Beer & Coffee Venison Stew

For the most part this is a fairly standard stew recipe.   The complexity in flavors comes from using dark beer and coffee as the liquid base and from allowing the stew to rest overnight in the fridge before finishing it on the stove top.  This is a very accessible way to introduce someone to eating or preparing wild game.  Nothing scary, just simple and good.

Ingredients

1lb cubed venison 

3 cups chopped carrots

3 cups baby dutch yellow potatoes

3 cups chopped celery

1 large red onion

3 cloves garlic

1 can dark beer

3/4 cup coffee

3TB venison or beef demi glace

1/2 stick of butter

2-3 large pitted prunes or small handful of raisins

2TB tomato paste

bay leaf

fresh rosemary

few dashes Worcestershire sauce

few dashes pepper sauce

salt, pepper, red pepper

heavy whipping cream

1. Brown the venison in a pan.  Season with salt and pepper.

2. Rough chop all of your vegetable.   We want big chunks that will hold up during an extended cooking process. Leave the potatoes whole and the skins on.  Mince your garlic.

3. Mince your prunes or raisins.  These will add some depth of flavor as well as help to balance the bitterness of the coffee and the tomato paste.  Go ahead and mince up some of the fresh rosemary as well.  

4. Now the venison, veggies, prunes, tomato paste, all go in a crock pot.  Add the bay leaf, rosemary, demi glace, Worcestershire sauce and pepper sauce.  The butter will help add some fat and give the right “mouth feel” to the dish.  Your favorite dark beer and some leftover coffee will go in the pot as well now.  Add enough water to just cover all of the ingredients.  Season it with the salt, pepper, and red pepper according to your taste.  Give it all a stir.

5. Set the crock pot on LOW and leave it to do its thing for 5-6 hours.  You’re looking for the carrots and potatoes to be fork tender without falling apart.  The stew will be a little more liquid at this point than the finished product.  Don’t worry, we’ll address that in the next step. Once done allow it to cool and put it in the fridge overnight. 

6. The next day before serving:  Make a roux in a pot large enough to hold all of the stew.  We want some color on the roux, but not super dark.  We are looking for more of a thickening agent than anything else, but we will definitely be adding some nutty complexity as well here.  Once the roux is where you want, it add the stew and gently stir to get everything incorporated.  Make sure you pull the bay leaf out and discard it at this point.  Slowly warm the stew back up without scorching the bottom of the pot.

7. The final step is to add small amounts of the heavy whipping cream until you have lightened the shade of the stew just a little.  Too much cream  is a bad thing here.  We are just trying to bind all the flavors together and add a hint of creaminess.  We aren't making clam chowder.

That’s it.  Serve with some good bread or even some skillet cornbread.

Notes:  You can sub out beef for the venison if you need to.  If you do so and use a particularly fatty piece of beef, omit the butter.  If you don't have demi glace on hand you can use Better Than Bouillon from the grocery store in a pinch.  These amounts are all approximate. Feel free to augment according to what you prefer or have on hand.