My barbecue deer and goat ribs recipe

The other night I cooked some deer and mountain goat ribs on the grill.  This is one of my favourite recipes (more a method than an actual recipe), and one that I have refined a great deal over the years.  I can remember the first time I tried to cook deer ribs on the grill and we did not even bother to pre cook them.  With all the fat they caught on fire and the flames burned as high as the roof.  Then for years we simply froze the ribs unprocessed and would then thaw them out and then make the sauce and do all the rib prep the day before we cooked them.  This was a serious hassle and meant that cooking ribs was always something that you put off.  

In the beginning the ribs were always sort of something that you had to take care of because to not do so was wanton waste of game meat. But not anymore, these days the ribs rate high on the list when it comes to divying up the game meat between hunters after a hunt.

We've also learned that you take care of them start to finish.  I am very careful to keep them clean when I butcher the deer or goat in the field. I also try to not over process them because I want to have something to trim for when I do the final clean up.   Then when we get home they are the first cut of the animal that we process.  On getting back to the house I immediately trim and clean them up (hair and excess fat) and cut off the chine along along the bottom.  I then use gardening sheers to cut the ribs in half longitudinally.

Next step is to put them in my biggest La Creuset pot with lid with a couple inches of water inside, and cook them in the oven at around 180 degrees for 12 hours or so.  Philip cooks them sous vid (click here to see his elk ribs) - but that is a little too complicated for me. After 12 hours or so I pour off the fatty water and use a bottled barbecue sauce (like Tubbs) to liberally coat all the ribs. You can also make your own barbecue sauce but this is also usually the day you are butchering the rest of the deer - so why create more hassle and work? Once coated in sauce, I cook them at low heat for another hour or so.  Then I pair up the half racks 2 or 3 to a package, wrap them in plastic and butcher paper, label and freeze them (see top photo).

Now when you want ribs for dinner you just take them out of the freezer, thaw them out, and they are all ready to go on the grill.  I usually put a little more sauce on them for the grill, and cook them just like those precooked and premarinaded ribs that you buy all wrapped up in plastic at Safeway.  Except mine are WAY better.  I've also found that they last a long time in the freezer - far less subject to freezer burn than the un precooked and processed ribs that we used to freeze in the past.  

And so convenient!

Patrick