Venison and Barley Camp Soup
Shank meat, barley, and root vegetables in one pot over a long fire.
- calories
- 520
- weight
- 14 oz
- cal / oz
- 37
- protein
- 42 g
- serves
- 6, scales
- prep
- 30 min
- cook
- 300 min
- total time
- 330 min
- water
- 2400 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
- Winter / snow
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Venison shanks | 4-5 lb | mostly bone, so buy by weight not by count |
|---|---|---|
| Cooking oil | 2 tbsp | |
| Salt and pepper | to taste | |
| Onion | 1, diced | |
| Leeks | 2 cups, chopped | |
| Carrots | 2, sliced | |
| Celery | 1 stalk, chopped | |
| Garlic | 2 cloves, minced | |
| Thyme | 2 sprigs | dried works, use 1 tsp |
| Bay leaves | 3 | |
| Beef broth | 1 quart | or 4 cups water plus bouillon |
| Water | 1.5 quarts | |
| Worcestershire sauce | 1 tbsp | |
| Pearl barley | 1.5 cups | |
| Water for the barley | 4.5 cups |
Method
- Get a bed of coals going. You want steady low heat for hours, not flame.
- Heat the oil in the dutch oven over the fire. Season the shanks hard with salt and pepper and brown them on all sides. Work in batches so they sear instead of steam.
- Add the onion, leeks, carrots, celery, and garlic. Stir until the onion goes translucent.
- Pour in the broth, the 1.5 quarts of water, and the Worcestershire. Add thyme and bay leaves.
- Lid on. Bank coals around the sides and set a few on top. Hold a bare simmer for four to five hours, checking every hour and adding coals as they die. The meat is done when it slides off the bone.
- Pull the shanks out. Strip the meat, throw the bones away, and return the meat to the pot.
- In a second pot or the same one after skimming, simmer the barley in 4.5 cups of water about 40 minutes until tender. Stir it into the soup.
- Fish out the bay leaves and thyme stems. Salt again at the end, since the barley will have flattened it.
Shanks are the cut nobody wants at home and the right cut for a camp fire. They are mostly bone and connective tissue, which means they need hours of low wet heat before they give up anything — and hours of low wet heat is what a coal bed does well. Brown them first. The crust is where most of the flavor in the finished broth comes from.
The barley cooks separately and goes in at the end on purpose. Left in the pot for five hours it turns to paste and soaks up all the liquid, and you end up with wet grain instead of soup. Cooking it on its own keeps the grains whole and lets you decide how thick the finished pot gets. This is a car-camping or basecamp dish: heavy, cooler-dependent, and worth the fuel only when you have the time and the fire to spend.
Packing
Shanks stay frozen in the cooler and thaw on the drive. Chop the vegetables at home into one bag. Barley, bouillon, and dried herbs go in a jar. Worcestershire travels in a small leakproof bottle.
Variations
- Beef shanks or oxtail behave the same way if you have no venison.
- Swap the barley for rice or small pasta if someone is avoiding gluten, and cook it separately.
- A splash of vinegar at the end wakes up a long braise that has gone flat.
https://realtree.com/timber-2-table-wild-game-recipes/venison-shank-and-barley-soup