Legendary Whitetails Ambassador Joe Keckeisen is back in the kitchen! This week, he’s sharing a favorite family venison recipe, with a little German heritage mixed in there.
Growing up, my Mom would put German Rouladen in our family dinner rotation. I always loved the dish and now I make the same dish using venison backstraps. This recipe does require a moderate skill level in the kitchen. But with a little patience and time, I’m sure you can get it!
You will need a few tools for this dish! A good-quality, sharp knife will be necessary to cut your backstraps. Something you might not see in every kitchen, a meat tenderizer is also a key tool to make sure the meat reaches the desired thickness level.
The key to making this dish great is watching how the different pieces fit together. For example, you’ll want to make sure that your bacon slices are slightly shorter than the backstraps. This will make it much easier to roll the meat later on.
As you saw in the Al Capone Venison roast last month, this recipe also utilizes butchers string. If you like cooking fun roasts with venison, you’ll definitely want to invest in some string for your kitchen!
There are a lot of strong ingredients in this dish, so apply them all in moderation. The bacon, mustard, or even the dill pickle can easily take over the dish if you’re not careful. It’s the marriage of these that create this incredibly flavorful dish. You can serve this with
Cooking Time
1 hr 50 minsIngredients
- ½ a venison backstrap
- Stone ground German mustard
- 4-5 slices of bacon
- ½ white onion, sliced
- 2-3 dill pickle spears
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 2 tbsps butter
- 2 cups beef broth
- ¼ cup all-purpose flour
Directions
- Cut 1/2 venison backstrap into two halves. Cut with the grain of the meat, making the halves about 1/4″ thick. Repeat this cutting process again with the two halves, giving you 6 pieces of venison total.
- Cover one piece of backstrap with plastic wrap and flatten it with a meat tenderizer until the piece is about 1/8″ thick. Repeat this process for each piece.
- Spread stone ground German mustard to lightly cover one side of meat, and then cover with pieces of bacon. Place slices of onion on top of the bacon, before cutting pickle spears in half and placing a few between the onion slices.
- Roll meat up, keeping ingredients in as you roll and secure with butchers string.
- Put oil in large pan over medium heat and brown each roll on all 4 sides. Remove them from the pan, leaving the drippings behind and add the butter. Let it melt, before adding the flour slowly to make a roux.
- Once your roux is smooth, add the beef broth and heat it until simmering. Add the venison rolls back to the pan, letting the gravy cover them to keep everything moist.
- Let it simmer for about an hour until the venison is tender. Serve with egg noodles or spaetzle, pouring gravy over everything.
