Pan-fried Fish on the West Coast Trail
West Coast Trail inspired Pan Fried Salmon & Baked Potatoe. Great recipes from Miche Genest, with an accompanying trail tail.
Yukon Wild
Go Wild With Greens
There are few wild greens easier to enjoy than lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium album) also known as white goosefoot and, sometimes, pigweed. A member of the populous Amaranthaceae family, which includes amaranth, quinoa, beets and spinach, among thousands of other plants, the leaves can be eaten fresh or cooked and have a flavour somewhere between spinach and kale.
Let the gardening and foraging begin!
The days are longer, the temperatures milder—it is time to prepare for gardening, planting and foraging. Some tips to get you started!
Gather: All The Spruce Tip Things
Spruce tip season is short. There’s anxiety about getting out soon enough. Once picked and processed, you can experiment with abandon.
The History of the North American Bison
The Yukon bison herd is said to be 1,400+. Learn a little North American Bison, it’s introduction into the Yukon and a great Bison recipe.
Trout sandwiches with pickled jalapeno tartar sauce
Trout filets are perfect for sandwiches, they’re lovely and thin so they cook quickly and the skin is easy to crisp in a hot pan
Nose to tail : Don’t overlook the offal when meal-planning this winter
Offal —literally “off-fall”— refers to those parts of an animal carcass that have fallen off during butchering. While muscles represent more than a third of the weight of cattle, by-products including side meats, bones, skin, and intestines constitute most of the animal body. The brain, the trotters (aka feet), kidney, liver, sweetbreads (pancreas) and tripe …
Nose to tail : Don’t overlook the offal when meal-planning this winter Read More »
Seasonal Recipes: Cherry crisp
Cherries are everywhere right now, and when they’re in season, it can be easy to buy a few too many and end up with some sad, limp cherries in your fridge. A cherry crisp makes use of those sad cherries while still letting them be the star that they are this time of year. …
Dandelion season
Don’t hate them! Not only are dandelions beautiful, the bees love them and we should too! They are delicious.
A Hubbub of Rhubarb
Rhubarb is a good producer to just keep harvesting, resulting in a pile-up of chopped rhubarb in bags in the freezer. A hubbub of rhubarb!
Wild Strawberry jam
The berry season is still months away, but a close friend gave me a small jar of jam for Christmas. And so, I made cheesecake.
The Easter Moose
Why not celebrate this time round with a feast that connects you to the landscape; that reminds you of where you live.
Game on
One thing you know for sure about wild meat is that it hasn’t been loaded with chemicals and growth hormones to get it to market quickly. In general, it has feasted on wild plants and grasses. It’s about the most natural meat you could get. When hunting and harvesting wild game, you know the exact …
Currant-ly Available
Blackcurrants do grow wild in the Yukon, sparsely. You may find Ribes hudsoniam in damp forests at the base of mountains, like for example on the King’s Throne hike in Kluane National Park.
Sage Advice
I find one of the best ways to calm the spirit and focus the mind is to go out foraging. When foraging for wild plants we enter the landscape on an intimate scale, we’re down on our knees, looking, exploring, paying attention, the microcosm engages us and the macro shrinks away.
It’s Spruce Tip Season!
For those as yet uninitiated, spruce tips are one of those truly magical wild northern foods. They’re packed with Vitamin C and have been used by Indigenous people to soothe sore throats and combat flu for centuries.
Spruce Tip Jelly
Serve spruce tip jelly on toast with butter; in thumb-print cookies; on a charcuterie platter; with smoked salmon and cream cheese; or to accompany any wild meat or fish, whether braised, grilled, roasted or fried.
Getting the best out of wild meat
Murray Martin with his first ever moose, shot with a bow and arrow in 1963. It was recorded in the Pope and Young World Records. Shot with a 70 pound recurve bow at 30 yards There is a right way and a wrong way to cook your wild meat, but there is one other thing …
Moose and corn turnovers
Anyone who hunts knows that when you harvest an animal you’re always going to end up with a ton of ground meat. These turnovers are great with any sort of ground and make a fantastic snack to have with a few cocktails, or even a light, quick lunch. They also freeze really well after they’ve …
Deer hunting recipes
With hunting season once again upon us, it’s time to attempt to read those hurried, scribbled-down notes of some great wild-game recipes that I have received from many of the big-game hunters I have met, or hunted with, over the years.
Fish for dinner
Now that we’ve caught the fish, what do we do? Throw away the fish chain, remove the fish to a waterbox to keep the fish alive and replace it with an ice box.
Yukon dining on the wild side
What do you wear to an outfitters ball? The two terms seem to be in contradiction to each other.
Cooking with moose meat
A successful hunt means cooking moose. Murray shares some meat pie and quiche recipes to try with the moose meat from a successful harvest.
Birds ‘on the fly’
One of the best-tasting meats comes from game birds. Stripping the bird of all of its bones should be your first step … and the next step, after cooking, is to enjoy.
Steak tacos
Tacos are ideal for camping because you don’t really need a plate or utensils to eat them. And if you mix the sauce before you leave, there’s really minimal prep for your taco camping feast. You could even buy a bag of pre-sliced coleslaw mix and have it do a bit of double duty on your trip.
The best and most authentic currywurst caribou tater tot poutine
Let’s just get this cleared up right away. Poutine is a national treasure. There is no dish so beloved, so exalted throughout this nation as poutine.
Many ways to eat moose
Now that you have your moose or deer meat in the freezer, it’s time to get serious about cooking it the outdoors way, inside.
Low impact on the land
The sites you choose look good to you or you wouldn’t set up there. Make your best effort to leave them as you found them. PHOTO: Pixabay It really wasn’t too many years ago that campsites could be obvious almost forever due to the accepted practices of the day. Tents were different with straight …
Chicken fried bison steaks
While I love using bison steaks, you can totally use any sort of lean, quick cooking steak you’ve got – moose, caribou, even beef.
Let’s use that whole bear
Sadly, black bears have an undeserved reputation of not being very good to eat. A number of Yukon hunters, including me, will dispute that thought as black bear is just as delicious any other animal hunted for meat in the Yukon.
Cheese stuffed bacon wrapped bison burger
It’s still a bit too cold to grill – at least for me it is. So these burgers are made to cook in a pan, which means that you can stuff them to the gills with cheese and wrap them with bacon without having to use any sort of toothpick. When picking out a cheese, …
Moose round steak
Tenderloin and backstraps (striploin) get all the hype regarding being the most tender cuts off any wild game animal. They have a good reputation as they usually are tender unless they aren’t cooked properly – which is very often as many people insist on cooking wild game just like they would cook beef. For many …
French Onion Soup
This moose spin on a classic dish will become your favourite winter meal for a host of reasons.
Tea and gin cured salmon
Salmon is a great fish to quickly cure, and the addition of a bit of tea and some gin really compliment the delicate flavours of the beautiful West Coast salmon we’re lucky enough to have access to. The addition of tea and gin makes this a great dish to have for brunch (because gin Caesars …
Bear pepperoni and herbed ricotta stromboli
This recipe uses bear pepperoni, but you could use salami. Or really anything. Stromboli are delicious no matter what they’re filled with.
Simple Meat Ragu
Things get freezer burnt. Those unfortunate packs of meat can still be delicious if you know how to deal with them.
Moose, Spinach and Sunflower Seed Strudel
Moose, Spinach and Sunflower Seed Strudel Serves 6 Ingredients ½ cup plus 1 Tbsp olive oil, divided 1 onion, finely chopped 1 clove garlic, finely chopped ¼ tsp ground cinnamon Pinch red pepper flakes One 300 g block of frozen spinach, thawed 1½ pounds ground moose ¼ cup sunflower seeds Salt and pepper, to taste …
Wonder What to do with a Pike?
Pike Chowder Supreme This will take some time, but it is time well spent. Ingredients: 1 pound of freshly caught pike fillets, cut into stew-size pieces 2 ¼ cups boiling water 2 cups milk ¾ cup diced celery 1 ½ cups raw diced potatoes ½ cup thinly sliced carrots 3 Tbsp butter 1 white onion, …
Big Game Cookery
With the hunting season upon us, it’s time for some special big game recipes. First of all, there is just about no part of a moose that you can’t eat and enjoy. What better to start with than Baked Moose Tongue. BAKED MOOSE TONGUE First prepare a special Raisin Sauce You will need: 1 cup …
Bison Hunt: On The Table 5/5
When serving bison, ideally the first meal is raved about. If not you’ll have difficulty serving the remaining 2300 pounds in the freezer.
Plank It Up
Sockeye is in season and if you haven’t yet discovered the ease and piquant flavour of cooking fish on a cedar plank, now is the time. Planks infuse a wonderful woodsy taste to fish as well as minimizing the mess in cleaning up. Following are two recipes, a really easy one and a more challenging …
Acadian as Rappie Pie
This summer I was in Dawson City at the farmers’ market, scoping out the best produce the Klondike has to offer. It was beet season and Grant Dowdell’s stall was there. His beets are world class, so I knew I wouldn’t leave empty-handed. My friend and fellow chef Brian Phelan and I started talking about …
Moose Meat in the Closet
I don’t keep moose frozen more than 6 months. Dry curing it for a few days, you intensify the moose flavour.
Don’t Be Groused Out
Growing up in Valemount BC, surrounded by vast wilderness and unexplored terrain, it was not uncommon to see grouse and other small game during my outings. Sometimes they’re unavoidable, and seem to end up under the wheel of your motorbike, no matter how hard you try to avoid them! Moving to the Yukon, I had similar …
Sourdough-Dipped Chicken-Fried Caribou Steaks with Cream Gravy
Chicken-fried caribou steaks might just be the best thing I’ve eaten in a long time. I’ve played around with a lot of different recipes and styles over the years, and have always been happy with the results. But on one fine winter day, I topped them all. I was subconsciously staring at my ever-so-hungry-jar of …
Sourdough-Dipped Chicken-Fried Caribou Steaks with Cream Gravy Read More »
Moolash
A gift of moose is great, but a dinner of moose is even better! I recently acquired a little stockpile of my old friend “Big Horn” and have been cooking up a storm. I’ve done open-face kimchi, mayo, shaved moose and cheddar broiled goodness, to classic jerky, and everything in between. Growing up, I remember …
An Old School Loaf
I recently resurrected my sourdough starter from the deep freeze. I throw it in there from time to time when I feel like starving it for an extended period of time, or if I feel like being unusually cruel to it. It never really seems to mind the solitude, and I’m always amazed how fast …
