Processing My Maine Bear Legs and Backstrap – And Some Delicious Meal Ideas |

I’m thinkin’; “Get the processing/butchering done as soon as possible.” Accordingly, I pulled my briefly frozen bear leg meat to thaw. Just enough thaw to begin cutting and processing.

To read about my September 9th hunt, look back four articles or so to my hunt with Foggy Mountain Guide Service. It was an adventure in the deep woods of Northern Maine.

Onward to processing meat and meal ideas…

Meat Process Tools:

Sharp Knives

Large Cutting Board

Salt for periodic cutting board sanitizing if you stop for more than 1 hour or so.

Clear large plastic bags

Vacuum sealer and quart seal bags

Step 1

Cut fat from leg.

Step 2

Remove silverskin

Step 3

Cut and remove leg calf meat from bone and bag it in large bags kept in your fridge. I will make burger with this later.

Step 4

Debone shoulder and rump leg meat. I found front legs and shoulder blades hard to debone so I boiled meat off. Rear rump leg meat is easier to debone.

Place bulk cuts of leg meat in large bags in the fridge as you go. I label the bags stew, steak, roast, backstrap, for burger, and trash meat.

Below backstrap cut for roasts.

Later pull bags from the fridge for making finish cuts, vacuum seal label and freeze.

Grinding Burger

I use 20% pork butt to add to the meat. The grind is done in two stages; rough and finish. Looks Great.

The key to cooking bear meat is to use a meat thermometer to ensure the meat reaches an internal temperature of 160ºF or more to destroy Trichinosis. Just like we did with pork some years back.

For tenderness, I found that stewing the meat at a slow boil for three to four hours with salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaf and veggie mirepoix (don’t forget the garlic) until tender produced very flavorful meat. To speed this up, I have used a pressure cooker in the past as well.

I toss out the mirepoix and save the cooked juice with the meat and freeze it in pint containers.

Stewed tender meat that has been cooked well beyond 160F can be used in a variety of dishes such as my signature bear stew with vegetables and gravy below.

I rave about the tender mouth feel of stewed bear meat.

Chopped stewed meat makes a great lunch soup with noodles, peas, carrots and beef broth or beef bouillon.

We use it for our spiced up bear tacos.

You can use the stewed meat to make a bear stroganoff too over noodles and so much more.

The ground burger raw meat with pork can make a mouth watering meatloaf or chili as long as the cooked meat hits the 160F. The best way to ensure that the right temperature is reached is to either measure temperature or cook/boil/stew/bake it for some time.

I hope this article was helpful in creating your own adventure in the woods and your cheffing in the kitchen.

Good Eating!