I'm curious about moose.

[Quick Draw McGraw]

Is it tasty? Are moose burgers good?

[mart]

We eat quite a bit of moose. A bull in full rut is not so good but our season ends before the rut really gets going full swing.

My wife uses a lot of moose burger. We have two college kids from our church living with us and the supply is dwindling fast. Moose burger, roasts, steaks and stew meat is excellent. I add 15% beef sit when I grind it. My wife, the kids, and I all put in for cow tags for next year.

[sixshot]

Moose meat is superb if taken at the right time & taken care of once it's on the ground just like any other animal. If you get it all dirty or don't cool it out right you won't end up with a quality piece of meat.
,
Our season here in Idaho runs about 3 months if you draw a tag & they are once in a life time. You can take one bull & you can also take a cow. My advice after being in on quite a few of them is don't take one early in the season (September) they are huge animals & need another month to get the fat on & you will end up with a much better piece of meat. We did take one with the bow in September & it was the worst one of all that we've ever taken, all the others have been great.

Get that chest cavity opened up & cooled as quickly as possible & as mentioned keep the meat clean & you will find it's as good as beef & some folks will tell you it's better. Taken during the rut an old bull can be pretty tough to eat & you might end up canning most of the meat to be able to eat it, timing is important!

Cut up a moose just as you would a beef, add beef suet to the burger meat that you grind & it's amazing & very filling. As always moose meat & any other wild game is lean, cook it rare to medium rare with the fat trimmed off & you will have many great meals, over cooked & it's going to be TOUGH!

Dick

[bradshaw]

Moose properly cared for and aged is fantastic. Each species of venison is unique. Ernest Hemingway put elk at the top of the meat pole, above moose. For some years I agreed, but it is not true. Moose is incredible. Unlike beef animals, which derive much flavor from fat, the flavor of deer meat comes straight from the muscle itself. Fat doesn’t marble deer muscle as it does beef and pigs. Which is a good thing, since deer fat is unpalatable to humans. People in desperate times eat venison fat, and smoking makes it more palatable. Raw fat from a whitetail, rubbed into skin cracked in freezing weather, heals the wounds, which commercial products do not.

I see the meat of deer species completely separate from the beef species. Red meat is meant to be eaten RED, certainly the backstraps, rump, tenderloins, and thigh muscle. Shoulder muscle and some neck muscle may be eaten rare when tenderized with a club.
David Bradshaw

[Paden]

Dec 21, 2017 22:07:40 GMT -5 Quick Draw McGraw said:

Is it tasty? Are moose burgers good?

Yes.

Moose is fabulous. Typically very, very, very lean, and needs to be cooked accordingly! Our staple game animal here. Nothing wrong with moose fat, when you're lucky enough to harvest an animal with any appreciable fat, tho it does go rancid easily, and acquires unpleasant flavors if poorly cared for in the field! A nice fat late fall cow harvested in the hills while heading for the lowlands in search of a boyfriend is not to be looked down upon. IMHO, burger is an abomination, a sacrilege, regardless of the animal in question (if you're one of those guys who grinds an entire animal into 900 pounds of burger, don't even talk to me. I don't care what your justification is). If you're hell bent on some moose burger, add some grape seed oil, olive oil, or good organically grown pork fat to aid cohesiveness. My priority when butchering: steaks, to the greatest extent possible; then roasts; then for the scraps which need to be ground: breakfast or Italian sausage (with 1/4 to 1/3 added locally grown organic pork shoulder). The few (and there damn well better be few!) remaining scraps deemed unfit for human consumption are cooked enough to kill parasites and frozen in single serving portions for the dogs. Additional note: leaving the heart or tongue in the field should be a punishable crime!

[Snyd]

Moose is great! I've got a freezer full. I've eaten at least 20 of 'em over the past 25 years. It's more of a coarse grain meat where as elk is a fine grain meat. But surprisingly tender. Flavor is mild compared to Montana Whitetails and Mulies I was raised on. Moose is very high in water and extremely low in fat. Depending on what you read it has 30-50% more protein than beef. Cooking steaks they go from medium rare to dry in about 30 seconds. Which means cooking roasts can be tricky. A big roast can shrivel up to a small dry hunk of something that resembled a roast at one time. I butcher my own and cut the steaks thick. We LOVE the burger. Moose burgers are the best! I add a little moose fat to it to help hold burgers together for the barbecue and I make em thick. No way I'm puttin beef suet or anything else in my moose! Moose fat is not strong or gamey. It's rich and tasty. No sausage, etc. for us. Just plain 'ol Moose! Moose also keeps well in the freezer. I've eaten 2 year old moose with no freezer burn. I think it's the moisture. Well... and the wifey's great wrapping skill!

I'm a meat hunter and shoot the first legal one I see. Which is any bull. A 2 year old forked horn is fine by me but I prefer the 3 year olds. Half again as much meat, not as big as a 5+ year olds, easier to handle alone and tender. I've killed 5 of them by myself. I must say though. I've never had a bad moose. Including the 50 and 69incher we've got over the years. They aren't really ruttin until October, we kill em between Sept 1-20.

Getting it skinned, quarters off and in bags clean (NO HAIR!) and cooled makes all the difference. I do the gutless method. Here's a 2yo fork I got a few years back. A few hundred pounds gooood eatin!







I grind about 20lbs at a time...


If we can get it out in 4 quarters and all the bone we can cut T-Bones on my buddies meat saw! The best!

[whitworth]

It's delicious! Here's my Canadian moose at the processor!

[ryan]

Thawing some out for burgers right now, it's my favorite!

[bula]

Suddenly, I'm hungry.

[jfs]

One of the tastiest  dinners I`ve had took place in an Alaskan cook tent with mashed potatoes and gravy, canned string beans and moose meat..... man O man that was good.....

[alukban]

I have never had moose but have read that the native americans prized it over deer, any day.

I kinda recall an old saw about slower moving animals being more tender and tasty

[sixshot]

I love elk meat but moose is better!

Dick

[2 Dogs]

For me, It’s a dead heat with my Moms chicken fried butterflied venison blackstrap and Mark Hargrove’s grilled Elk. I could eat either till I burst. No Moose here in S Texas that I know of. The next best game meat we have is Nilgai which again properly prepared is excellent. Having had Sixshots fixin’s Moose is definitely on my bucket list!

[bula]

The bigger the critter, the bigger the steak ! I'm good for 2lbs, easy. Burp. I've only gotten to try moose at game dinners. It left me hungry for more. I can get elk most anytime, there is a an elk ranch around the hill from our hunting camp with a help your self, leave money in the bucket, set-up. A big freezer on their front porch. 

[jsh]

Snyd, leaving the bone in I take it does not impart bad taste from the marrow?

Made some chops once from a white tail. They were picture perfect, I mean just beautiful cuts. Packaged up and frozen for later use, a month later I got them out and they stunk to high heaven. Went ahead and tried to cook them, no better. All of the boned meat from that critter was fine. First and last time I left the bone in on venison.
Jeff