Squashed Deer Stew

The following is a recipe that evolved from my kid's insistence on not eating anything lumpy & mixed... so I blended it before serving. I also used a short cut to make stew with meat from the freezer without thawing it first, very useful for the busy (and forgetful) mom!

When I can tomatoes, like everyone, to make paste I cut the tomatoes, boil them up but then remove the liquid with a ladle before the tomato flesh completely disintegrates. That way I don't have to boil the tomatoes forever to remove excess liquid, plus I either can or freeze the juice to use for other things (stew, soup, etc).

1 leg of frozen meat, I use goat or deer
1 quart of saved tomato liquid, frozen or canned

Add to cast iron pot (start with a little bit of extra water if liquid is frozen, like rinse out of the bag or jar, to help start thawing the rest) and simmer until meat easily comes of the bones.


Remove all meat and bone from liquid, let cool down on cutting board, when meat is cool, remove from bone, remove squishy parts and cut up in small pieces.

1 butternut squash or medium pumpkin, skinned & cubed.
same amount of sunchokes (jeruzalem artichokes), cubed.

Add cubed squash and sunchokes to liquid and simmer until tender.
When cubes are soft, a fork sticks right thru, blend with stick blender.
When blended add meat back in and heat until all is warm.

We like this with spagetti but it works well with all kinds of pasta. The neat thing is that the paste sticks to the pasta (courtesy of the sunchokes) so the kid has to eat the veggie even if he tries to pick around the sauce :)

Why I call it Squashed Deer Stew?
Cause the deer had a vehicular encounter before ending up as stew...