Venison Stir-Fry with Wild Ramps
My Venison Stir-Fry with Wild Ramps is the perfect way to transform simple ingredients into a delicious Chinese take-out style meal at home! If you don’t have a freezer full of venison (like us) or freshly foraged wild ramps – Don’t worry! You can also make this dish with beef and scallions/green onions and it will be just as delicious!
One of the biggest struggles I have as a “blogger” is the delicate balance between being authentic yet still consistently producing appealing content which will attract traffic. (traffic = money) You see ‘authentically’ right now I’m pretty focused on cooking with locally available meats and seasonal produce/wild foraged edibles – BUT (just being honest) those recipes & blog posts aren’t going to bring traffic to my blog – i.e. they don’t “pay the bills.”
The recipes that bring most people to HSITK are mostly desserts and paleo/grain-free/gluten-free adaptations of meals – WHICH aren’t truthfully aren’t what we really eat often and not solely what I want HSITK to be about.
So, I finally feel like I’m at a point, business-wise, where I can FINALLY let my ‘freak-flag’ fly a little more often and dedicate more of my time to posting the realities of my local-seasonal-kitchen.
Just to be clear – all of my recipes here on HSITK are honestly my own and are truthfully foods we eat, but often times they are the minority of what I make and not a representation of the majority of our healthy meals.
Yesterday morning I shared my recipe for my Smoked Salmon & Ramp Stuffed Omelet, knowing that most of you aren’t going to share my enthusiasm for wild foraged ramps, BUT traffic be damned, I posted it anyway because it was DELICIOUS!
And for those of you who have advanced beyond the basics of real food, you’ve been eagerly begging for me to share more of my wild & seasonal dishes and I’m sharing them just for you!
This Venison and Ramp Stir-Fry may seem a little intimidating, I always thought that it was beyond my reach to replicate the textures and flavors of Chinese food at home – let alone create my own unique twist using local/seasonal ingredients! But it’s totally easy.
The secret to the melt in your mouth, butter texture of the meat in Chinese dishes is using a technique called “Velveting.” And it’s a complete game-changer.
You will want to start by cutting your meat (chicken, pork, beef, venison, etc) across the grain into thin slices, (slightly large bite sized slices).
Velveting can be done several different ways, but by simply using baking soda and water works well and does not add extra starch to the meal. There’s some crazy chemical reaction that occurs, a reaction you can actually hear, it’s like a foaming/sizzling sound. The baking soda helps to break down the fibers of the meat, but not making it delicate where it falls apart, just becoming super tender. Let your meat velvet for 15-20 minutes.
It’s very important to throughly RINSE your velveted meat very well with cold water, then allow it to drain. The baking soda does great things but it doesn’t taste fabulous. When in doubt, rinse it again, using your hands to be sure to get all the pieces of meat rinsed well.
Buttery soft velveted venison, still crispy stir-fried vegetables and a thick sweet & spicy sauce, makes my Venison and Ramp Stir-Fry one of the best dishes I’ve ever created. No joke. Ray, my husband and biggest fan, said that we’ll no longer need to occasionally indulge in Chinese-take-out anymore when I can cook just as good at home!
The best part is that YOU control the quality of the ingredients creating a healthy dish that’s full of nutrition!
Venison Stir-Fry with Wild Ramps
Ingredients
For Velveted Venison
- 1 pound venison steak thinly sliced, against the grain
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 cup Water, filtered
For the Sauce
- 1/2 cup coconut aminos or Tamari
- 1/2 cup bone broth
- 2 tablespoons Rice Vinegar
- 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
- 2 tablespoons Honey
- 1+ tablespoons Sriracha Hot Sauce
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 2+ cloves Garlic
- 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
- 1 tablespoon Arrowroot Starch
- 1/8+ teaspoon Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
Stir Fry Vegetables
- 1 medium red pepper cut into chunks
- 1 medium yellow pepper cut into chunks
- 1 medium head broccoli broken into pieces
- 4 ounces Mushrooms, Sliced
- 1 bunch ramps left whole, cleaned
Optional Garnishes
- – sesame seeds
- – ramps sliced
- cooked jasmine rice or cauliflower rice
Instructions
- Combine venison, baking soda and water in a medium bowl. Allow to “velvet” for 15-20 minutes. Rinse well with cold water and strain.
- Combine sauce ingredients and set aside.
- Heat a wok or large skillet over high heat. Saute venison in coconut oil until cooked through and no longer pink – roughly 3-5 minutes.
- Remove cooked venison from wok and set aside.
- Return wok to high heat, add additional coconut oil and quickly stir fry the vegetables. I like to get some high-heat color on them, without cooking them through. Stir-Fry for 2-3 minutes.
- Add meat back into wok with vegetables and add the sauce ingredients.
- Reduce heat to so that the sauce is barely simmering, sauce with thicken as it cooks.
- Serve over rice or cauliflower rice. Enjoy!
