Venison goulash from the Crock Pot

Ingredients for 8 servings:

• 2 kg venison from the shoulder or leg, diced
• 100 g bacon with garlic crust
• 3 small onions
• 1 liter beef bouillon or game stock
• 300 ml red wine, dry
• 400 g mixed wild mushrooms, e.g. button mushrooms, chanterelle mushrooms, king oyster mushrooms
• 1 tsp juniper berries
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 tsp thyme, dried
• 1 pinch(s) sage, dried, ground
• ½ tsp allspice powder
• ½ tsp clove powder
• 1 tsp lovage powder
• 1 tbsp dried soup seasoning (carrots, celery, parsley root, parsley, parsnips)
• 1 pinch(s) of pepper
• 1 pinch(s) lemon peel or orange peel, dried
• 1 tsp porcini mushrooms, dried or mushroom powder
• ½ bottle of cooking cream, e.g. Cremefine or cream
• Flour butter or cornstarch
• n. B. Oil
• 2 garlic cloves, as needed

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour; Cooking/baking time approx. 5 hours; Total time approx. 6 hours

suitable for the game season

Wash the meat, remove the sinew, roughly dice, and pat dry. Remove the rind from the bacon and cut into cubes, and the onions into wedges. Reserve the bacon rind. Clean and finely chop the mushrooms; if using, drain the finished mushroom mixture from the jar. Fry the bacon in a hot pan until crispy and transfer it to the Crock Pot with the garlic from the crust. If you don’t have any garlic bacon, add two cloves of garlic. Brown the meat in batches in the bacon fat and add it to the Crock Pot. Finally, briefly fry the onions, adding more oil to the pan if the bacon fat is insufficient. Add the onions to the Crock Pot as well. Deglaze the pan with some of the stock, pour it into the Crock Pot, and top it up with the stock and red wine. Add the mushrooms and the spices. Crush the juniper berries with a fork or rolling pin before adding them. Mix everything well. Add the trimmed bacon rind and cook it with the bacon fat; this will give it a great flavor. Simmer everything on high for about five hours. Remove the bacon rind and fish out the bay leaves. About 45 minutes before the end of the cooking time, thicken with the flour butter or mixed cornstarch and, just before serving, refine with Cremefine or cream. Serve with potato side dishes, red cabbage, and cranberries. Note: Regarding the soup seasoning, I would like to say that I make it myself in a dehydrator and process it into a powder in the blender, as well as the mushroom powder. It would be a shame to add ready-made seasoning to the good venison. If you use store-bought, please use a good soup seasoning without MSG. If you don’t have mushroom powder available, we recommend soaking dried porcini mushrooms, finely dice them, or puree them, and adding them to the CP.