Grilled Venison Heart

Our niece has been living with us for the past several months while getting established in a new city, and this past weekend she moved her into her own apartment. Exciting times for her. She has waited quite a while to find the right place to finally set up her own pad. 

My sister in law came for the week to help her get moved in and together we spent the week shopping, setting up IKEA furniture (if it uses an allan key you know you are in trouble!), and creating some bookshelves out of crates. We also spent a significant amount of time and effort ‘hacking’ an IKEA sofa table, refinishing it and adding a shelf to create a rustic looking tv stand. Can you say #bluejob?

Somehow cooking up a deer heart also feels like it should be a blue job. Like hunter dude should be cooking it over an open fire on a stick.

Anyway, when my brother in law (hunter dude) and sister in law (master meat cutter and packer) were here in the fall, they left two venison hearts in the freezer as this is one of their daughter’s favourite cuts of meat. But since I am the chief cook and bottle washer, they were still in there, all nice and tidy and frozen solid. I have never prepared a venison heart, or any other kind of heart, and I had no idea what to do with it.

But, with limited space in the new apartment freezer, my sister in law and I decided to cook them up, getting them out of the way while feeding the bunch of us.

Having never cooked much in the way of organ meats I had no idea what to expect, though some Google research had assured me that heart is unlike other organs like liver or kidney. It is really a very lean muscle meat in a strange looking package. 

My sister in law usually roasts her venison heart whole but was game (‘scuze the pun) to try something different.

I had seen several recipes a few months back for grilling heart on the barbie but turned first to Hank Shaw as so far his is the best sight I’ve seen for great game meat recipes. He suggested a simple red wine vinegar and herb marinade, followed by a quick sear over high heat. Being lean, you don’t want to overcook this cut as like most game or grass fed meat it can go quickly from nice and tender to dry and overdone. 

While we set to work sanding the stupid (did I say that?) factory finish off of the IKEA table, the hearts were cut  into filets and left to marinate, by dinner time they were ready to be grilled on the barbecue. Hank didn’t give a lot of instruction on the cutting and trimming part so we just winged it, but we were pretty close to this video.

Steve likes his beef rare so as you can see one large cut was left pretty rare just for him. The rest was cooked to rare to med-rare.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The heart was not particularly ‘wobbly bit’ like to prepare, and the finished meat had a firm dense texture and was quite delicious. Paired with a nice Argentinean Malbec, it was a perfect end to a day of IKEA hacking. 

Grilled Venison Heart

Servings: 6

Author: www.miasdailydish.com

An easy recipe that is pretty similar to grilling a steak.

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Ingredients

• 1 or 2 venison hearts
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp natural liquid smoke
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp fresh ground pepper

Instructions

1. Remove any fat from the top of the venison heart with a fillet knife
2. Cut vertically through the largest ventricle down to the narrow tip of the heart
3. Open the heart
4. Cut the second largest ventricle in the same way and open again. You should begin to see that you have three flaps of meat, two thicker and one thinner.
5. Use this video as a guide for trimming all pieces (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfxLptyBQkY)
6. Mix all marinade ingredients in a bowl and add meat, allowing to marinate in the refrigerator for at least one hour and up to overnight
7. Grill meat over a hot barbecue as you would a med-rare steak. Do not over cook or the lack of fat in the meat will cause it to be dry. Removing your meat from the grill at 125° should give you a medium-rare meat once rested.
8. Slice and serve with horseradish or chimichurri sauce.

Recipe Notes

Adapted from Hunter, Gardener, Angler, Cook