Slow cooked venison with gin

Venison – check. Gin – check. Slow-cooked goodness – check. These are the three key ingredients for slow cooked venison with gin. Not only is this a satisfying meal, there is nothing more satisfying than sharing wild game with family and friends – in fact, we find this one of the best ways to talk to non-hunters about hunting. 

We recently gave a friend of ours some venison rump from a chital we shot on a meat hunt last year. Not being a hunter himself, he had never cooked venison before, so wanted a few pointers.

In the spirit of the Naked Chef, we love taking traditional recipes and experimenting with them to create new recipes – a pinch of this, a splash of that, swap this for that…

Add some cubes of cream cheese to some venison meatballs, and voila! you have a taste explosion that is out of this world. Mix up a traditional beef and red wine casserole, switching the wine for a splash of gin, rum, or whisky and you have a whole new take on the recipe. 

So we shared a recipe for slow cooked venison with gin, which tastes amazing but doesn’t require any specialist equipment or Master Chef skills. 

Having only ever eaten venison in fancy restaurants, Alec and his wife were exceptionally pleased with the results, and have not stopped raving about how good it tasted. The only problem – they now want more venison to cook, and we’re almost out. But those are good problems to have, as it means we need to head out and do a big meat hunt.

Here’s the recipe if you want to give it a try. 

Slow cooked venison with gin ingredients:

1.5-2kgs venison, cubed

2 x onions, sliced

2 x carrots, sliced

2 x garlic cloves, crushed

1 tablespoon of olive oil

8 – 10 mushrooms, quartered

1 cup gin – use the good stuff. We like Bombay Sapphire.

2 tablespoons tomato paste

3 cups of beef stock

Salt and pepper to taste

Slow cooked venison with gin method:

In a heavy fry pan, lightly brown venison cubes in olive oil and set aside. You will need to do this in batches so they don’t stew. 

Add onion and garlic and fry until translucent.

Add mushrooms and lightly brown.

Transfer these ingredients to a large stock pot (you could also use a slow cooker).

Add in sliced carrots and remaining ingredients.

Cover and place the pot in the oven on 150 degrees Celcius and cook for 4 hours.

Remove lid half an hour before finished to allow excess liquid to evaporate and the sauce to thicken.

Serve with crusty bread or mashed potato.