Sweet-Bacon Wrapped Venison Tenderlion

My husband is great hunter. We harvest a few deer each year to refill our meat stock. We trade meat with neighbors to keep a variety in our stock. I love Venison; it is so versatile and is the red meat of choice in our home. I hear folks say all the time, they don't like venison because of the gameness. It's all about how the meat is prepared. Sure you can soak the meat in water or milk but if you prepare the meat properly, you won't have to go through the soaking process.

My husband has his own method of preparing the deer meat before packaging. As with any other avid hunter, each have their own "best" practice that they have learned from their fathers or grandfathers. For mine; he will clean the meat and put it on salt ice for about 10 days before he cuts and packages the meat.  We use a 7 day cooler to pack the meat in ice and salt. The salt pulls the blood out of the meat and in my opinion removes the "gamey" taste.  We check the meat every day and drain and add ice as needed. Then clean all the silver skin away from the meat and cut to our family protons and freeze.

Our Christmas Eve catch yielded Tenderloin, Steaks, Stew meat and Flanks. We use all of the meat, including the heart. Yes, we keep the heart and eat it. We cook the heart on thanksgiving with some onions and green peppers. On Christmas we use the sweet meat (tenderloin) for breakfast biscuits.

Back to the recipe....this recipe is a wonderful on Port as well. I've done it with a large pork tenderloin without the bacon or with. It's a very simple recipe and I bet most folks; like me have all the ingredients in the pantry at any time.

Sweet Bacon wrapped Venison Tenderloin

• 1 1/2 LB of Venison Tenderloin
• 1/2 LB sliced bacon 
• 1 Cup Soy Sauce (not the low sodium)
• 1/2 C Brown Sugar (use as much brown sugar as you like)
• 1 t Cumin
• 1 t Garlic powder
• 1 t black pepper (want a little kick; use red pepper flakes)

In a bowl, mix the Soy sauce, sugar and spices with a whisk till sugar is mostly dissolved. Pour over tenderloins and marinade for 3 hours or over night.

Remove tenderloins from marinade; don't discard the marinade! Wrap the them with bacon. Secure with toothpicks.

Heat your grill to med-high heat. Then baste with the marinade through out the cooking process. We like our meat on the med rare side so cook for 25 minutes, flipping as needed to evenly cook the bacon. Basting the with marinade will allow the bacon to crisp up and have a nice sweet flavor. YUM!

Note: Cook for approximately 35 min for medium/well done meat.

With our meal, i harvested the last of my carrots from the garden.

Clean up the carrots and trim the "hairs" as I call them. Slice them and put them in a sauce pan.

Simmer with water, 1 T of butter and 1 T of brown sugar until they are tender. Very simple yet very tasty. Enjoy!