Recipe: Venison Chili

The humble bowl of chili is far and away one of the most popular dishes among North American hunters. The true origin of the dish is a topic of dispute worthy of arduous debate and hours of research, but there’s a Native American legend about chili that I recently found on Google and decided to adopt as fact.

The Legend of Chili

As the legend goes, the earliest documented recipe for chili con carne was put to paper by the holy apparition of a Spanish nun named Sister Mary Agreda. Though Agreda rarely left the comfortable confines of her Spanish convent, her spirit frequently lit out for America, apparently “transported by the aid of the angels” while she was in the throes of a phenomenon called “mystical bilocation.” During these episodes of biolocation Agreda would appear to a tribe of native people called the Jumanos somewhere in the lawless Texas-New Mexico border lands of the early 17th century.

Like most Spaniards of the time who visited America, wether in the physical or spiritual realm, Sister Mary Agreda’s primary aim was to convert the native peoples to Christianity, but sometime during the course of her divine escapades in the New World she took things a step further and left the Jumanos with a killer recipe for venison chili. Agreda’s recipe, it should be noted, calls for the meat of deer or antelope along with onions, tomatoes, and chili peppers.

Why We Love It

Regardless of its actual origins, it’s not hard to see why chili has retained such a strong allegiance with modern Americans and amongst the hunting crowd in particular. After all, chili is delicious and chili season directly coincides with the hunting season of whitetail deer—the most widely pursued big game animal in American history.

Everyone seems to break out their old family chili recipes sometime after Thanksgiving when a chill hits the air, football is on T.V. and millions of deer hunters are taking to stands all over the country. The dish itself is an American tradition and one that’s particularly prevalent among folks who hunt and harvest their own meat. Here is my version.

Recipe

2 1/2 lbs Cubed or Ground Venison

*** I used cubed venison cut from the sirloin in the batch pictured above.

1/2 lb bacon

3 cups Venison or Beef Stock

2 cans kidneys, 1 can black beans, rinsed

3 cans whole tomatoes in tomato puree, hand crushed

1 large onion, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons ground cumin

*** If you’re feeling ambitious toast some whole cumin seeds in a skillet and grind them in a spice grinder before adding to the chili.

2-4 tablespoons canned chipotle en adobo per your preference and heat tolerance, minced

3-6 loves garlic per taste, minced

2 tablespoon smoked paprika

4-6 dried ancho chilis

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Procedure

1. Salt the cubed venison and allow it to set out on the counter until it is roughly ambient in temperature.
2. Cut up and de-seed the dried chilis then soak in warm water for an hour or so. Grind these in a food processor with just enough of the soaking water to create a thick, paste-like consistency. Don’t bother cleaning the food processor. You’ll be using it again in a minute.
3. In a large Dutch oven, cook the half pound of bacon over medium-high heat until crispy.
4. Remove bacon from pan, chop and reserve for later.
5. While the pan is still hot and full of bacon fat, put a good sear on all sides of the cubed venison sirloin (tongs are useful tools for this task). You may want to do this in batches. Once the venison is seared, set it aside sprinkle it with fresh cracked black pepper and reserve it for later.
6. Reduce pan to medium heat. Add the chili paste you made from the dried anchos and the chopped onion, scraping browned bits of venison off the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon.
7. Continue to stir this mixture well over medium heat until the onions are translucent and soft.
8. Now take one of the cans of rinsed kidney beans and puree it in the food processor with a 1/2 cup of stock and add the resulting mixture to the Dutch oven. This trick makes for a thicker, more hardy batch of chili.
9. Add the chopped bacon, tomatoes, stock, chipotle en adobo, salt, garlic, oregano, smoked paprika the reserved venison cubes. Allow this to braise over medium heat until the venison is fork tender. This could take anywhere from 2-4 hours or longer for tougher cuts of meat. If you’re using ground venison instead of cubed, you can forgo the long braise and reduce your overall cooking time to 2 hours.
10. When you think you’ve got about an hour of cooking time left add the remaining two cans of beans. At the end of that hour taste the chili, adjust seasonings as needed and serve.

Plating

I like to serve my chili piping hot with some cheese curds, a dollop of sour cream, some sliced avocado, finely diced red onion and a smattering of diced cilantro— alongside a slice of cast iron corn bread.