Venison Kofta Skewers
Spiced ground venison pressed onto skewers and grilled over the fire. Camp appetizer that eats standing up.
- calories
- 330
- weight
- 7 oz
- cal / oz
- 47
- protein
- 34 g
- serves
- 6, scales
- prep
- 30 min
- cook
- 15 min
- total time
- 45 min
- water
- 100 ml cold
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Snack
- Grill grate
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Dairy free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Ground venison | 2 lb | kept frozen in the cooler until the morning you cook |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow onion | 1 medium | quartered |
| Garlic | 2 cloves | |
| Flat-leaf parsley | 2 packed cups leaves | stems pulled off |
| Fresh mint leaves | 1/3 cup | |
| Bread | 2 slices | toasted dark, then soaked soft in water |
| Salt | 2 tsp | |
| Black pepper | 1 1/2 tsp | |
| Ground allspice | 1 1/2 tsp | |
| Paprika | 1/2 tsp | |
| Cayenne pepper | 1/2 tsp | |
| Ground cardamom | 1/2 tsp | |
| Ground nutmeg | 1/2 tsp | |
| Bamboo skewers | 12-14 | soak in water 30 minutes so they do not burn through |
| Pita rounds | 6-8 | for serving |
Method
- At home, run the onion, garlic, parsley, and mint through a food processor until everything is fine and wet. Bag it and keep it cold. In camp, a knife and a cutting board do the same job with more work.
- Toast the bread until it is properly brown, then drop it in a cup of water. Squeeze it out when it is soft all the way through and crumble it into the meat.
- Mix the venison, herb paste, squeezed bread, salt, pepper, allspice, paprika, cayenne, cardamom, and nutmeg with your hands until the color is even. Do not keep going past that.
- Roll egg-sized lumps, then press each one down the length of a soaked skewer into a flat sausage about an inch thick.
- Build a bed of coals or run the grill on medium. Lay the skewers on a clean, oiled grate.
- Turn every 3 to 4 minutes, 12 to 15 minutes total, until the outside is browned and the center is no longer red. Venison is lean and goes dry fast, so pull them early rather than late.
- Slide them off the skewers onto pita and eat standing up.
Kofta is a good use for ground venison because the herb paste and the soaked bread do the work that fat normally does. Deer is lean enough that a plain patty turns to sawdust over coals. The bread holds water inside the meat, and two packed cups of parsley plus the mint keep it from tasting like a lean burger.
The spice list looks long but it is one premix made at home, and every item is a dry shelf-stable powder. Skewering matters more than it looks: a flat inch-thick sausage cooks through in the time the outside takes to brown, which is the whole trick with lean meat. This one needs a cooler and a grate, so it belongs at the truck or a basecamp, not in a pack.
Packing
Grind or buy the venison at home and freeze it flat in a zip bag; it doubles as a cooler ice block for the first day. The herb-and-onion paste goes in its own small jar. Premix all six spices with the salt in a film canister so camp assembly is one pour.
Variations
- Ground lamb or 85/15 beef stands in directly if you have no venison.
- No skewers: press the mix into patties and cook them in a cast-iron pan.
- Skip the pita and serve on a bed of couscous cooked in the same pot of water you soaked the bread with.
https://realtree.com/timber-2-table-wild-game-recipes/venison-kofta-kebabs-appetizer-recipe