Anybody here ever try it? Thinking about about adding it to the Thanksgiving menu this year.

I've eaten venison, elk and muskox mincemeat pie and I liked it all. My folks used to make mincemeat out of elk and deer, one or the other, every year when I was a kid and when I lived in AK, I shot a muskox, sent them some meat and they made mincemeat out of some of it.

I think it would be worthwhile for you to add to the menu this year!

I sent them the musk ox meat in 1989 and they canned some of the musk ox mincemeat they'd made. About 5-6 years ago, I was talking to my folks who were in their late 80's at the time and my mom mentioned she had made a pie from the mincemeat to take to a church social. She said the pie was a hit and told the folks the mincemeat was made from musk ox...I asked if she told them how long ago it had been canned, "no I didn't tell them that, but it was still fine," was her response. I had to laugh about that one!

Great story, Cameron.

Does mincemeat pie have grits in it? Just wondering'......

SRH

Thanks Stan....my folks, a couple of depression era people who waste absolutely nothing, and incidentally are still living in their own home pushing their mid 90's and had their 70th wedding anniversary a little over a week ago.

I don't think the mincemeat they made had grits in it. I know it had raisins, red currents and some other fruits and ingredients but I'm not exactly sure what! I'm heading to their home for Thanksgiving, I may need to ask for the recipe.

sounds wonderful...

I was asking tongue I cheek, Cameron. Didn't really expect it did, but the currants and fruit does sound good in there. Never had mincemeat pie in my life, but would like to try it someday. It's not a traditional dish in my part of the South.

Super congratulations to your parents. Seventy years together, wow! What a blessed couple.

SRH

I know it sounds odd, but I had carrot cake made with deer meat rather than carrots. Now, carrot cake can be quite good, and the "deer" cake with that wonderful frosting was super. One could not tell it from the cake made with carrots. Later, I tried making carrot cake with caribou with similar results.

Don't for get the "Minces" in that pie-- Never understood what minces are, and how much eatin' meat (roast, chops, backstraps
you can get, using a good sharp knife and some skill-- Now grits- man, I'd run through a forest fire wearing kerosene BVD's for some real home-made grits (Not the box kind they sell up here)- salt, pepper and butter suits me right down to the ground. Happy Turkey Day. RWTF

Odd, but have you ever had German chocolate cake with sauerkraut(marinated in brown sugar) inside- and the coconut coating on the top. Not too shabby for desert-- Der Fuchs

Modern mince meat has very little meat in it.

It was traditionally made with dried meat.

American mince meat stems from early settlers exposure to pemmican. A way to store meat and fat with fruit for high energy density food over winter and spring.

Euro varieties lean more to the dessert realm. Almost all sweet fruits and spices.

Just finished a batch of Czernina here.

I'm bred and born in the South and never lived anywhere else. And I don't particularly like grits. Make mine hashbrowns instead. I've eaten mincemeat pie, but I don't think it had any meat at all in it?...Geo

The commercial mince meat pies are just a bunch of candied fruit bits. Mother's real mincemeat pies were made from Elk neck meat. I'm fortunate to have a friend whose wife was a home ec major and between her and another lady we know who hunts elk, I've been having about four real mincemeat pies a year for the last decade.

Ah, but you've not had my tomato-cheese-bacon grits yet.

SRH

A real minced meat pie is quite dense.
A full sized pie only has maybe 4-6 oz dried chopped meat in it.

Some people add beef fat, we don't.

I make a couple quarts from cooked chopped whitetail meat and eat it by new years. It can be quite boozy if you like.

I'm surprised it's not popular in the south.I

Is it for sale in bricks or jars in the south?I
None such is the brand locally.

Well there is that to consider. Sounds good. If we left out the grits it would make a good toasted sandwich...Geo

I was just talking to a friend from North Carolina today and we were remembering some of the very Southern foods we liked and she mentioned the tomato grits. I asked about it and she said she chops and dices the tomatoes up small and cooks them in the grits. I have never had it like that although I have had an order of grits with sliced tomatoes on the side and I ate them together which was quite tasty.

"Real" Southern Grits are known as Hominy Grits. I believe that most grits you can get today are simply coarse ground Corn Meal. I still like these though but they're not as good as real Hominy Grits. I have never tried any with tomatoes in them but use chopped up bacon bits & a little touch of Tabasco. I never use instant grits, only the longer cooking type.
My favorite Hot Cereal though is Oatmeal. I like it with some raisins or dried cranberries, a touch of cinnamon, a bit of butter or coconut oil & sweetened with real Sorghum. A local grocer keeps the real stuff in stock which is made by some Mennonites. A couple of co-workers visited them once while they were making. They had a large mill with about 6 spokes projecting out the top with two horses on each spoke. They said a stream of juice was running from that mill you would simply have to see to believe. It is pure straight Sorghum, no syrup added or other "Impurities.

I'm putting on a cooking of tomato-cheese-bacon grits tomorrow morning at 6 am to take to the 9 am breakfast at my church. Ingredients .......... chicken broth, Rotel, petite diced tomatoes, grits, one package bacon/ cooked and crumbled, and one 8 oz. package extra sharp cheddar cheese. No water. Yields one crockpot full. Cooking them for a couple hours on simmer, in the crock pot, makes a difference.

SRH

If I had read this last night I might very well have got in the car and drove up to Stan's church in time for breakfast...Geo

Don't know what denomination Stan's church is, but I am pretty ecumenical when it come to church food.

Surprisingly, and this is coming from a person who is so Yankee, that he is closer to Canada than he is Tennessee, there’s a local lady who makes her own hominy.

She gets a couple of bushels of shelled field corn, which people around here often use in lieu of wood pellets, and then she places it in plastic garbage cans with wood ashes and water.

She buries them in her yard, and then at some point in her crude processing, she rinses it, and replaces the wood ashes.

After, I think it was three cycles, she rinses it with freshwater, and then spreads it out on old window screens to dry.

After it’s dried, she eats it as is, or Grinds it with a coffee grinder into some kind of corn meal.

She said she’s been eating field corn all her life.

So I guess her corn meal would be yellow cornmeal.

The wood ash makes lye that removes the skin of the corn kernel. My mother remembers helping her grandmother and mother make hominy. They washed it all in the Cowpasture River.

Well, I am 81 years old, but I remember helping my Mother make hominy. Although we burned wood for heat she normally just bought a can of MerryWar lye from the grocery. I do recall there was an ash hopper at my grandmother's but don't recall ever being there when she made her lye with it. We also used the canned lye to make soap using hog lard which we rendered in a big iron kettle.

We just ate the hominy though, never made our own grits. In fact, even being from Southern TN I did not grow up eating grits, my Dad was an Oatmeal man & I ate a few box-car loads of them. Actually started eating grits after Marrying a "Yankee" girl from Illinois.

You can also use lime water to de-husk the corn to make hominy.

You know, you can buy a 7 pound can of hominy at Wal Mart for less than $3.

Maybe you should tell her.


https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-White-Hominy-111-Oz/10451514


Best,
Ted

By all rights, I should not be alive today. In my youth I ould break an egg from a Free-Range hen into a glass of Raw Milk & drink it. For many more years, I continued drinking raw milk & using raw eggs in making ice cream & such. I have eaten both homemade & store-bought hominy.

A lot of food today is cheaper as well as more convenient but when it comes to Flavor;
They Ain't playing in the same ballpark, much less the same game.

When we still raised &killed our own frying chickens when one te into a drumstick or thigh there was not a bloody spot on the bone. In the process of killing they were thoroughly bled out.

In my 81 years of existence on this old earth, I've been on both sides of the fence. The food in my earlier years simply tasted better.

Life as a sharecropper leaves a mark.
She followed the old ways from where she came.

There are many old people here that migrated up from the south to find a better life in the old foundries. An industry long gone from here.

I like grits and love hominy...but give me some corn meal mush fried up in bacon grease to partner up with my runny eggs and I'm a happy camper!

Getting back to minced meat.

Remember that venison carries no intramuscular fat.

Additionally venison tallow is very waxy, and makes good candles.

So, you want the least tallow or rendered venison fat as possible in your mincemeat. Otherwise it will bring you a new understanding of the phrase “lip smacking good”.

A rich flavorful mincemeat contains about a cup perhaps 2 cups of venison.

I’d stay away from adding prunes, otherwise it takes on a Polish slant.

Apples raisins orange peel lemon zest all good.

Nuts all good

On the spice flavorants, not too much clove.

I've not had mincemeat pies. I am not a big fan of fruit in my meat dishes, but it does sound interesting.

Do any of you make pasties? The Yooper version of the Welsh meat pie perhaps? Root vegetables are used instead of fruit. They are almost a perfect food for lunch on a long cold winter bird hunt (or just about any other time too).

My father's family came from Ishpeming.

I've eaten them everywhere in the world they are produced.
I probably ate 30 different varieties in Cornwall.

My favorites are made with A/P flour and lard.

Venison, onion, asparagus, and rutabeggy, is a fave.

Should anyone find themselves near Cadillac,MI, Mr Foisie's are as good as they get.

I didn't even know what a rutabaga was until I had a pasty. I think they are essential now. Asparagus is an interesting twist.

Can I see some of your favorite Mincemeat recipes?

I have always made my own venison mincemeat pies but there is a dry package of mincemeat 'spices' or condiments' that I have used.
About 2 cups of lean ground venison, 1 cup of finely diced apples, 2 cloves, 2/3 cup of raisins, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 cup of sugar or maple syrup - if you use syrup instead of sugar use only 1/2 cup of apples and use more raisins, or it will be too wet.

That's a nice basic recipe.

I like a little more astringency, so I add some vinegar and citrus juice&peel.

Mincemeat spans from excessively sweet all the way to excessively savory.

I don't store it, so I use almost no suet or lard.

Great use for pressure cooker venison shanks.

Sawzall them up, plop in the pc with a boullion cube and 2 cups water, pc for an hour. Strain, Pick, and chop.

Use the broth in lieu of cider for the stewing.

Is the rutabaga cubed or mashed in the pastie?

Cubed.

In the ones that I've had, they were cubed.
Karl

You folks are an inspiration! I've gotta try this now, except that after a thorough review of my freezer, the only venison in residence is elk, and I'm down to just ground and roasts. Roasted shanks would be arguably perfect.

Depends.

Industrial producers, mash potato and rutabaga into sort of a smooth consistency, and then inject it into the piecrust.

It’s efficient.
It’s consistent. it’s easily measured.
You can make millions of pasties for regional distribution, and they’re all identical.

Unfortunately, they tend to look just like those burritos you find in the gas station dairy case.

That’s not a pasty.

Traditional pasty’s have chunky filling with no gravy, identified by the braid of their crust.

Mines are cold dirty and wet, lunch pails kept the pasty clean dry and warm. A pasty’s owner/producer were identified by their crust braid down in the mine.
(Family lore, fwiw)

Makes sense. It's the root vegies that I was unclear about. They are critical for proper flavor and I was never clear about what and how they were prepared.

The UP is a harsh environment.
Whatever you stored you could eat in Mar, Apr, and May.
Rutabaga have a post-apocalyptic lifespan due to their density, cold hardiness, and waxy (natural pectin) outer skin.I

Next thing you know, someone will ask a bout ramps as a mosquito deterrent.

Just found this in a cookbook published in 1941. Imgur is giving me some trouble today...

I look for ramps while turkey hunting in the spring... delicious!!


I don't use mace in my mincemeat recipe anymore. Last time I tried using it it sprayed back in my face when I tried to fill a teaspoon with the nasty stuff....

A spray of mace in the face-- sure ain't like Old Spice, is it-Deano?? And being a student of both Latin and the Roman Empire, seems like a mace was a rather nasty club like weapon-- 1941- wonder what spice Co. sold that item, and what it did to enhance the flavor of those minces??

Derived from the nutmeg tree found in warm climates, mace is the bright red, lace-like covering of the nutmeg seed shell. Mace is primarily found in ground form because it is much easier to use than the whole form, which can be difficult to crush. Because they are produced from the same tree, mace and nutmeg feature very similar flavor profiles, although mace is more pungent. Mace is often described as tasting like a combination of cinnamon and black pepper due to its spicy-sweetness. It is commonly used in baking, but works well in a variety of recipes ranging from sweet to savory.

Yet another variant, British I believe...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i9qs7CLeQQ

Enjoying the discussion about mincemeat and learning far more than I thought possible.

Re: mace. Just try finding some in your local supermarket. I hit 3 this afternoon looking for some and came up empty. 73 kinds of chicken rubs and no mace.

Re: oatmeal. One of my favorite things to do with oatmeal (and farina, too) is to chop up a couple strips of candied orange peel and maybe some raisins and throw that in. Makes a world of difference, turning a good breakfast into a great one. I candy my own orange peels, so nothing from the fruit goes to waste.
I do something similar with yams for Thanksgiving dinner. Start off making caramel from white sugar in the saucepan, then add the canned yams and their syrup, then add some chopped candied orange peel, raisins and slices of orange.

But for the real stick to the ribs winter breakfast, there are plum dumplings. Make them around Labor Day when the prune plums come in, then freeze them. Come winter, microwave one or two and add a little cream. Stay warm from the inside out, all day.

Lloyd thanks for that 'Tube link.
Great little piece

Tinker: You're welcome. It was interesting for me to note that the chef in that one couldn't eat his final production as he, like me, is gluten intolerant.

FWIW, you can add nuts and nut oil in lieu of suet.
It’s no longer a storage mechanism as much as a holiday treat.
I like chopped walnuts in it.

I noticed that.
I'd read quite a bit about using acorn for flour.
I don't recall if it would be suitable for pie crust, but it's worth a look.

We mill flour here. Have you tried sourcing non-gmo organic wheat and milling your own flour? I've heard that some gluten intolerant folks have found that they can do fine, without bad reactions, with clean non-gmo wheat flour.

I have heard that European versions of non-GMO wheat and other grains might be tolerable for my now badly-damaged gut, but...once bitten and twice shy is now my operating model. Heck, I'm still battling weight issues the minute I slack-off on my exercise regimen so... I'm clearly not perishing. I'm also blessed in that my wife loves to bake and prepare seemingly-endless wholesome meals from scratch. Namaste, King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill produce some wonderful flour options, and for almost any application. I really only struggle when I'm on the road working, and I have learned to work-around on that one as well.

This one looks like a winner! We were making our own citron yesterday to do this pie, and frankly...it doesn't taste so-good (at least to me). This recipe doesn't seem to require that step.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72NqgvytZGQ

The only suggestion my wife would add would be to egg-wash the crust for more browning. I would have to use ground elk (or deer, if I had it) for the beef, and Baby Bourbon as a substitute for the Jim Beam.

I’ve never quite warmed up to minced meat pie to go out looking for it on purpose, but I’ll say a quick thanks to Stan. We tried a variation on his grits, and will have them again. Good stuff, and whoever’s turn it is for hunting camp cook could whip up a batch easy.

craigd: I frankly can't stand the candy/meatless versions, but I'm always on the lookout for new venison dishes, especially the traditional ones.

Citron is supposed to be bitter. Peels are bitter, but hold a lot of citrus oil, that's why they get candied.
Or, you add sugar to the recipe.

That guy doesn't know what suet is or where it comes from.

FWIW, A solid tart apple holds it's shape and works better for me. Granny Smith, et al.

Bacon is commonly hickory smoked. You might not like it in a pie.

Some people grind it into their venison, some dont.

I'm glad you are having fun with this.
Try lard in your piecrust.
A couple tablespoons of vodka in place of some of the ice water will prevent gluten formation. Old trick.

ClapperZapper: I have some rendered bear grease that I hear is great for baking and is used interchangeably for lard. Is that so?

I don't think so.
But I'm not a bear guy.

Suet is a fine grained light weight fat from around the kidneys, along the back bone, in the abdominal cavity. Not tallow, not waxy. Hence it's use.

I think the you tube guy ate venison fat and didn't understand what he ate.
Historically, bear grease was a good lubricant for axles and muzzleloader patches, and used as a waterproofing agent.

Never heard of anyone doing anything edible with it, just smearing it on their boots.

Glad you liked them, Craig. How did you fix them? I'm always interested in variations.

SRH

Lloyd3,

Concerning rendered bear grease, my grandmother said that rendered bear fat was the best for baking pastries, pie crusts, donuts, etc. She'd insist on getting the fat from any bear we managed to kill and would render it for her baking needs.

I couldn't tell the difference with any of her baked goods as to what she used; bear grease, lard, butter or oil...it all tasted good to me as a kid!

Try it!
You only need 1/3 of a cup for a crust.

I freeze the fat, then grate it, fwiw.

Post a pic.

I hadn’t had grits for quite a while, we ended up with a thing of ‘quick’ grits. So, I figured it might not work out too well if it was left a couple of hours in a slow cooker. Used stuff on hand, some decent chicken stock, picked up a can of rotel, a couple of good sized hand grabs of cheese, and browned breakfast sausage instead of bacon.

The batch fit into one of those 8x8 baking pans and we ran it at 350* for about a half hour. It’s really good comfort food. The rotel gave it a little tangyness, next time I’m thinking about trying some of my wife’s homemade salsa. It’s not overly hot, but it’s all fresh ingredients. Maybe, we’ll try it with bacon, or maybe another butcher type fresh sausage. Thanks again.

If you want a little more heat there are varying degrees of Rotel as far a "heat" goes. The 5 minute grits will do fine in a slow cooker, like a crockpot. No worries.

A friend of mine tried a variation on it, and raved about it. He cooks pork hams in a slow cooker and saves the liquid. He substituted the ham juices for the chicken stock and said it was over the top.

SRH

Craig,
For a little more heat you could also substitute a 14 1/2 oz can of "house brand"( whatever store you use) diced tom./w peppers, instead of the 10 oz can of Rotel.
Mike