Here's how to make a delicious venison burger that will have your friends and family clamoring for more. The whole process from grind to bun.
Scott Rea has a bowl full of venison trim or scraps. He wants to turn those scraps into a delicious venison burger, but unlike many youtube videos out there Rea wants his burger to be simple and to reveal the taste of venison as much as possible.
To that end he's added no fillers or binders like bread crumbs, bacon, pork fat or the like. He's simply run the trim through a grinder twice and added salt and pepper to the ground meat.
He does weigh everything for the sake of uniformity. To 500 grams of venison he's added 5 grams of pepper and 10 grams of sea salt, and mixed it well. Then he quarters the ground venison and forms four patties in his hands.
He sautes the patties in a pan with a glug of oil and prepares his other ingredients while the venison burgers are cooking: thinly sliced tomatoes, semi-thin sliced onion, baby lettuce, sliced pickle and a little bit of special mayonnaise he made from plain mayo mixed with a spoonful of harissa sauce.
The bookends for this simple burger build are a lightly toasted brioche bun. A slice of white cheddar cheese over the almost done burger in the pan does the trick.
He tents the burger with foil and lets it rest while he builds the bun. Slathering the harissa mayo on the bottom, he follows with lettuce and onion. He places the burger over the lettuce and onion, followed by tomato, pickle, and harissa mayo'd bun top.
It's fairly rare that you'll find as simple and unadorned a burger recipe as this online. But this is a burger that wants to let the venison flavor shine. It's brilliant in its simplicity, and delicious in the end result.
Like what you see here? You can read more great articles by David Smith at his facebook page, Stumpjack Outdoors.
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