaker 1: old e Q on the radio where you've got too
Speaker 1: much base and you need to bring in a little
Speaker 1: bit of trouble. And that's exactly what what those flavors
Speaker 1: are with that like acidic punch and mustard seed ginger
Speaker 1: things like that. I want to close with, Uh, I
Speaker 1: want you to I'll do mine first. I get to
Speaker 1: do three, but you only you only get to do one. Well,
Speaker 1: your best, like your best message, like if you could
Speaker 1: have a message to wild game cooks broadcast into outer
Speaker 1: space so that all life would hear it? What would
Speaker 1: it be? I go first and I only got one.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna go first. I get three. Okay, one
Speaker 1: is going to Jesse's restaurant too, is get if you
Speaker 1: like to hunt wild pigs, get Jesse's hog Book. What's
Speaker 1: it called? The hog Books? New was something real simple.
Speaker 1: More people company about that book. People, people that are
Speaker 1: exposed to pigs, and they got all the stupid ship like,
Speaker 1: you can't eat this guy, you can't eat the bars,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't eat the sounds. Whatever the hell
Speaker 1: here at all? Uh? It's available on the meat Eater store.
Speaker 1: It's phenomenal book. Thank you. People calling to me all
Speaker 1: the time about how blown away they are about that book.
Speaker 1: We won the James Beard Award. Since I saw you last,
Speaker 1: that book won the James Beard Award. Yes, sir, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be no. For the single subject category. The hog
Speaker 1: Book is the winner. I think that's a win for
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the word would beat, but when the just
Speaker 1: getting that recognition for a book about hunting and specifically
Speaker 1: about pigs, that's hyper graphic. There's uh we we self
Speaker 1: published it so we could put whatever pictures we wanted
Speaker 1: in there. There's a lot of I mean, there's guts,
Speaker 1: the there's blood, there's there's death, there's dead piglets, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. I think that, Uh, the recognition from the
Speaker 1: culinary community about a book like that was really significant
Speaker 1: to me. And I'm not trying to be said to
Speaker 1: something like it's a win for us all, but it's
Speaker 1: a win for us all. I felt like that was
Speaker 1: it was very cool to see that I didn't hear.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. It was pretty cool. I got to
Speaker 1: go to Chicago too and hear my name. It was cool.
Speaker 1: That's great. My daughter said that my nose was sweating. Um.
Speaker 1: So here's my final tip. So let's go to your restaurant,
Speaker 1: get your hog book. Here's my final tip. Uh, I've
Speaker 1: said this before. You're either cooking it too long or
Speaker 1: you're not cooking it long enough. You nailed it. You
Speaker 1: nailed it, you nailed it. I'll mind mine is don't
Speaker 1: leave what they say. I don't believe what they say
Speaker 1: because when they are telling you talking that a gaff
Speaker 1: top catfish is not edible, or that an ad dad
Speaker 1: is not edible or edible or you can't eat a
Speaker 1: pig over pick your weight, whatever it is, I can't
Speaker 1: eat him. And from February August or whatever. Don't believe him.
Speaker 1: Don't believe him. You can't eat a shoveler, you can't.
Speaker 1: You know, boiled meat is not good. Just don't believe him.
Speaker 1: That's that's uh, that's my advice. Thank you, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: Lions sons of bitches that they are all you know what,
Speaker 1: and they've never tried it, they just heard it. It's
Speaker 1: just that generational misinformation. I think we we got to
Speaker 1: remember to call the cream. You gotta remember to call
Speaker 1: the episode. Don't believe them. I love it. We came
Speaker 1: up with a good titles and we kind of forget them.
Speaker 1: It's best to just record that. Just were workshopping and
Speaker 1: just put it right. We do record it, and it
Speaker 1: was something different we want to call this episode, and
Speaker 1: then we're like, na think then it gets a different
Speaker 1: name and the listen really confused. This one, by God,
Speaker 1: is going to be don't believe them and check my
Speaker 1: work by go and look at what it's called. All right,
Speaker 1: thank you very much, Jesse Griffin, Yeah, thank you. Die
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas, yes, sir d A I d U. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he should have named something different. It should now Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's way too late, had ships sailed. Yeah, my daughter,
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna tell you know when she was
Speaker 1: reading it. Yeah, I was like, it's die do, die do.
Speaker 1: That's that's an Italian coming out. Yeah. You you genetically
Speaker 1: knew how to pronounce it, all right, Thanks a lot, man,
Speaker 1: Thank you,