Bison and Hominy Camp Stew
Dried hominy, dried root vegetable, and bison stew meat cooked slow over coals.
- calories
- 420
- weight
- 9 oz
- cal / oz
- 47
- protein
- 34 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 120 min
- total time
- 135 min
- water
- 1200 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Bison or venison shoulder, cubed | 1 lb | stew meat is fine; keep it cold in the cooler |
|---|---|---|
| Dried hominy | 2 oz | posole, not canned |
| Dried timpsila (prairie turnip) | 2.5 oz | dried parsnip or turnip if you cannot get it |
| Wild onions or ramps | 4 oz | one small yellow onion works |
| Cooking oil or lard | 2 tbsp | |
| Cornflour | 2 tbsp | for thickening at the end |
| Dried ramp leaf | a generous pinch | optional |
| Salt and black pepper | to taste | |
| Dried chives | 1 tsp | optional, for the top |
Method
- The night before, salt and pepper the meat and put it back in the cooler. Put the hominy and the dried root in two separate jars and cover each with twice its volume of boiling water. Lid them and leave them overnight.
- Build a fire and let it burn down to coals. You want steady low heat for two hours, not flames.
- Drain the root pieces but keep that soaking liquid. Cut them into chunks about the size of the meat cubes. Halve the big ones through the taproot first.
- Heat the oil in the dutch oven and brown the meat hard in two batches. Crowding it steams the meat and you lose the crust.
- Add the onions and cook until they go soft. Return all the meat, then add the hominy with its soak water, the root pieces, and enough of the reserved liquid to cover by an inch.
- Lid it, set it on coals with a few on the lid, and let it go about two hours. Check every half hour and add water if it drops below the meat. The hominy is done when it splits open.
- Stir the cornflour into a few tablespoons of cold water, pour it in, and simmer five more minutes until the broth coats a spoon. Salt it, add the ramp leaf, top with chives.
The dried roots are the point. They spend two hours pulling broth in, and by the end they eat closer to meat than to vegetable. Hominy takes about the same time to bloom open, which is why both go in at the start and why both need an overnight soak first.
Soak the two separately. Hominy water goes into the pot as part of the broth; the root water is milder and gets held back as top-up liquid. Coals, not flame, for the whole cook. The cornflour at the end is there because a long, low simmer thins out more than it reduces, and the stew wants body.
Packing
Hominy and dried root go in separate jars at home, since they soak at different rates and you want the liquid kept separate anyway. Cornflour and dried herbs in a small bag. The meat is the only cooler item.
Variations
- Dried parsnip, turnip, or even dehydrated potato stands in for timpsila. It is not the same thing, but it soaks and behaves the same way.
- Beef chuck works if bison is out of reach.
- Cut the meat and use a full pound of hominy plus dried mushrooms for a meatless pot.
https://foragerchef.com/bison-stew-with-timpsila-ramps-and-hominy