Bear Tag Filled

We have bear in the freezer!

Oops - not that bear!

(Sorry, I have a warped since of humor.)

Got her within a mile of the house last weekend.

She was a 2-3 year old sow.

That was Sunday evening, and yep, you guessed it,

we had to be to work Monday morning:)

That part actually wasn't too bad.

It is beginning to get dark early enough that we

finished up just about bed time.

By we on that part of course I mean Mr. LB.

He actually likes skinning/dressing them out.

I am in charge of getting and having everything ready.

Hanging bag, vinegar water, wash bowl and rag, wheelbarrow (for guts) etc.

Once it's all cleaned, we go over it with a mild vinegar water

just to make sure it's actually "clean."

We let her hang two full days before we started working on her.
If it had been a little cooler, we might have waited another day.

So Wednesday night we began the process.

Bear is a lot of work to clean and process.

It took us (both) 3 evenings, and I finished rendering the last of the lard 

Saturday morning.

I've heard of quite a few folks who hunt avidly who don't like to eat bear.

There are some unique features to processing bear

that make me wonder if they had ill-processed meat.

First, bear is a member of the pork family so cook it thoroughly.

We find the lard superior to pork lard.

Our cast iron hasn't looked better since beginning to use it several years ago.

The other thing about it is that it doesn't have that "pork smell" 

when frying an egg and potatoes or whatever we happen to be cooking.

It just seems cleaner that way.

A little caveat here on how I render bear lard:

I send it through the grinder first. 

(I should share: we have an unfinished kitchen. We finally picked out countertops this past week so hopefully within a month or so 
we will have a 'real' kitchen:)

Then heat it on the barbecuer burner outside.

This is just beginning to turn and look at all that lard already.

It will kinda resemble lightly-browned burger when ready.

Grinding it first makes the heating/rendering part go really quickly.

I then pour it through a lose-weave cotton cloth 

(looser weave than a sheet, but tighter than cheese cloth.)

It is a yellow color until it cools then should be a soft white.

I got just shy of a gallon and a half of lard from this one bear!

We do store it in the refrigerator for good measure.

The clincher is that bear fat (not rendered) can go rancid even in the freezer.

If folks try to cut up a bear like they would a deer or elk,

it would taste foul by the time they pulled it out of the freezer.

We didn't always know this either, but knew we didn't like bear fat on the meat.

In fact, last year, we had a bear given to us by a neighbor.

(He shot a bear right behind his house and was expecting company about a half an hour later.  We all have bear tags up here since they can be a nuisance.)

I didn't have time to get all the fat rendered into lard so threw a bag of the unprocessed fat into the freezer.

I took it out and rendered it later when I had more time.

Here is how it set up using the same process as above.

Yes, it was still in the fridge - please don't judge:)

I want to save the jar and hadn't had time to dispose of it.

In addition, if the un-rendered fat is unknowingly used in the burger

and proceeds to go rancid, the whole package will carry that flavor.

This is definitely one of the advantages to doing our own cutting and wrapping.

We cut and wrap the meat according to the ways 

we prefer to cook it for our meals.

Our favorites are to include it with elk meat and beef fat in sausage,

in Mediterranean like we sometimes do venison (recipe here) 

or barbecued bear kabobs. 

Recipe: I use Sweet Baby Ray's as a base.
Mr. LB likes it, but I don't really care for it.
To this base I add Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, garlic, onion, parsley, and a little ground savory.  Let it marinate at least over night but up to 2 days.
Then barbecue slowly.
Sorry, I don't have a picture of after they were cooked.
It was getting late, and we were hungry. 

We have tried roasts before, but because we remove the fat, 

it cooks up to be a bit on the dry side.

It is now deer season so we might be burning the candle at both ends of the day for another week or so.

Please forgive me if posts are a bit sporadic.

More "how to" or at least "how we do it" posts coming.

In the past few weeks, we butchered lambs, cut and hauled 4 cords of wood,

processed about 70 lbs. of tomatoes, and have Mrs. Calabash back in service

so there's plenty to share.