Caribou

[drheerdt]

A friend wants me to smoke a caribou. Anyone done this? Suggestions?

 

[rbranstner]

No I have never had the chance to try caribou. I would think it would be close to an elk or venison but am not sure. I am guess there is little to no marble in the meat and it is very lean. If I am correct you are going to want to smoke it until around 140-150 so it is still medium or it will be very dry otherwise. Think about wrapping it in bacon to keep it from drying out. Do a search for Elk or Venison and you should pull up some recipes you can follow.

 

[plj]

Caribou is excellent, you're in for a treat. My wife ranks it #1, elk #2. (I put elk #1, caribou #2, moose #3, whitetail #4, dont care for mulie... but when my wife says "we need some caribou meat", I dont argue!) Anyway, yes, I agree with rbranstner - cook/smoke it the same as any other extremely lean venison being very careful about the moisture. With game meat I go mostly for steaks, stir-fry, and ground. And about half of it into sausage, kielbasa, etc. Anyway if I was doing game in the smoker I'd wrap it in bacon and definitely have a pan of broth beneath it, in fact I'd probably have it foiled for half the cook time, think about serving it in the au jus, or like the "italian sammies" you see some good pictures of here on SMF. Your biggest issue as with any game meat will be the dryness.

ok, now I'm hungry.