Venison Stew

I’m cleaning out my freezer, so I can order my next pig, so I finally got around to making venison stew from the venison I helped cousin Don cut up last fall. The resulting dish turned out to be pretty similar to my oxtail stew recipe, with a few differences.

1. I had about two pounds of venison, since it was boneless.
2. I used a cup of red wine (instead of white) to marinate the venison overnight, along with one sliced onion, a couple of bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, crushed garlic, a bit of olive oil, and lots of ground pepper.
3. After browning the meat, I deglazed the pan with the red wine marinade and tossed out the vegetables. Then I browned an onion, two carrots and celery in about 2 Tb of olive oil.
4. I used red wine vinegar, eliminated the orange peel and brown sugar, and added about 2 Tb of tomato paste.
5. In addition to the marinade wine, I added about 1½ cups of venison stock, another ½ cup of red wine and the mushroom soaking liquid to cook the stew. It took about two hours.

I served the venison stew with a mixture of mashed potato and mashed celery root—I cooked them together, which worked out fine (though others suggested different pots), and Tim mashed them with butter and half and half, but olive oil would work too. I thought about adding some more mushrooms and will probably do so when we eat the leftovers. It would also be great with polenta or wide egg noodles.