Food. Special food, southern food, Mexican, TexMex, Chinese, German, Scandinavian… What about comfort food, fast food, deep fried, pan fried, baked and even air fried – if that can really be a thing?

How about natural foods, organic…? Can food be rewarding just as a food? Certainly, a well-executed recipe finished to perfection can be rewarding for the cook. Can the food itself be rewarding? I say you betcha! What if it corn or carrots or potatoes from a garden you planted and watered and weeded for four months? Maybe it’s that treasured Morrell mushroom you searched the swamps for maybe some asparagus left over from an old homestead in the river bottom. 

OK, how about some pure protein? Nothing more pure than that deer or elk you hunted and took with a great shot. You field dress it quickly keep it cool, sure to drain all the blood so it doesn’t put a gamey taste to the meat. Packed in ice for the trip home to the freezer. But wait, you have to butcher and package and store the treasured meat. Are you doing steaks and chops or roasts or maybe it’s all into ground meat for chili and spaghetti sauce and tacos and enchiladas?

Ok now let’s say you love to hunt, don’t mind the field dressing and even are ok with the butchering. However, you don’t find the taste of game meat all that appealing. You have a conscience and feel morally obligated to eat what you take, not just pass it along to others. Well in that case you hope you are a good cook and willing to do anything to like your harvest. 

You start to play with seasoings and cooking style and the whole process. You know what kind of you like so you start there. I like beef steak, So I try it like a well-prepared steak, nope! Still too gamey for my taste. Add extra salt and pepper, a little help bot still nope. Try barbeque sauce and grilling the steak. Still, nope. I hear about soaking the meat in butter milk, nope, 7up, nope Dr. Pepper, nope. In fact that feels like being on the wrong track. Then I remember a marinated fillet I had when I was much younger. So I tried a powder packet of teriyaki marinade. Oh, that seems to be the right direction. I tried marinade for an hour, two hours, four hours, overnight and finally found out at least 24 hours in the marinade made the game meat quite tasty and bearable to eat. However, it still feels like it could have improvement. So instead of pan frying or BBQ, I try deep frying in oil. OK, now that’s good enough it no longer is in the tolerable category. Now it’s actually pretty good. So I’m thinking I like chicken fried steak so let’s see what happens when I do that. It’s amazing and literally something most of my family and friends try it and rave how good. But could it be better… 

When I do the steaks it seems I still can taste the gamey in the thicker parts of the meat. Since I don’t like the gamey part and my whole goal is to like my game, I decide to take my last shot at completely eliminating the gamey taste. 

FINGER STEAKS!

Yup I take the steak I have been using and cut them into finger steaks. ¾ inch cuts and whatever length the steak is wide. I marinade them in a zip lock in the fridge for at least 24 hours in my own concoction of a marinade. 

Start with a bottle of Lowry’s Teriyaki marinade, mix with about a quarter cup of Worcestershire sauce, about a quarter cup of A1 sauce and at least a tablespoon of garlic powder. Throw all the cut finger steaks into the bag and into the fridge, flipping it every once in a while, to make sure all the meat is fully exposed to the marinade. 

Prepare the dredge, I started with flour years ago then found out I was allergic to gluten so now I use crushed cheerios or honey nut cherrios. The honey nut dredge is quite sweet and you will literally have to guard the fingers from the kids. They love em. In the dredge, shake in to your taste, garlic powder, not salt it gets too salty, and if you like some diced or chopped onion bits to your taste, then add black pepper to taste. I like a lot of black pepper and like to use fresh cracked. 

Note: do not add salt until you taste it. This recipe has a lot of salt in it. 

Now for the cooking, Use a deep fryer. Temp at least 450. Pay attention and don’t overfill the fryer. Needs to be hot. Olive oil works really well but by far the best result and taste is with beef tallow. 

A couple little pro-tip advisos… Don’t try this with beef. It literally will turn it too doctored up and it will taste like a mistake. 

Please, if you have a recipe you have worked on for a long time. Send it to us. Who knows maybe we will try it or maybe sometime in the future we may produce a game recipe cookbook.

Internationally famous? Gotta laugh. Ok well maybe im grasping a bit but I did receive rave reviews for my finger steak recipe from a hunter/client out of Canada. So technically internationally famous. 

Full disclosure. My kids get to choose their birthday meal. Often, they chose my finger steaks. Most of the time, the first three or four plates full are gone before I’m even finished cooking them.