Diced Venison 500g

Generous chunks of diced venison* shoulder and haunch, characteristically dark in colour and rich in flavour as befits its provenance from the beautifully wild Harewood Estate.

This venison is wonderful when braised low and slow for a warming casserole or pie-filling, or any dish with the power to wrap you in a comforting winter embrace, and warm you from the inside out.

Suet puddings in the age of the avocado are as rare as corncrakes, but so pleasing when the bite of winter relegates the click of salad tongs for more substantial dishes. Diced venison combined with homely fayre produces fine results in a thick gravy with onions and smoked bacon lardons, or mushrooms wrapped up in a pudding blanket and then steamed for hours. Buttered greens and boiled spuds on the side. Be sure to save some of the gravy to pour over the pudding.

The venison’s flavour also makes it a great candidate for a curry. A Massaman would be a good host, so too a variation on the Jamaican goat curry, or even a Kashmiri-style offering, heavy with black pepper, cloves and cardamom. Whichever route you opt for, be sure to have bread and rice to hand.

Whilst the natural instinct is to cook this low and slow, there are some options for quicker cooking. Venison Cornish pasties are an easy to make twist on the classic, and an absolute joy to eat; the venison goes really well with the swede and copious amounts of black pepper.

Chef Val Warner inspires:
"When cooking venison (in this case fallow), remember to cook it slowly and in a heavy pan with a well fitting lid. Really low and slow will give the best results.

A favourite of mine is to make a Mexican-style Birria. Sauté onion, a little fresh coriander stalk and garlic, in lard with cumin, cloves, oregano and star anise, toast ancho and guajillo chillies with perhaps a chipotle or two. Blitz the chillies with a considerable amount of cider vinegar and the onions plus a spoon or two of tomato puree. Stew the meat very slowly in this mix with additional bay, black peppercorns and water. Reduce the sauce once the meat is cooked. For a delicious taco, eat the stew in doubled up (juicy) warmed tortillas with a mix of chopped raw onion and fresh coriander leaves sprinkled on top plus a good squeeze of lime juice.

Diced venison is wonderful in a rough puff pastry pie, the meat cooked with bacon and quince and using red wine. Roughly chop the venison up even smaller and cook with diced swede, onions, potatoes and spices and it makes for a wonderful golden pasty, and the perfect lunch for a bracing coastal walk.

Add to a deep stew containing smoked sausage, paprika, cabbage, lentils and a good stock, and it makes for a wonderful eastern European hunter’s stew, ideally produced from a thermos in a forest."

*Swaledale wild venison live a natural life on the Harewood Estate in West Yorkshire. These slow grown fallow deer are free to roam and forage amongst the bounty of the forest and pastures for a nutrient-rich diet of various grasses, herbs, fruit, nuts, acorns and wildflowers. Swaledale wild venison is lean and tender meat, naturally marbled and with a rich and dense umami flavour. All of our venison is dry-aged for 10-days on the carcass to intensify its gamey character. Diced venison is Always Fresh Never Frozen®, butchered to order, vacuum packed, and shipped in recyclable packaging to arrive safely insulated and ready to enjoy. Please note Swaledale Butchers® work in harmony with the life cycle of wild deer, therefore this is a seasonal product only available from early autumn to late winter.