One of the main dishes for my birthday was bacon wrapped deer tenderloin. I've had deer in the past as I have many friends and family that are hunters, but it's always been a bit of an after thought rather than something I have taken a lot of time to prepare and cook. More like an appetizer or a chef's prerogative. This time we put some time and effort into the venison. For this dish, Dad and I did a tag team. He did the prep and I did the cooking. The outcome was pretty stellar. Click below to see the how we pulled it off...
Part I: The prep by Fool's Pappy
Whole Deer Tenderloin was generously provided by Adrian, a high school classmate of Fool’s Pappy:
1-tbsp minced garlic
1-tsp ground black pepper
¼ cup olive oil
1 cup soy sauce (we used ‘lite’ soy sauce to reduce sodium content and it worked well)
juice from one lemon **Editor's note - when adding the juice of a lemon run the juice through your fingers so that the seeds do not make it into the marinade**
Marinade in a gallon Ziploc bag several hours or overnight (we did overnight) then remove from marinade and wrap in bacon (we just can’t stay away from that pork fat thing!).
Grill over medium hot coals till bacon is crisp.
Prep: notice the ‘silver skin’ or membrane in the picture below when the loin is turned over?
Use a sharp knife to begin the process with upward pressure on the ‘skin’. You don’t want to remove too much meat while performing this. The next few pictures will give you an idea of how to properly remove the silver skin:
By this time the sun had set and a chilly, sunny afternoon had turned into a very windy and bitterly cold evening. I loaded the grill up with more charcoal before adding the venison to the grill. Once the coals got going I added the loins directly over the heat as evidenced by the red embers visible directly below the meat:
But I didn't have a choice here. It was just too cold and windy to try to cook these things without the lid down. What I did to compensate is I listened closely. When I heard it flare up inside I opened the lid and moved the meat away from the flare ups. I must've done this about eight times. Once the bacon crisped on the bottom I flipped them over. Here is a close up of one after I flipped it:
What I would do differently? I probably should've moved the grill over to the side of the house and used the house as a wind break. Otherwise I wouldn't do a thing differently. These came out incredibly good. Everyone was surprised to find out it was venison rather than beef. There was no gaminess at all. These got nothing but raves...
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