We made our scrapple based on a venison scrapple recipe found in multiple places online. We had a small "no, don't delete those pictures!!" incident with the camera, so no Bonus! photos. Sorry.
Here's the recipe from Cooks.com:
Venison Scrapple
1 med. onion, chopped fine
2 lbs. venison, bones and some beef suet
1 c. cornmeal
1 tsp. salt and dash of pepper
Brown onion in suet until delicate color. Into 2 quarts of salted cold water, add the browned onion with the fat and the meat and bones and cook until the meat is tender. Cool.
Skim off the fat and remove the bones. Chop the meat fine. To the remaining liquid add enough water to make 1 quart. Add the cornmeal, salt, pepper, and meat. Cook 1 hour, stirring frequently to prevent lumping. Turn into mold. Cool. Cut in slices and fry until brown
I used 2 pounds of venison, some soup bones from the freezer, and used moose fat since I have it. We boiled it with the browned onions. John kept referring to it as "stew" while it bubbled away on the stovetop.
We put the pot on the porch to cool. Removed the bones as soon as we could, so we wouldn't disturb the fat layer later. Once the fat set up, removed it. Then, we warmed up the broth, that had jellied up because of the bones, and John pulled out the meat and sorted through it to make sure we only put in stuff we'd actually want to chew. That took awhile. He can be very thorough when motivated, and this was one of those situations. The cleaned meat was put back in the broth, which I had run through a sieve because I don't like running into bone chips and mystery things in my food. Call me picky that way...
So, I added the cornmeal and cooked as directed. I used loaf pans for the mold, it took four of them to accommodate my slurry of stuff. Reminded me of polenta laced with stewed moose.
Well, I never got to eat any of the creation. John ran off with the pans so he and his moose hunting buddies could try it. Apparently it was ok, they fried it up and had it with beer. I never got to try it, and I have four loaf pans that are AWOL.
I'm intrigued enough to try it again, because I don't mind polenta, and I like tamales very very very much. So, bits of meat in cornmeal sounds attractive, especially since I'm keeping an eye on what meat is going in there.
I'm not sure that John is that interested in me making it again, but I want to give it another try. I'm tempted to try making scrapple with a pork shoulder, because that sounds good. Then again, with pork shoulder I'd probably make tamales or pozole. We'll see.
I feel rather let down by the whole thing, so that's why I'll try it again.
