Bison

Time to talk buffalo, and I don’t mean the city in New York.  Not knocking the Sabres fans out there, but we’re going to be talking about the tasty offering that’s made quite the resurgence in the past few years.

Actually, lets dispense with the term “buffalo” for the moment. That technically only applies to the asian water-buffalo. I’m sure its tasty itself, but we’re dealing with the North American Bison here, so let us work with the name given.

Here in western Canada, at least, there’s been a lot more bison on offer. We’ve seen our share of fad food-production around here, but bison seems to be sticking around.

Bison is noted to be a rather nutritious meat, and its low in fat. Very low in fat, actually. Where beef is 8.09 grams of fat per 100 grams of cooked flesh, bison is 2.42 grams. Its also a good source of Iron, B12, B6, Niacin, etc. (source: www.canadianbison.ca )

With this in mind, I set forth to the Calgary farmer’s market last friday to secure some Bison, in order to do up a bit of a meal.  Had a quick chat with the good people at the Valta Bison vendor, and selected a roast for the evening’s experiment. Please note, I am not a professional chef. I’m not even an unprofessional chef. I prefer to call this sort of thing “hacking my meal”.

Experiment:

Slow-cooked Bison Roast with a Shiraz and Bleu Cheese reduction

My friend Kyle brought over a bottle of shiraz some time ago, and I had opened it for a drink and to cook some spaghetti sauce with previously. Even with a shot of inert gas, no wine stays good forever, so it was time to use it or lose it!

Please forgive the photos of the kitchen in my utilitarian hovel.

Lets start off with the raw meat itself:

This here roast was a little over a kilogram, (1 kg=2.2lbs). There’s a thin layer of fat on one side, but don’t count on much from that while cooking.

Not much on its own, and while bison is rather flavourful as a meat, this baby’s going into the slow cooker for several hours. Its going to need some company.

First off, a bit of olive oil was rubbed over the roast. I mentioned before the meat is lean. A little oil isn’t going to hurt this.

I mixed together 3 teaspoons of ground sage, a teaspoon of ground black pepper, half a teaspoon of salt, and a teaspoon of Mrs Dash seasoning. (I try not to cook with salt TOO much), and promptly rubbed the mixture on to the roast.

Doesn’t exactly look appetizing, does it? That’s what our friend the slow cooker is for though. I put a little water in the bottom of the slow cooker (just enough to cover the bottom), along with a little beef bouillon for flavour. The slow-cooker was set to low. With bison, this is very important. It does not handle high heat very well at all (with the exception of a quick searing of bison steaks on the grill, you’ll see something from me on that this summer).

Fast foward several hours, and the bison was nearing completion. Bison should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160F for “well done”, which is what I did. Medium rare is 145F. As I live with someone who has significant food safety concerns, “well done” tends to be the norm for shared dinners.

Looks a lot better than it did before! Note the bleu cheese in preparation for the reduction coming up, and of course a glass of wine for the hacker.

Time to get on with the reduction part of the dinner. Normally, with a traditional oven-roast, I’d deglaze the pan and its drippings with the wine, and let it simmer down and reduce. Unfortunately, slow cookers do not make deglazing the pan easy, so I cheated. As reductions aren’t something everyone learns in home-ec class, I’m going to throw a few extra pictures in here. Click any picture to enlarge it.

First, a few well-sized garlic cloves get chopped fine, and set to saute with a bit of olive oil. Let the garlic brown up a bit, like so:

Next up: Time for the wine!

Reduce the heat immediately after adding the wine, to simmer. Give it a stir occasionally as well.

Here’s the tricky part: How much reducing is right for the reduction? I’ve read anywhere from a third to a half, to two thirds for specific applications. I’m going with half. Its truly just something you’ll have to keep an eye on for.

Looks about right to me! Lets get a couple tablespoons of butter into that, keeping it on low heat. The butter gives it a bit of a creamier taste (along with the eventual cheese) and takes a bit of the edge off the wine.

Finally, I cubed up a couple ounces of a nice looking danish bleu cheese I bought from Sylvan Star Cheese (also at the Calgary Farmer’s Market) and added it in as the last step.

I stirred it around a bit, and let the cheese soften and crumble some, but not melt completely. I wanted a bit of a texture differential in the sauce.

Lets get back to that bison for a moment, its been standing there long enough, I would think!

Notice something? Almost no marbling at all. This hammers home yet again the whole “lean bison” concept.

I’d done up some mashed potatoes, and some roasted carrots to go with the meal. In the end, and with absolute recognition that I know nothing about presentation, it ended up like this:

So how did it taste?

If you bite into bison expecting it to taste like beef, you’ll be a bit surprised. The texture is indeed like beef, but the taste is a little stronger, a little sharper. “Gamey” is too strong a word to use, but there are notable differences. The shiraz reduction complemented the sharper taste of the bison quite well, with the bleu cheese mellowing out each mouthful in a manner quite satisfactory. My girlfriend Juli found the taste to be quite rich, but she did say the sauce complemented the bison.

I found the sauce to be pretty tasty on the mashed spuds as well, but I definitely love strong flavours. All in all, I’m willing to declare the experiment a success, and I’ll definitely be trying this one again. I might try it with a sweeter wine than the shiraz, just to see how that changes the end result.

Oh, and the bison itself? The leftovers were sliced thinly and served in sandwiches as 5-grain-and-pumpkin seed bread with some grainy mustard. I even caught Juli nomming on some of the leftovers straight from the fridge. If you have bison available in your market, I think you’ll find it to be a worthwhile addition to your repertoire.