Cooking Special: Smoked Meats With Eduardo Garcia | S6E13 | MeatEater

i have a bit of a confession to make when it comes to wild game cooking i'm kind of a professional thief i tend to look at what good regular chefs are doing and then i find a way to do something similar with wild game i prey heavily on people like this fella right here eduardo garcia a professional montana based chef hunter and fisherman today with his help we're going to whip up a whole pile of smoked meat i'm stephen runella to me hunting isn't only about the pursuit of an animal it's about who we are and what we're made of i live to hunt and hunt to live i am a meat eater on this meat eater cooking special i'm stealing largely from this fella right here eduardo garcia used to cook in the belly of a ship country boy hunter fisherman uh went to culinary school and turned professional chef 11 years on a yacht uh amazing traveled the world like a private chef cooking for families catching fish and cooking them yeah cooking for families and and the coolest part were crew members from all over the world so it was really playing with food getting paid to do it and getting paid to cook out of markets of the world i mean yeah like a kid and culinary kids dream come true that's when i first read your book the scavenger's guide was that right yeah it was yachting so the inspiration goes both ways but i mean i spent 11 years professional cooking and then came home i wanted to do more of this i wanted to cook for family with friends and then started montana mex which is a retail food brand it's a good name it's a good name and let me tell you it's been an eye opener and this is why i like doing this more because it's i do a lot of recipe testing but just getting down and cooking over a fire or smoking like the flavor of smoked food or grilling will always win my heart like every time smoking started out as a preservation technique yeah it inhibits bacterial growth which is probably just accidental to the primary thing is it kept bugs off right but then you taste it you're like oh you know what and it's good too yeah and it tastes amazing it was just like the practical matter of i want meat that's not rotten therefore it's probably gonna be brined and smoked eduardo and i are going to be making four main dishes smoked muskox tongue smoked mallard duck smoked mountain whitefish empanadas in a dry rubbed smoked whitetail roast but before we smoke anything we need to prep our meat one of the first steps we got to take here is we're going to work on the tongue now this is a musk ox tongue it's like such an under utilized underappreciated cut of meat in american culture i don't understand why well for hunting anyway i'm one of the only guys i know other than you i guess that that that take it out of the field that a want to hike it out and then b know what to do with it afterwards i only started pulling these out of animals within the last handful of years do you come through the back of the job come right here and cut here yes peel this back and then actually pull the tongue out so it's coming down yeah and then sever it okay that's what the hide hunters used to do like you know you always hear about the buffalo hunters the hyde hunters guys that shoot buffalo to get hides they would send barrels full of buffalo tongues packed and brined to the east used to be just utilized more than is now in the historic record there's cases where people have killed 5 000 buffalo in a group just to sell the tongues three bucks a piece everything else just stayed in the field yep because you could get it so fast that is unbelievably wasteful and just blows my mind yeah while this happens to be a muskox tongue you can do similar preparations with pretty much any tongue pulled out of any large north american game animal my preparation is based off of the cured beef tongue you find in the good jewish delis of large american cities where it's commonly eaten as a sandwich on rye bread so what i do with this this thing's already cured for here i use sugar salt black pepper coriander and fennel kind of mashed up a little prague salt or cure salt number one that gives it like a nice color and it increases the shelf life on it so it inhibits bacterial growth now to cure the tongue it's really simple you take this stuff here mix this stuff put it in a ziploc bag i put half of it down lay the tongue on there put the other half in there wrap the bag up and put it in my fridge and flip it every day and then you pull it out and rinse it the next step is trying to get this skin off to get the skin off you put the tongue in a pot of simmering water and let it go for a few hours then you drop the tongue in a bath of ice water to quickly cool it slice the outer skin and slowly gently peel that away once it's skinned it's set for the smoke okay so here we have a mallard duck one of the most hunted ducks in america and you'll notice he still has his skin on him if you skin your ducks stop you really leave skin on ducks not divers because the skin is real fishy and oily but on your puddle ducks okay your ducks that don't go underwater to feed leave the skin on them because it's great fat it just makes them so much better keeps from drying out tastes great leave it on there this bird here he's been gutted and he's been soaked for about 24 hours in a liquid brine half gallon of water some salt some sugar some maple syrup hearing salt pull them out we're going to let them sit and dry before going into the smoker a big sin you can make on duck is overcooking duck even in a smoker i still don't like to cook it anywhere beyond medium rare sure it just it turns gray and nasty i got friends that called ducks like i was like oh flying livers i'm like yes because you overcook them yeah to sinful levels as the number one food allergy is when someone has screwed up a dish yeah i don't like tomatoes or i don't like salmon well it was probably not fresh or their tomatoes were not in season you know and so same thing duck that tastes like liver will probably cook till well done it goes from being thing a to being thing b when it's overcooked so even though we're smoking it we're not gonna cook it until it's just this gray nasty mess okay here we've got a whitetail roast america's meat more now than at the time the columbus landed in the west indies no way oh yeah whitetail deer yeah they're doing good in my opinion two areas on a deer carcass yield cuts that are fail safe for grilling and hot smoking meaning any cook with even a basic skill level will be able to pull it off the loins which are very easy to work with and the upper cuts of the back hams before you start smoking the roast slice away any silver skin and fat bring the meat to room temp before cooking it and give it a good generous rub of salt and pepper or else a nice dry rub blend a favorite of mine is garlic powder black pepper onion powder dry mustard salt paprika and thanks to eduardo's recommendation pasilla negra pepper yeah that smells great right now you can like the the moisture from the mussel from from the meat itself just hydrating all those spices right now yeah oh for sure that's a crowd pleaser yeah like mother-in-law whatever you don't have a mother-in-law but if you did have one you could feed them that note to self for the future yes okay the next dish is going to start out with me giving a public service announcement on behalf of the mountain whitefish i don't need to give it to you because you know oh yeah i'm a believer man the rivers of the american west are full of fish that people dumped out of barrels into the rivers they have names such as rainbow trout brown trout they're in large measure of synthetic creation this guy has been here since the beginning of time as we know it the mountain whitefish people look down on it they talk about it being a trash fish man mountain cart yeah why does everyone hate this fish i have no idea dependable when you want to eat and you like to eat from your surroundings you can always catch a white fish someone put a gun to your head and said catch a fish you'd be like no problem it will be a white fish give me a heresie or beat head size 18. it's a gorgeous fish we used to brine them smoke them and make dip there's a consistency in rocky mountain whitefish that is like phenomenal yeah it's always flaky pure white meat and it takes to frying baking smoking super well my dad is a fisherman from mexico and fried fish tacos are our favorite so we're gonna smoke it flake the meat off and make empanadas first we need to brine the fish in water with salt black peppercorns bay leaves and chipotle peppers i've been playing with chipotles for a while so chipotle being smoked jalapeno yeah then it's dried out exactly yeah so i'll just throw a couple of these into this brine and i think what they're going to do is they're just they're going to double up on just the smoke that it'll get in the traeger but um also they're the heat will come out of these chipotles a little bit i mean empanadas latino food i got to have some spice to it so just a little bit you know add some flavor to it and the reason it's on the stovetop is i'm just gonna heat the water up a little bit just to get everything to dissolve just to help dissolve it yeah if you have so many brine ingredients in your water that you can't whisk it into warm water i feel like you probably have too much in there oh my gosh if you've whisked and you still have grain of any kind crystal and of any kind it's over salted over sugar slightly warm water even warm water out of a tap whisk it in you should be able to get everything dissolved inside there and key though if you are going to warm it at all cool it off before you throw your protein in because we're not poaching we're not cooking um oh yeah you'll mush if you put this fish in 100 degrees water it's going to not it's not going to do anything you just ruined it cool so i'm going to take our racky mountain whitefish throw them in this loaf pan get our brine here and we just want them fully covered we're going to throw them in the fridge we're going to let these guys sit overnight 24 hours before they go into the smoker oh yeah that's plenty man that'd be perfect [Music] all right we're gonna jump into making a bunch of sides that go with smoked foods you have a bunch of me want to make and they all have like a very international flair latino south of here yeah in any latino culture especially in mexico there's the condiments the toppings so you picture like all this stuff you just kind of lay it all out people do what they want with it yeah you're kind of more that festive it's all in the middle you've got your different toppings your cooked meats a pile of warm tortillas and just get down yep i'm with you so what's the first one you're gonna do pickled red onions so pickled red onions bring acidity into the fried empanadas yeah you get it on here there's a dry cast iron and it's just going to start blackening we're going to let it do its thing background task next thing i think we should get into rosehip chutney yeah rose hips grow all over this region and it's going to yield a chutney that's gonna be fruity and tangy and have that nice spice background add all ingredients bring to a boil let sit when i'm home i'm cooking for little kids i used to use a lot of ginger like any kind of like pepper and i use a little bit because like the one thing that like goes in their mind man is when something seems spicy they just it's just out of their mouth baby steps that's why they're close yeah i never want to burn them out you know because now then they'll eat something and you'll see a visible yeah i'm like wow man he really hates that oh i screwed up on that one yeah this will thicken up as soon as that rose hip starts yeah as soon as it starts to come back to life absolutely yeah check this out so this is our red onion that's oh he's rolling now see how you can start seeing it bubble like this right now that's kind of an indicator like hey time to turn let's get this avocado salsa going grab a serrano chili seed him or don't see it let's see them yeah cilantro now do you want the stems love the stems for flavor yeah just cut a lemon in half like a teaspoon of salt and then half a cup of water that's great so that's ready for tacos that's beautiful steve next thing our red onion has just been doing its thing dude that's magic man isn't that something yeah let's let it cool let it cool just so it's easier to easier to work with and then i want to make a smoked taco salsa let's take six romas single habanero all blister garlic also with the paper just the way same way we did this squeeze it out yeah yeah let's grab a red onion that's about as simple as it gets we're gonna brown all of our veggies and then we'll throw them into a basket to get that smoked smells amazing man that's that's the smell of a mexican market right there red onion and you can feel that it's it's soft almost all the way through so it should be just a little uncooked in the middle why do they not teach you this after they teach you how to boil water man i feel like you should go like boil water onions the hook works as an auger man you see that you gotta work with your tools with what man gave you yeah work with it life gave you they could go right now but i think it benefits with at least a few hours uh if not overnight sitting yeah spot on man my new favorite thing it's amazing this is supposed to be a smoked salsa which means it's time to fire up the traeger grill and smoker we fill the hopper with pellets and get to about 250 degrees first we'll do a slower round of smoking that includes the salsa vegetables the mallard the musk ox tongue and the white fish yeah some places they call that a party yeah me too me too [Music] while the meat is smoking away eduardo shows me how to make homemade tortillas using an old-school wooden press this is the clutch move right here pressing the tortilla so once you get it in a ball get it in the center give it just like a pre-emptive kind of press stamp it down with the handle we're going to want to we'll do the first one here you're going to press open it up check the material give it a flip 180 because it's going to be a tighter on this yeah yeah that that that is textbook perfect right there i'm gonna peel the top layer off peel it back go zam so we want these to puff up that's the trophy tortilla is when they steam and puff on the inside put the booty crockett tortilla that is the boone and crockett tortilla eduardo finishes up the tortillas and i go check on our progress with the smoker the whitefish is done cooking first which means it's time to make some empanadas what a beautiful looking fillet though you know did it capture some of that smoke yep yeah the fish is ready when you can gently lift the flesh away from the bones using a fork we mix in the white fish with what eduardo calls a fry up this one being his father's go-to blend white onion garlic tomato fresh thyme and oregano cooked down in avocado oil the empanadas start with an uncooked tortilla take our whitefish filling just kind of fill it in just like this not too much not too little give it a turn and the beauty of the plastic bags it helps you kind of just press it down like that yep that's pretty cool you just want to be really delicate with how you peel it off and we'll slip it into some hot oil layer empanadas in just like that oh yeah give you guys a little turn and it was beautiful yeah next out of the smoker are the veggies for our smoked tomato habanero salsa i haven't tasted yet but i'm already digging this way to make salsa man charred garlic red onion tomato cilantro lime salt habanero that should be all we need that one habanero yeah it'll have some crank to it and i like to leave some chunk in it too but it's really a personal preference yeah nice and chunky that's gorgeous yeah oh man that one freaking pepper it's good though it's subtle like i feel like some people would would immediately jump out and be like oh it's a smoked salsa but it's there you know yeah it is next to come off are the duck and the tongue then we add the whitetail roast which cooks hot at 450 degrees while that cooks we slice up the duck and the tongue oh man that tastes great gotta be good with that chutney [Music] you see the cure made it in quite a ways yeah that looks tender though it looks like it's cutting perfectly huh oh yeah man check that out it was tasty [Music] that's good you never guessed musk ox tongue huh how old was the animal was it a bull or a older bowl okay he had hair on him that was 20 some inches long there's nothing long like except for a horse's tail yeah really yeah hangs down to the ground man is my hair gonna grow 10 inches tomorrow now boy ma'am our venison roast comes off and we're ready to dig in i'll start with the empanada now if i was going to do this proper like where would i what would i do with it proper like grandma's style split it in half get it like that this is how grandma's do it yeah and then salsa top it just like that and then you wanna throw a couple pickled onions on it boom it's like a little ice cream calling out mm-hmm [Music] oh yeah have i never made one of those man that's what i said you know these guys you can either cut it up or just lay it in their hole about doing this the musk ox yeah muskox tone man just the fact that we're eating muskox tongue in my house is just a treat i would say that avocado sauce on that's going to be exceptional too yeah oh yeah that looks like the money that is tender wow yeah i like having like little fixings man that are good for a bunch of different things i keep eyeballing that smoked duck i think it's time [Music] why does chutney go good with smoked duck i think duck lends itself naturally to tart and sweet things it loves that flavor combo and that flavor profile yeah yeah [Music] so whitetail rocky mountain whitefish mallard musk ox all this does it gets me fired up for upcoming fall you know and and then and then that's the beautiful thing is like we hunt all kind of fall season winter and then there's a dormant period where you're smoking you're kind of putting things away and then you get to eat eat them throughout the year until like you know you see september start rolling around again you know yeah i love it it keeps the conversation going 24 7 all year oh yeah it keeps you in the hunting mind frame man yeah even just sitting in your kitchen yeah absolutely well thank you man it was fun i'm reinvigorated to go home and cook new stuff my wife won't be as bored with me anymore i like it i got your back man i'll sometimes claim that i'm a self-taught cook but really that's a load of bs i learned what i know by doing this right here cooking and eating with men and women who forge strong connections to their ingredients by living full lives in the wild and great outdoors as they pass through my life i pick up the flavors and bits of knowledge that they're willing to let off just like how a piece of meat or fish will gather in the essence of passing smoke [Music]

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 311,573

Keywords: steven rinella, meateater, meat eater, Steve rinella, cooking, eduardo garcia, hunting, meat, smoked meats, wild game, smoke wild game

Id: CyAJC5CPpOM

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021