Coues Deer Heart: Discovering & Cooking the Ultimate Wild Game Recipe's
Coues Deer Heart
Discovering & Cooking the Ultimate Wild Game Recipe's
Written By: Stephen Miller, Bowhunting AZ
Hunting Blog, Podcast & Media Creator
I’ll admit I was always skeptical of eating organ meat. I have tried liver pate before and I think it’s delicious. But, that’s as far as I have ventured into the world of eating organs. That was until November 17th, 2019 when I decided to give it a shot and cook up my 2019 early archery Coues deer heart. I had just turned 31 this November and I was extremely blessed by our neighbors who gifted me a Pit Boss 440D smoker. I ran to the local hardware store and bought a bag of pellets to get my initial burn done. The initial burn is basically a high temp break-in period for the smoker, in part to season the grill and also to clean it of any debris inside from manufacturing. Initially, my first run on the Pit Boss 440D was an elk tenderloin and a large elk roast. The meat turned out ultra smokey and we devoured it, to say the least. My wife is a huge fan of salmon and I had been wanting to try out some smoked cedar plank salmon now that I had the pellet smoker. So, she ran to our local Fry’s (Kroger for you back east or Midwest folk) store and grabbed a salmon filet. I soaked the two Western BBQ Wood planks for roughly 12 hours in our kitchen sink and cut the salmon filets to size and set those aside. I was able to fit 2 standard sized salmon filet cuts onto 1 cedar plank. Right about when I had received my smoker I got a message on Instagram from a gentleman who owns Slavo Salt Seasonings (https://slavosalt.com/). He and I got to talking and he was extremely generous and sent me out 3 bottles of their seasonings. Garlic Salt, Spicy and their All-Purpose Seasoning. For the salmon filets, I went with the Garlic Salt on top as well as some freshly squeezed lemon juice and melted butter. However, for the Coues deer heart, I wanted a good pop of flavor, so I chose the Spicy seasoning.
Freshly harvested Coues Deeer heart in the field.
Thawing out my Coues Deer heart for dinner.
Preparing my Coues Deer heart and taking photo’s along the way.
Early archery success, enduring 100+ degree heat in Arizona
On average, a full grown coues buck only weighs 100! They are much smaller than their eastern cousin.
On August 23rd, 2019 I harvested my first archery Coues deer on the opening day of the early archery season here in Arizona. After many conversations with friends and online social media acquaintances, I wanted to save the organs and give it a whirl at cooking them. One of my coworkers loves liver so I saved the liver for him, but the heart I knew I wanted for myself. After reorganizing my deep freezer I discovered the heart which I had almost completely forgotten about. I knew I had elk heart which was neatly packaged from the processor, but my deer I had processed myself and I stuck the heart off to the side for processing at a later time. Fortunately, no freezer burn had taken place on the heart and I set it in the sink to thaw while I ran a few errands. After the heart had thawed I did a thorough cleaning of it in the kitchen sink. When I’m in the field I’ll clean it out as much as I can by using my palm to almost pump the heart again as if it were beating. I discovered this technique rids the heart of any coagulated blood and really does a good job of cleaning out both ventricles for the most part. Running a good amount of water through the valves and individual ventricles will finalize the cleaning and remove anything else that may have been in there.
After cleaning the heart out I did a light drying with a paper towel to make sure I have a decent hold on it while I’m cleaning and doing the cutting. Being a former cook I’m confident in my skills to carve something up however for this project I’m using my Havalon Piranta knife. This knife, if you haven’t heard of it yet, is hands down the best knife a hunter could ever have. The Havalon is without a doubt as sharp as a scalpel. If the blade begins to dull simply use the tool it came with and swap out the blade for a new one. It comes with 12 additional replacement blades. A simple flick of the wrist while skinning or quartering an animal and the knife slices through the meat as if it was hot butter. So for today’s culinary exploration, I decided to use the Havalon due to the precision I can wield with it. The blade is the perfect size for being precise, especially when it comes to cleaving fat or silver skin off of meat. In this case, I’ll start by trimming fat off the top of the heart. This fat seems to have more waxy consistency. Whereas regular deer fat can usually render down as it cooks. I carefully used the Havalon Piranta to work my way around the top of the heart where all the fat lies. You’ll also see the valves and a piece of flesh that looks like a flap all connected at the top. Once you’ve worked your way around the heart to remove the fat, make a swift slicing motion and remove the fat, valves and flap all at once. You should now have a heart with a flat top and you can see clearly into the 2 main ventricles.
If this is your first time cleaning a heart don’t be alarmed when you see white strings inside. Your deer doesn’t have some weird disease or parasites. These are properly known as “Chordae Tendineae” or are from the same phrase we commonly use “you’re pulling on my heartstrings.” These strings are easily removable, but first, we need to open the heart in order to get to them properly. Looking at the outside of the heart you’ll see what looks like a seam running down and along the side of it. This is the left ventricle and we will start by opening this up first. Run your knife along the inside of the seam and separate it from the main bulk of the heart. Be sure you’re not cutting too deep and into the right ventricle. This should be a swift motion cutting almost outwards and opening the left ventricle into a flap of sorts. Now, carefully cut along the seam, all the way until it ends and then fully remove it from the heart by cutting straight down and removing the flap. You have now fully removed the left ventricle and have your first heart filet ready, set it aside. Make sure to click the photo’s below to enlarge them and use them for reference.
No that’s not a parasite or disease. These are “Chordae Tendineae” or better known as “the heart strings”
Carefully insert your knife along the inside of the left ventricle seam and cut it open.
Be sure you’re not cutting too deep and only removing the left ventricle.
Carefully cut the seam all the way until it ends and then fully remove it from the heart by cutting straight down.
Pictured here is the “seam of the heart” where we will use our knife to open the left ventricle.
You can also lift the left ventricle by putting your finger inside of it and pulling it away from the main part of the heart.
Here you can see the left ventricle is mostly removed and turned into a flap.
You have now fully removed the left ventricle and have your first heart filet ready, set it aside.
Here the valves, fat and left ventricle is fully removed and we will now open up the right ventricle to create our final filet.
The next step in preparing the heart is to open the right ventricle. Now that the left ventricle is open, separated and set aside take the right ventricle in your hand and again insert your knife and filet it fully open. You’ll notice that the round bottom will still have a bit of the pointed tip secured. A second cut will free this away and let you fully open the right ventricle into another heart filet. Congratulations, you just processed your first big game heart!
Insert your knife into the right ventricle
In one or two swipes you should easily be able to open the right ventricle of the heart
The tip or point of the heart may need an additional one or two cuts in order to properly lay flat for a filet style
Now the heart can fully lay flat and you can begin to work on removing the heart strings
The next step will be to remove all the Chordae Tendineae. Using your finger to pull them up carefully, take your knife and slice each cluster of strings away from the heart. Do your best to not remove any additional meat in the process. On my Coues Deer, I only had about 3 or 4 of these clusters, I'm sure that the larger the animal the more there will probably be. Do your best to remove all of these and once they’re gone you’re ready to season the heart.
Tugging on the strings can help you get a sense of where they’re attached and how much you’ll need to cut away without wasting meat.
Carefully use your knife to slide parallel with the heart, cutting the strings away.
Once one side is free, pull them up and use the knife to free the other end.
The Final Stretch
Now that you’ve successfully processed the heart let’s do the last little bit of preparation. This is subject to both opinion and dish of choice but I think heart meat cubed was an excellent selection. This is due to the fact that cubed meat has such a wide variety of use case scenarios. I knew from the beginning I’d be making a taco out this. However as always, there is more than one way to skin a cat.. or heart.. you know what I mean! Instead of doing cubes you could do long strips or medium strips. You could also leave it in full fillets if you wanted to. However, this article is focusing on heart taco’s so cubed it is! As you can see in the photos below I took the fillets and cut them in long wide strips. I laid the long strips horizontally and cut vertically making them into about finger-width pieces. Once all the fillets were cut, I then again cut those pieces in half creating meat cubes. Make sure to reference the pictures below for how I approached this process.
Upper left is the right ventricle of the heart. Lower right is the left ventricle.
4 perfectly processed heart fillets
Laying the fillets horizontally and cutting them into finger width slices
Cutting the finger width slices again into a final product, meat cubes
One Coues Deer heart, fully cubed and ready for seasonings and a cedar plank
The Seasoning
This is hands down one of my favorite parts. I feel as though this is where the meat really comes to life. As I said earlier, I was extremely blessed when the owner of Slavo Salt Seasonings message me via Instagram and offered to send me some of their seasonings. A Phoenix-based company, Slavo Salt Seasonings offers an awesome variety of spices that fits every niche. In this dish, I chose to go with the Spicy blend. This turned out to be a great choice as it incorporated the perfect pop of flavor with the tender deer heart. In hindsight, if I had planned more properly I would have done a thorough marinade. However, for a short notice prep, that flavor of the Slavo Salt Spicy blend and a few heavy dashes of Worcestershire sauce across the meat once it is placed on the cedar plank was the perfect blend. All said and done we were extremely impressed with how it turned out. In fact, upon the writing of this article, I have some elk heart currently thawing and will be doing the exact same process again for tonight’s dinner.
Line up the cubed mead perfectly along the center of the plank but spaced out enough heat can penetrate the meat cubes
For the salmon I cooked it with a meat probe inserted. Roughly 350 for 45 minutes was perfect for our fish. However the heart was ready within 20-30 minutes. It’s really all on preference of how rare you like your meat.
For cedar planks I ran to my local Ace Hardware and bought a pair of Western BBQ cedar planks
http://www.westernbbqproducts.com/cedar-planks.html
I absolutely love Worcestershire sauce so feel free to add as much as you’d like, you can never have too much in my humble opinion!
Turn on your smoker and let is rise to 200 on the “smoke” setting. Once the smoker reaches temperature, raise it to 350 and let the heart smoke on the cedar plank for roughly 20-30 minutes. Readiness will all depend on how you like your meat cooked. Me personally, I’m a rare to medium-rare kind of guy. Anything above is that too done. Especially when it comes to cooking wild game you always want to go “low and slow.” Another thing to remember as well is as the meat sits after cooking it will continue to rise in temperature slightly. Again, this meat was hands down some of the best I have ever had. As you can see in the photo’s the cedar planks do a phenomenal job at maintaining juiciness and keeping the Worcestershire sauce contained in with the heart. If you go to check on your heart halfway through make sure to add a few extra drizzles of Worcestershire sauce to help maintain the moisture. Now dig in and enjoy, Bon Appétit! If you make some of your own creative heart recipes be sure to share them with Bowhunting AZ on social media! You can find us on Facebook and Instagram “@bowhuntingaz”
Here’s a little promo video I made of my own Pit Boss 440D pellet smoker. In this video I cook an elk roast and elk tenderloin. For pellets I use a blend of Oak, Mesquite and Pecan.
https://pitboss-grills.com/