Barbecued butterflied roe haunch

Pine Marten

Well-Known Member
Hello everyone!

Today at lunch I finally put into practice my plan to barbecue a roe haunch. Now lots of people say that you can't barbecue venison because it lacks fat, but I think this is just defeatist. The important thing is that this was absolutely gorgeous, and I intend to improve it, but in the meantime I thought that this may be of interest.

First of all, I boned out the haunch, and with two or three additional cuts flattened it out roughly into a rectangle about 5-8cm thick. Then I marinaded it for a couple of hours in a blitzed mixture of olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, fresh thyme and rosemary. This is the greenish mess that you see below.

View attachment 29161

After that, I lit a great pile of charcoal in the barbecue. Bear in mind that you need a barbecue with a lid to do this. I let the charcoal burn for a while until it started to cool down, as I need it less hot than you would for grilling steaks or burgers on direct heat. This took maybe an hour and a half or two. When the coals were glowing gently and spread out, I put the haunch on the grill. The oil in the marinade caught fire, but as soon as I put the lid down, the flames were smothered. I left that for maybe half an hour, turning it over once or twice. Here it is about halfway through cooking.

View attachment 29162

Finally, this is what it looked like, when I pricked it and the juices were just slightly pink. Absolutely fantastic and I shall be experimenting further with this style of cooking as soon as I've shot some more deer, as this was the last of my stash. Hopefully, Sikamalc will help me with that next weekend.

View attachment 29163View attachment 29164

Bon appétit!
 
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Good job there PM, that looks delicious.

I BBQ venison fairly regularly, last Sunday I cooked a whole haunch (roe) on the BBQ and as ever it was beautiful!

I first tried it about 5 years ago, and as Pine Martin mentioned many are, I was a little worried as to whether it would completely dry out, but no, if anything it is more moist than if cooked in the oven.

I have a 22" weber kettle BBQ, which means cooking large joints and even the Christmas turkey is fairly easy. If cooking joints and anything that is likely to take more than 20 minutes you should:

  • Use briquettes rather than lumpwood charcoal, which don't produce as fierce a heat, but last a lot longer
  • Arrange the briquettes so that you are cooking 'indirect' which again makes the heat less fierce, but also encourages the heat and moisture to circulate almost akin to a fan over.
 
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Good job there PM, that looks delicious.

I BBQ venison fairly regularly, last Sunday I cooked a whole haunch (roe) on the BBQ and as ever it was beautiful!

I first tried it about 5 years ago, and as Pine Martin mentioned many are, I was a little worried as to whether it would completely dry out, but no, if anything it is more moist than if cooked in the oven.

I have a 22" weber kettle BBQ, which means cooking large joints and even the Christmas turkey is fairly easy. If cooking joints and anything that is likely to take more than 20 minutes you should:

  • Use briquettes rather than lumpwood charcoal, which don't produce as fierce a heat, but last a lot longer

  • Arrange the briquettes so that you are cooking 'indirect' which again makes the heat less fierce, but also encourages the heat and moisture to circulate almost akin to a fan over.

I have to say that my wife keeps mentioning how delicious and tender this was, which helps justify my trip to Sussex to try and find another one with Malc next weekend! I can't agree with you on the briquettes though, they're horrible. I had to use some last year as I ran out of lumpwood charcoal and that's all I could find. They don't provide the same smokey flavour, and they leave a horrendous pile of ash behind (mostly potash, I think). However, for a lower heat, you could just use hardwood embers.
 
Mine's not a kettle barbecue, it's more like a split oil drum, so with a rectangular cooking surface. The lid can be opened all the way out and used as another grill to double the cooking surface. I only tried that once and the heat of the two combined half-drums was so intense that I couldn't go near the damned thing to do any cooking for hours. It's wasn't that expensive though, just under £100 from Homebase. And I buy big sacks of lumpwood charcoal from the Turkish supermarket up the road. Oh, and Iain? Gas barbecues don't count. They are just gas cookers that you use outside.
 
Proper job that Lawrence :thumb: got to confess I am a venison addict all the young animals never go to the dealers and are used at home.
Mainly use roe as I don't get much access to fallow or muntjac ( my favourite ) to me red deer just reminds me of hare goes straight to the dealer.
keep up the good work and keep on posting your findings please. DF
 
Don't you like hare? I love it, but I have never shot one. They're not around in any of the places I shoot (not surprising of course as these places are of the boggy variety). I had a chance to shoot one about ten years ago in Scotland, but as I swung through it it turned into a cheetah and I hit the ground about 2m behind it! Another one lolopped up right in front of me on a driven day, bit there was a no ground game rule, which left me chewing my hat off as I'd much rather have had that hare than ten pheasants.

That was my last piece of venison, but hopefully, I will stock up again at Malc's this weekend. I think this time I'll bone both haunches, and maybe cut one of them into steaks, frozen two-by-two for weekdays when it's just two of us at home. This also has the advantage of taking up far less space in the freezer.
 
normally do venison sausages burgers on the BBQ and in the stone oven roast this one will definitely go on the dinner list for this summer
 
Coincidentally I just bought the same BBQ that Pine Marten has last weekend. Fired it up on Sunday evening and was very pleased with it. Now I've seen that receipe / method I will have to bone out the haunch of fallow I have in the freezer and give it a go.
 
Good luck with gents! I daresay a fallow haunch will take a bit longer, that roe haunch was under 2kgs, maybe only about 1.7kgs once boned out.
 
Hello everyone!

Today at lunch I finally put into practice my plan to barbecue a roe haunch. Now lots of people say that you can't barbecue venison because it lacks fat, but I think this is just defeatist. The important thing is that this was absolutely gorgeous, and I intend to improve it, but in the meantime I thought that this may be of interest.

First of all, I boned out the haunch, and with two or three additional cuts flattened it out roughly into a rectangle about 5-8cm thick. Then I marinaded it for a couple of hours in a blitzed mixture of olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, fresh thyme and rosemary. This is the greenish mess that you see below.

View attachment 29161

After that, I lit a great pile of charcoal in the barbecue. Bear in mind that you need a barbecue with a lid to do this. I let the charcoal burn for a while until it started to cool down, as I need it less hot than you would for grilling steaks or burgers on direct heat. This took maybe an hour and a half or two. When the coals were glowing gently and spread out, I put the haunch on the grill. The oil in the marinade caught fire, but as soon as I put the lid down, the flames were smothered. I left that for maybe half an hour, turning it over once or twice. Here it is about halfway through cooking.

View attachment 29162

Finally, this is what it looked like, when I pricked it and the juices were just slightly pink. Absolutely fantastic and I shall be experimenting further with this style of cooking as soon as I've shot some more deer, as this was the last of my stash. Hopefully, Sikamalc will help me with that next weekend.

View attachment 29163View attachment 29164

Bon appétit!
We had this last night , followed your recipe. It was absolutly fantastic and it didnt dry out. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Tusker
 
Glad you enjoyed it Tusker! I wanted to pursue my venison culinary adventures, but I ran out of raw material and time to go and find some. It will have to wait until the Winter.
 
I'm reviving an old thread here, but it's taken a couple of years for me to score another roe haunch! Yesterday I prepared the same dish again for a group of friends and their children, with a couple of variations. First of all, I needed to prune an invasive rosemary bush, so I threw a couple of big branches onto the coals, hoping to impart a sort of smoked rosemary flavour to the meat. What happened was that the barbecue smelled fantastic, and it worked to a subtle degree... I think this is something that would work better on meat that has a more neutral taste, perhaps chicken or indeed fish. Still, worth a try.

But the most interesting thing was that beforehand, I'd made some venison burgers for the children as a safer option (two thirds minced roe, one third minced pork to add some fat, essentially, plus a load of herbs etc). And they didn't really like them that much at all. But when I carved up the haunch, they started lining up with the plates! So lesson learned there: the kids like the expensive bits more, same as the adults! They see straight through the burger ploy.

Anyway, great work done there for the Venison Marketing Board!
 
I BBQ'd a Roe fillet for my wife and I.

She likes it overdone. Mine was thrown on the griddle for a couple of minutes each side.

Not time for it to dry out. :D







Steve.
 
I threw a couple of big branches onto the coals, hoping to impart a sort of smoked rosemary flavour to the meat. What happened was that the barbecue smelled fantastic, and it worked to a subtle degree... I think this is something that would work better on meat that has a more neutral taste

Sounds great. A tip for next time? If you beat the rosemary leaves it releases the oil, then you can dip it in olive oil & use the 'brush' to baste the meat. Works great, especially if you give it an extra brush just before you serve it :thumb:
 
Top tip, thanks very much! One of my friends who was at the barbecue said that in France, he'd been to a wild boar roast. Obviously the boar was on the spit for hours and hours, and there was one guy whose job it was to baste it. This was achieved with essentially an entire wild thyme bush lashed to a stick to for a sort of mop, which he would dip in olive oil and paint the boar with once in a while. I hope they kept him topped up with beers because it must have been pretty boring work.
 
The way I like to cook is with proper hardwood logs - mopane is by far the best, but hard to come by in the uk so oak, beech, birch all work well. Let the logs burn and then rake out the coals - keep the fire burning to supply fresh coals.

Take your butterflied haunch with all the oil and marinade, wrap it in several layers of tinfoil and then place on a thin bed of coals and turn regularly. Takes about fifteen / twenty minutes. Rest and slice thinly - nicely charred outside but rare in the middle.

Spatchcocked chickens are equally good done like this.

Best to do this on a beach, once you have canoed down a sea loch to get to a deserted point.
 
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