Instantpot cooking has made meal preparation easy and fast, even with venison that is considered hard to cook – spices and pressure cooking simply the difficulty and enhance the flavor. Photo courtesy of Forrest Fisher

Venison can often get a bad rap from those not familiar with how to prepare this low-fat, low-calorie, high-protein, nutrient-rich red meat from the wild. Nasty taste can come from venison processors too much in a hurry to remove the venison fat strips that can turn venison slightly rancid during freezer storage. So, if you have steaks and roasts with silver skin (sinew) and deer fat that is easy to remove, just cut it out and proceed before you cook it. We’ll share several recipes in the coming days. Here is one tasty ground venison recipe everyone can enjoy with very little prep time: Instant Pot Venison Spaghetti.

Ingredients:

≤ 1 to 1-½ lb. make meatballs (mix 60-40 ground venison/ground pork), or just make venison ground burger meatballs.

≤ 3 TBS olive or Avocado oil

≤ 2 cups (16 oz) chicken broth (regular or low sodium)

≤ 1 lb. (16 oz) spaghetti noodles

≤ 1 can (28 oz) tomato sauce

≤ ½ cup sweet white onion, chopped

≤ ½ cup sliced mushrooms, fresh portabella

≤ 2 tsp minced garlic

≤ 1 cup celery sliced very fine

≤ ½ tsp thyme

≤ ½ tsp rosemary

≤ ½ tsp salt

≤ ½ tsp black pepper

≤ 1 small can (15 oz) diced tomatoes

To prepare: In a 6-quart Instant Pot, in this order — place the trivet on the bottom and add meatballs to top of the trivet, add chicken broth, then break noodles in half and crisscross noodles. In between about five noodle layers, add the mixture of onions, garlic, salt, pepper, thyme, and rosemary. Add the diced tomatoes to the top of the pile. The pot is pretty full but will subside with the heat before the noodles absorb and expand. Cover the Instant Pot. Set to pressure cook for 10 minutes. Once finished, turn off power to the Instant Pot. Allow for natural release (about 10 minutes). Remove cover when safe. Use a wooden spoon to mix all and let sit uncovered for 10 minutes. The sauce will thicken and mix flavors yet more. Noodles will melt on your fork. Makes about 10 adult servings. Add cheese or garnish as you like atop the final platter.

Note: Instant Pot gadgets are simply modern, user-friendly, pressure cookers. Please be sure to observe the operating instructions for your Instant Pot brand. The above recipe will work with all brands. We have the Duo Evo and the Duo Evo Plus Instant Pot in our kitchen; we like these models because of the built-in safety factors. They work about the same, except the plus model is digital.

CALENDAR

Nov. 16 to Dec. 8: NYS Southern Zone regular (firearm) big game season

Nov. 21: Southtowns Walleye Association monthly meeting, 7 p.m., 5895 Southwestern Blvd., Hamburg, Info: 716-208-4023

Nov. 23 to Jan. 19: South Area — Late Canada goose season, see syllabus.

Nov. 30: Last day of inland musky season (Great Lakes musky goes through Dec. 15).

Nov. 30 to Dec. 14: Pennsylvania Regular (firearms) deer season. See https://www.pgc.pa.gov.

Dec. 9-17 and Dec. 26 to Jan. 1: NYS Southern Zone late bowhunting season