Caribou - It's What's for Dinner

Please note: this image came from the
website backcountrytaxidermy.com

A few weeks ago, a friend's husband gave me some caribou he had shot. It's been living in my freezer ever since...waiting...

Please note the duct tape.

This week I finally bit the bullet and tossed it in the fridge to defrost. Determined NOT to work on my day off (the novelty!), I began researching caribou recipes. Shockingly, my current cookbook collection doesn't quite cover game recipes (Mark Bittman, you have failed me - "How to Cook Everything"? Yeah, right. Try "How to Cook Everything You Can't Buy in Bush Alaska")

Next stop - my favorite internet recipe resource - epicurious. A search for caribou yielded one recipe: Rockin' Moroccan Stew...a vegetarian recipe. Huh?!? A search of the page revealed that the last line of the recipe reads, "Make sure you have a few camels standing nearby to add some North African ambience. A moose or caribou will do."

NOT helpful. Also - since when are there moose in North Africa?

Next try: a phone call to a friend who has eaten all kinds of crazy foods. He's eaten moose! He's lived in Maine! He MUST know how to cook caribou!

Not so.

Finally, in desperation, I turned to my friend Google. I found lots of websites discussing proper butchering and curing of "bou" meat. (Look at me using the lingo!)

Marinading.

After sifting through websites that purported to be helpful ("8 Tips for Cooking Game Meat" included helpful hints like #2 "Drink more," #5 "Use expensive cookware," and my favorite, #8 "Accompany everything with bacon jalopeno macaroni and cheese.") I wound up at a website called CDKitchen with a very simple roast caribou recipe. Apparently marinade is key.

Marinade, man!

Marinade.

After a night of marinading, I smothered it in sauce and roasted it at a low temperature. Combined with some yummy split pea soup and mashed potatoes (fried in bacon grease...) it was a feast, AK style!

Please ignore the blackened goo on the bottom.
Turns out I need a real roasting pan.

leftover mashed potatoes

...my next-door neighbor saying, "MMM!"