Deer Heart Recipe: Simple Steps for How to Cook Deer Heart

If you cook it thoroughly, a grilled deer heart, also known as venison heart, can be a safe and filling meal. It is a hunting season delicacy and typically one of the first cuts of meat a hunter will cook since organ meats spoil faster than muscle meats. It’s typical, therefore, to consume the heart, liver, and kidneys of a kill before frying up, for example, the venison backstrap or tenderloin.

In a survival situation, deer heart can sustain you, offer nutritional benefits, and provide energy for whatever challenges you might encounter. Containing more than twenty grams of protein per serving, a meal of deer heart will help you feel full, replenish your energy reserves, and provide you with the amino acids your body requires to build muscle and repair tissues.

Additionally, venison heart is relatively low in fat and cholesterol when you compare it to other red meats. It’s high in B vitamins and essential minerals, including iron, selenium, and zinc. These help to keep bodily functions running smoothly, including those necessary for cell growth, the fighting of infections, thyroid gland health, blood circulation, and others.

Any whitetail deer hunting enthusiast or big game meat-eater will likely have a go-to deer heart recipe, but here are a few tips and techniques for cooking this dish for the first time outdoors:

• Remove any connective tissue. Wild game meat can be lean and fibrous, and deer heart is no exception. To clean the meat, let it soak in a large bowl of cold water to remove any excess blood. Then use a sharp knife to remove excess fat and ventricles, as these tissues can have an unappealing texture.
• Skip the marinade. While chefs preparing deer heart at home might use a marinade, Worcestershire sauce, or red wine to flavor the meat, outdoor cooks could easily forgo this step since deer heart is a highly tender meat. Skip a marinade and instead focus on producing as clean a cut of meat as possible.
• Season the meat. If you’re camping and have brought along olive oil, butter, ghee, or animal fat, add a little to your pan. Season each side of the deer heart with salt and black pepper. Alternatively, harvest sea salt in the wilderness by crafting a solar still (a method for finding water). This setup will enable you to harvest fresh drinking water while also collecting salt as a byproduct with which you can season future meals.
• Cook the meat over a fire. Skewer the heart cutlets and cook them rotisserie-style over an open flame or place the meat in a cast-iron skillet. If your hunting season packing list includes a grill or hibachi, set the appliance to medium-high heat. If you cook around a campfire, place the skillet above hot coals instead of directly over the flame for more efficient temperature control. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends cooking venison to a minimum temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Throw in additional ingredients. While the meat cooks, the edges of the heart steak will caramelize. Add any extra vegetables or seasonings you have available—for example, garlic powder and sea salt or even taco seasoning.

Certain outdoor activities carry an elevated risk of serious injury. Wilderness scenarios require extensive survival gear, including but not limited to food, water, maps, protective clothing, and first aid, along with mental and physical fortitude. This article is for educational and informational purposes and is not a substitute for hard skills and expertise.

Prepare for any outdoor journey by grabbing a MasterClass Annual Membership and committing Jessie Krebs’s wilderness survival course to memory. As a former United States Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape instructor, Jessie can teach you everything you need to know about packing for a trip (neon is the new black), purifying water, foraging (crickets: the other white meat), starting a fire, and signaling for help (forget SOS).