For me the stranger the better and it doesn’t get much stranger than bear. Yes bear. The big furry guys that eat honey and hikers. A friend went hunting in Alaska and downed a male black bear a few months ago. Once I heard he had some I had to have it. Fear of parasites and the so called bad taste of no importance to me. This one would be a big notch in my foodie belt.
After defrosting the meat the first thing I noticed about it was how dark it was. My sister saying it looked like liver. I guess when you eat small woodland creatures and berries your whole life, you turn red inside.
Now what to do with bear. One thing I knew was I had to cook it all the way through. No bear tartare unless I wanted some nasty parasites. So I had to cook the hell out of the bear. Rather then throwing all my eggs in one basket I opted for two preparations; baking and braising.
To bake the meat I covered it in olive oil and rosemary and cooked it until it was cooked all the way through. Then to go with it I cooked apples with cinnamon, honey (of course, come on its bear) and nutmeg.
The meat was super tough. Like leather tough. So I had to cut it really thin against the grain to be able to chewy it. Surprisingly it had little taste. It didn’t even absorb the rosemary taste. The taste was beefish. The texture was like beef but the flavor was almost absent. This can most likely be contributed to the fact that the bear was right out of hibernation having not eaten anything for months and having lost all of his fat. In the process the meat losing all of its moisture and flavor. But the sweetness of the apples did cut this tough ruggedness well.
For the other preparation I opted for a process that would give the meat flavor and moisture so I chose braising. I braised the bear in Guinness and veal stock with leeks, golden beets, dandelion greens, beet tops, garlic, honey, morels, and wood ear mushrooms. Everything worked good but I think the morels, which were dried, were bad and they gave it a dirt like taste. But the beets and honey gave it a good sweetness that worked good with the almost flavorless and tough meat.
For my starch I went with wild rice, keeping a vague wilderness theme, which was really good. I haven’t had wild rice in forever.
Now I can knock bear meat off my list. Not only have I eaten it, which very few can say they have, but I cooked it myself two different ways. I learned a lot though. First bear is tough. So it would be best to cook it low and slow or grind it up and cook it in meatballs or a meatloaf. Second that it works well with sweet flavors.
Next time, which there probably will be since my friend has a ton of bear still in his freezer, I will get real ironic with it, cooking it with salmon or rabbit, honey, and berries. Maybe even stuff a rabbit, deer, or salmon with bear meat. A little predator inside prey. The opportunities are endless with something like that.
