These are the days when I appreciate having a hunter for a husband. Fall, or what we consider fall, is right around the corner for us in South Louisiana. It’s the time of LSU football games and pumpkin spice lattes. During these months, I also usually yearn for a great stew, hearty soup or other comforting dish. My favorite ingredient in these dishes is the meat which is normally something Andrew has killed and brought home for us to savor. I didn’t always cook wild game but when I got married, I had to learn…quickly. I realized that if Andrew was going to go out and hunt and bring home a year’s worth of meat, I needed to learn how to prepare it for dinner. During the fall and spring, he will come home with some interesting animals: rabbit, deer, turkey, hog and even sometimes a raccoon! Just to give you an idea, we cooked the very last back-strap last night which was from last year’s hunting season and we are now at the beginning of another hunting season. He will restock our freezer all over again for an entire year. I appreciate what I eat in my household because my husband killed it, skinned it and cut it up himself.

With that being sad, I will now share with you a new crock pot recipe that I tried yesterday. It was absolutely delicious and easy to prepare because I don’t do complicated. The ingredients for this recipe are basic and inexpensive. I try and shy away from recipes that cost an arm and a leg to cook. I don’t have the pocket change to be marching all over Whole Foods or Fresh Market and everyone knows you can blow $200 easy at either store. This particular dish also doesn’t have a long list of ingredients which is always nice when you are crunched for time. During our hectic lives, no one really has the time to pour over an entire page of ingredients to make one meal. I usually like to throw it together in the crock pot at 5:30 a.m. (yes, we’re early risers in this Spivey house) and when I get home at the end of the day, it is ready. I came across a recipe for a Mississippi Roast in honor of my recent travels but tweaked it a little, added some extras and adapted it for venison. Since venison is leaner and doesn’t have the fat that beef does, you don’t need to cook it as long as beef. You can use this recipe for a chuck roast but you will want to make sure to cook it for 8 hours on low whereas, you only cook venison for 6 hours on low.

Hope you love it as much as I did last night!

VENISON ROAST – Mississippi Style
Ingredients:
3 lb venison back-strap (or chuck roast)
1 Hidden Valley Ranch dressing packet
1 McCormick Beef Stew seasoning packet
6 pepperoncinis
4 cloves of garlic
2 large white potatoes
1 cup of baby carrots
1 tsp of garlic salt
1 tsp of onion powder
½ tsp of Slap Your Mama’s seasoning (our favorite local seasoning)
¼ cup of Worcester sauce
1 – 1 ½ cups of water

1. Cut potatoes into pieces and layer them with the baby carrots on the bottom of your crock pot;
2. Add venison back-strap on top of potato and carrot layer;
3. Add water and Worcester;
4. Layer pepperoncini’s and garlic cloves around the edges of meat;
5. Sprinkle Ranch and Beef Stew packets on top of meat;
6. Add remaining seasonings and cook for 6 hours on low.