Wild game cooking is an elusive art. But the craft can be honed through routine and diligent practice, access to good instruction, and of course — some meat in the freezer. While most wild game cookbooks are painfully dated and short on details. Lucky for modern hunters, there has been an uprising of serious wild game cheffing in the past decade or so. We’ve collected a strong cast of new classics and suggested a few actual classics to help you start and grow your wild game cooking skillset. Bon appetit.
Best Wild Game Cooking Resources
There are countless wild game cooks in the world who are making tasty dishes and recipes, even if their reputation goes no farther than the neighborhood barbecue. The four cooks below are not only accomplished wild game cooks, but they also communicate their work in a way that is relevant, crisp, entertaining, and real. Think of their work as a baseline for your own wild game cooking adventures — then find your own inspiration and jumping-off points.
Honest-food.net
Hank Shaw has built a small empire of cookbooks, articles, and (a few) videos on how to cook almost anything wild. He has some background in professional cooking, so his recipes can be somewhat specific and fussy for the casual cook. But, this level of detail is a godsend for cooks looking to perfect salt ratios in smoked fish, make great wild game charcuterie, or other advanced techniques. Hank has done the legwork on these complicated tasks so that modern American hunters can prove to the world that wild game is delicious.
Meateater.com/cook
Steven Rinella is known for his television show Meateater, which has become an outdoors industry behemoth of sort in the past few years. Tons of articles on wild game cooking, from Rinella and a handful of other star contributors.
Jesse Griffiths, Chef
Hailing from Texas, Jesse Griffiths is a passionate hunter, fisherman, and chef. He runs a full-time restaurant in Austin and has steadily pushed American wild game cookery forward over the past decade or so. He doesn’t have a sole website, but Google him to find his books, podcast appearances, interviews, and a hunting and wild game cooking school.
Danielle Prewett, Wild & Whole (now part of Meateater)
Also from Texas, but plenty relevant for us Oregon folk, Danielle Prewett hunts, cooks, forages, and shares polished recipes and stories. Her site recently combined with the Meateater project.
Videos
The Best Start: Wild Game Breakfast Cooking Special — Steven Rinella, Meateater
La Bonne Cuisine de Madame St. Agne
Okay, so here’s another antique French cookbook. We’ve included it because 1) it is full of wild game cooking with very accurate descriptions and measurements and 2) this is the book that inspired the first cooks at Chez Panisse, who were aiming for a working-class French vibe. No fancy sauces or garnishes, but tons of stews, roasts, preserved things, and flavor. Somewhat eccentric, but a hidden gem.