After a successful trip to hog country last year, I found myself with a pile of ground meat to play with, in addition to the primal cuts. As I brainstormed new recipe ideas, I wanted to draw on the places where feral hogs live. I have made plenty of ...
Food
How to Make the Perfect Salmon Burger
When you hear the term salmon burger, you can’t help but think of some overpriced menu item at a pretentious restaurant or some flaccid, flavorless recipe out of a weight-loss magazine. Some of us can even still taste the metallic canned-salmon ...
Mess Kit History: Feeding Backcountry Adventures for Generations
The first time a Marine Corps sergeant instructor told me that chow is continuous in the field, I remember thinking, “That’s unexpectedly considerate; I get to eat whenever I want.” In reality, no time is set aside to eat, so figure it out on your ...
Boudin Balls With Wild Hog: A Twist on a Louisiana Classic
You may have never heard of boudin balls unless you’ve spent some time in the South. Boudin (sometimes spelled “boudain” and pronounced boo-dan) sausage is a beloved staple of Louisiana cooking. It is a cooked pork sausage traditionally made with ...
How to Make an Awesome Smoked Trout Dip
A heaping spoonful of smoked trout dip on a Ritz cracker is one of the best damn things you’ll ever eat. It's so good, you’ll find yourself going fishing just so you can make it. Smoked trout dip is one of those timeless recipes that anglers have ...
The Perfect Hasenpfeffer Recipe With Homemade Spaetzle
If you’ve only ever heard of one rabbit recipe, it's probably hasenpfeffer. Hasenpfeffer is a German rabbit dish characterized by a tart sauce and heavy use of spices. Loosely translated to “pepper rabbit” (hase meaning hare, and pfeffer meaning ...
The Chili Queens of San Antonio and Texas’ Signature Food
Since 1977, Texans have considered chili con carne the official dish of the Lone Star state. While the chili's status has only been official in the Lone Star state for about 45 years, the iconic staple of Tex-Mex cuisine gained popularity in the ...
9 Solid Ways to Recycle Used Coffee Grounds
Every time we finish a pot of coffee, an existential problem arises. No, it’s not whether we make another pot — that’s a given. The bigger question is what do we do with the coffee grounds? In the United States, 64% of adults currently consume ...
A Stick-To-Your-Ribs Wild Game Shepherd’s Pie Recipe
Difficulty: EasyPrep Time: 30 minutesCook Time: 45 minutesServes: 2 – 4 Shepherd's pie is one of those dishes that’s worth more than the sum of its parts. Sure, ground meat, mixed vegetables, and mashed potatoes are great on their own, but ...
Tex-Mex Venison Stuffed Peppers: Not Your Mama’s Thursday Night Staple
Stuffed peppers rank up there with meatloaf, spaghetti, and chicken pot pie as staples of the American dinner table. Many of us grew up eating stuffed bell peppers on an almost weekly basis as a cheap, quick, and filling meal to feed a family. But ...
A Venison Kebab Recipe That Will Impress Everyone
To most Americans, the word kebab, or kabob, simply means skewered chunks of marinated meat and vegetables. But in the rest of the world, kebab is a widely popular dish, and there are many kebab recipe variations beyond the cubed style we are ...
How To Make Amazing Feral Hog Shank Pork Tamales
Before I even touched the trigger, I knew exactly what I was going to do with the hog in my crosshairs. In my mind, I was already in my kitchen back home, whipping up a batch of pork tamales. I’ve made tamales a handful of times using venison, but ...
Escarole and Beans With Smoked Wild Turkey Wings
Italian greens and beans is a dish that feels like home. This hearty Italian dish is a soup of bitter greens, aka escarole or endive (think swiss chard), and white beans, mopped up with a good piece of bread, is exactly what I want in the ...
Venison Ragu: A Classic Wild Game Recipe
“Ragu” is one of those words we see on menus and hear in conversation all the time, but most of us have no idea what it actually is. As if things weren't confusing enough, sometimes you see it spelled “ragú,” and sometimes “ragout.” There’s even a ...
Introduction to Food Storage
When it comes to preparedness in my home, I work diligently to make sure that it flows with the normalcy of our routine as much as possible. Rather than viewing preparedness as a staunch concept that runs perpendicular to who we are, it is a parallel ...
Homemade Ricotta and Cured Salmon: Easy to Make, Delicious Together
There are a million ways to preserve fresh salmon, but sometimes the best way is the simplest. All you really need is a little salt and sugar to transform your catch into orange gold. Many cultures have their distinct variations, like Scandinavian ...
How to Make Country-Fried Deer Heart
Country- or chicken-fried steak is one of those things I can’t pass up if it’s on the menu. If you can deny yourself a tender slab of fried beef, then you’re a better person than I am. I don’t care if it comes on a sandwich or with a side of mashed ...
Recipe for Rabbit: Spice Up Wild Game Meat Tandoori Style
Most of us were introduced to tandoori cooking through Indian restaurants and buffets. Tandoori refers to food cooked in a tandoor, which is a large cylindrical oven, often made of clay or metal. Tandoors and similar ovens are an integral part of ...
Get a Little Classy With This Venison Wellington Recipe
Beef Wellington is an iconic British dish that lends itself well to a wild game adaptation. In fact, plenty of you will probably prefer the venison Wellington you're about to learn how to make, and that's a good thing. In the traditional recipe, a ...
Reader’s Choice: The 10 Biggest Free Range American Stories of 2021
This was a good year for Free Range American. We grew by hundreds of percentage points in every conceivable metric and covered a wide range of topics (and controversies) other outdoor media sites were afraid to touch. We broke the news on an ...
How To Make a Perfect Bowl of Creamy Grits and Crispy Fish
Seafood and grits is a southern classic. Whether we’re talking shrimp or a fried or blackened fish filet, a bowl of cheesy, buttery grits is the perfect companion. Being an inland Yankee, freshwater fish such as panfish, bass, and trout are usually ...
This Savory Tomato Jam Recipe Makes Sure No Harvest is Wasted
This tomato jam recipe is the perfect way to use up extra tomatoes from the garden before they go bad. Each year, as gardening season comes to a close, we often find ourselves with too much of a good thing. If you have fresh memories of tomatoes you ...
The People’s History of Barbecue
Whether sweet or tangy, sauced or dry, pulled, sliced, or on the bone, everyone loves barbecue. Barbecue is a product of meat, smoke, time — and history. It is an institution that defines us as a nation. Barbecue is a quintessential piece of American ...
South Carolina BBQ: A Tale of Two Tastes
When it comes to meat, South Carolina BBQ is whole-hog country. That means slow-cooking a 125-pound pig for 12 hours or longer in a cinder block pit over a fresh bed of hot coals until the meat simply falls apart. Whole-hog barbecue is the ...
Texas BBQ: Big, Like Everything Else in the Lone Star State
Everything’s bigger in Texas: Friday night football, the stars at night, never-ending wide-open ranges, belt buckles, Stetsons, and country-bluegrass music. And you have to add Texas BBQ to that list. Texas is one of the four main barbecue ...
Kansas City BBQ: ‘The Sauce’ is King
Ask someone if they’ve tried Missouri BBQ, and the response will most likely be a confused look. Ask the same person if they’ve tried Kansas City BBQ, and they’ll start salivating like Pavlov’s dog. Kansas City is where “the sauce” began, and we ...
St. Louis BBQ Ribs: From Surplus to Luxury Cut
Kansas City may be where “the sauce” began, but across the state, St. Louis BBQ became world-renowned for its specific cut of ribs. St. Louis–style ribs hit the scene during the post-WWII 1950s, and the name referred to a specific cut, not a cooking ...
Mexican BBQ: As Authentic as it Gets
While the process of slow-cooking meat over hot coals originated in the Caribbean, it’s been a part of Mexican BBQ for generations. In the old days, lamb or goat was cooked in a type of underground oven called píib. Another common barbacoa technique ...
Barbecue, Politics, and Alabama White Sauce
Sitting quietly in the heart of the southern barbecue belt, the Crimson Tide state harbors a somewhat strange and fanatical affinity for Alabama white sauce. Although this obsession only began in 1957, their love affair with slow-cooked meat goes ...
Memphis BBQ: Dry Rub or Sauced, You Can’t Go Wrong
Graceland, Sun Records, Gibson guitars, Beale Street, Peabody’s ducks, the muddy Mississippi, blues music, juke joints, and barbecue: If you want a taste of the southern experience, Memphis has got it going on. Union troops occupied Memphis ...
