Mark Gilchrist is the head chef and director of ‘Game For Everything’. He specialises in cooking game and only uses wild meat and seasonal produce to make his signature game pies and cater for events and dinner parties. He’s not afraid to experiment either and will confidently add an unusual twist, safe in the knowledge that ‘it just works’.
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Game the facts and the fools thoughts, hanging
December 25, 2008
on the subject of game cooking you can tell in four questions how much anyone knows about the whole topic,
1) what is the your favorite venison dish? if the person fails to give different cooking methods to different species of deer then be worried, the term venison is not used by anyone who has a good knowledge of game cooking.
2) how do you cook a rabbit? if the reply does not discuss soaking in salt water or mentions pan frying then your are dealing with a fool
3) how do you cook a widgeon? if the answers is they are inedible or fantastic you are talking to someone with no experience 4) how do you like you game hung? if the answer is a week, you are talking to someone who is recycling popular misconception as fact.
it is on the last topic i wish to say a few words, as i have a particular bee in my bonnet at the moment about it. i had an excahnge of words the other day with someone who said “game was tough if is was not hung properly.” he refused to listen to my opinion but took some note when i explained that i hung and cooked over 50,000 birds in my career so had some idea.
this is wrong on so many levels, if it has gone tough you have over cooked it that is the problem, nothing and i mean nothing to do with hanging. cooked properly any game bird, from “just shot” to a week in the fridge can be cooked so it is perfectly tender. The cooking of game is something i can teach you in a day, if this is level one of what i do hanging in level 20.
hanging is a complex issue as when hanging game you have two process, the first is hanging a process where by the natural fires of protein that are fused together due to riga mortis are broken down. this process is hardly affected by temperature
then there is the second process known which is decomposing, here the bacteria break down the meat changing the flavour and making it more forgiving in cooking, this process is massively temperature responsive. to make matters worse people who talk about game that is well hung are actually talking about game that is decomposing (in the most part).
if like me you have a palate, and wish to taste the flavour of the bird rather than revolting flavour of decomposing birds here is how you get them perfectly “hung”. after they have been shot, place them in a fridge strait away, this will cool the core temperature of the birds (48 degrees c for a pheasant) and stop the bacteria in the guts from growing too quickly. this will allow the bird to hang (not decompose) a little known fact it is that after 3 days of hanging the bird will not become more tender as it is hung. job done, finished. those who profess to to love their game hung for a week in the garage cannot possible like it like that for two reasons. Firstly the temperature of the garage varies during the course of the year. due to the way bacteria grow, (doubling every 8 min at optimal conditions) the resulting level of decomposition is very very different from a week at 0 degrees c and a week at 10 degrees c, suggesting a lack of experience from the person making this claim.
secondly i don’t believe that that is a flavour profile any one can enjoy, unless they are the sort of person that buys the hottest curry on the menu to hide there manhood issues. nothing holds back the popularity of game cooking more than the myth that it has to be rotting to be enjoyed so could all these people who are propagating this myth resolve their man hood issues by buying a sports car and not making my job of promoting game more difficult.
kind regards mark
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