The Food and Cooking of Sweden by Anna Mosesson has provided me with the recipes and ideas for curing salmon into gravlax, and now in process, curing venison. It is a wonderful book to look at, and I have realized we eat sort of “Scandinavianish” this time of year. Meat, potatoes, greens.
So this is how to cure a hind leg muscle from a deer:
Prepare your cure: equal parts salt and sugar, some freshly ground pepper, fresh thyme (the deer are stealing it from the garden now anyway).
Prepare the muscle by removing the fell, connective tissue, etc. There is always somebody around here who wants to help with this job.
On aluminum foil, put down a layer of cure and spice, the meat, and then use the rest of the cure to cover the meat. Enclose meat in the foil and place in a nonreactive container in the fridge or cold porch. Mine went into a glass casserole dish. Quite a bit of liquid will be pulled from the meat over the next two days.
Turn it over every 12 hours if you remember.
