Before I tell you the recipe for this awesome pulled venison shoulder I just want to express how being able to hunt and harvest my own meat is something that is hugely important to me. I love the fact that I am taking responsibility for eating meat from killing to butchering to cooking and it is good a feeling to know that I am not always letting someone else do my dirty work.

The venison we eat is local as can be, it lives it’s life free and is killed humanely to provide my family with delicious and versatile meat. In most cases venison is better than anything you can buy at a super market.

I am hugely thankful to the property owner who lets me hunt deer on his place and extremely fortunate to be able to do so only 5 minutes from home.

The Recipe

This easy recipe can be made with a slow cooker, smoker or a combination of the two. It is hugely versatile in both the dishes you can create with it and the meat you use. The recipe will work with pork, beef or lamb if you’re buying from the shops or goat or wild boar if you’re harvesting your own meat.

The pulled venison is delicious on our home made Outback Steakhouse Rolls served with coleslaw or kaleslaw. It is also awesome to have in flour tortillas with pico de Gallo, smashed avocado and chipotle aioli.

If you make this please send us pics or tag us on Instagram

Ingredients:

Shoulder of venison (fallow in this case) approx 2-3kgs

400g of diced tomatoes (canned or fresh)

500ml Chicken stock

1 sliced white or brown onion

1/2 tsp Cumin

1 tsp Paprika

1 tsp Chili powder (or to taste)

1-2 tsp of garlic powder or 1-2 cloves of fresh garlic to taste

1 tbsp Brown sugar

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Pepper

150ml of Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce

Method 2 (Slow Cooker Style):

Combine the stock, tomatoes, spices and half the BBQ sauce in the slow cooker, stir and turn on to low to heat before the next step.

If using the shoulder and foreleg remove the foreleg from the shoulder so it will fit in the slow cooker.

Brown the shoulder and foreleg on a hot cast iron pan or on a BBQ if the shoulder is too big for your pan.

Place in the slow cooker with lid on on low for at least 6 hours. I have left the meat in for up to 10 hours and that is the beauty of using a slow cooker. You want the meat to be fall off the bone tender so you need to be patient and prepared for this low and slow style of cooking.

When the meat is done remove from the slow cooker and place in a baking tray. Make sure you have a good look around in the slow cooker as there may be chunks of meat that have fallen off.

Remove the shoulder blade and foreleg bone which should easily slide out if they didn’t fall off when you moved the meat.

Now with 2 forks start to pull the venison a park so you get long fibres and small chunks. When this is complete mix in the rest of the BBQ sauce so it covers the meat. I also like to put a tablespoon or two of the cooking juices in to get the meat nice and juicy. This is a great time to sample your hard work and add in more sauce, cooking juicy or some spices to suit your tastes. Just make sure to mix it in.

Method 2 (Smoker style)

If you have a smoker you can utilise this to give a gorgeous smoky taste to your pulled venison. You can either use your smoker for part or all of the cook.

Rather than combine the spice with the stock and canned tomatoes you can combine all the spices and sugar and make a rub.

Cover the meat in a mild mustard such as an American style mustard and coat the meat with 2/3rds of the spice mix on all sides.

Set your smoker to 95c-115c and place meat in a baking tray and add your smoking wood (I like cherry wood) and let smoke for an hour and a half uncovered.

Once this is done add your stock, tomatoes, onion and remaining spices and sauce to the tray and cover in foil and cook for another 4-5 hours.

The alternative to this is to remove the meat from the smoker and place the meat (and it’s pan juices) and the rest of the ingredients in a slow cooker for the rest of the time. This is an easy way to ensure temperature control whilst having the benefits of the smoky flavour as the smoke flavour is mostly imparted at the beginning of the cook.

Then pull the meat adding in the bbq sauce and cooking juices to taste as per the instructions in the slow cooker method above.

So there you have it, 2 easy and delicious ways to cook pulled venison (or most other meats). Serve this on home made buns with kaleslaw or tortillas with pico de Gallo and smashed avo or any other way you wish to serve this delicious meat.

You can also freeze in portions for delicious meals well into the future.

We hope you enjoyed this simple and tasty recipe!