Any venison/elk recipe should do. The steaks you can cook like any other steak, although you'll probably want to add a little extra fat (like a pat of butter). You can use the ground meat pretty much like ground beef, adding a little fat into the recipe. You can also can the ground meat.

Sounds like you are trying to do the butchering, freezing and canning all at the same time? That is really complicated and full of possible errors. With 3 deer I hope you have multiple freezers. You need to butcher, wrap and freeze. Then put the canning off for now and you can what you want to can at leisure. Just pull the pack out of the freezer, cut it up frozen, and return it to the freezer until you have time to can it. We prefer hot pack with broth - beef, vegetable, turkey, even chicken. Raw pack makes its own broth and some prefer that - it is just a personal preference so you have to try both and see which you prefer. You can can it all if you wish but usually we keep the tenderloin, some steak, loin roasts and ribs frozen for fresh cooking. I can the backstrap steaks and the briskets (for bar-b-q) and most of the rest is ground and canned mixed with some pork for chili and meatloaf or frozen in burgers. I assume you are planning to have jerky and/or summer sausage made from the less-than-ideal cuts? Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Broken Arrow Ranch - Processing Venison

Love venison and live on it when I can. I'm guessing you mean whitetail venison... mule deer and elk are different meats all together. My current lust is cajun venison. Hot frying pan of bacon grease and toss in venison coated with cajun spice. I like mine rather rare... it will turn to jerky if you go for well done (which is not all bad). If it is home butchered watch close for any stray hair. One stray hair and the whole pan will take on a oily gamey taste. The hair has a protective oil that keeps the deer dry when they run around outside. Home butchered is often best given a quick rinse with cold running water before it hits the pan... I don't rinse but then I have years practice butchering so no stray hair or other booboo. If you pan fry it and it strikes you as gamey I highly recommend A-1 steak sauce... that should keep it edible to even the most sensitive taste buds. I don't recommend tomato based dishes unless you eat venison regular. There is a chemical in many meats that gives the "gamey" taste. After awhile your sense of tastes adjusts so that it is not remarkable. Tomato will bring out that taste and highlight it... as in venison chili. I eat venison chili but vension is regular table fare for me. My dad always likes a stroganoff dish. Fry venison, make cream sauce, stir in cooked noodles (kluski!). My grandfather's favorite burger was half venison and half pork. I don't recommend boiling venison. It won't be ruined and I boil scraps from butchering for my animals. I have tasted boiled venison... not bad. My cat Tuna loved it that way and could eat her own weight in just a couple days. For human consumption you want the meat juices to get on the hot pan and turn to a sweet brown carmel... the browning on meat. Buffalo venison I don't recommend as anything other then ground meat. It is so lean it starts shoe leather tough and gets tougher. Elk is one of the finest meats in the world. More fat then whitetail/buff so it can be panfried. The sweetest and mildest of the venison family that I have tried. Mule Deer are fairly fatty with a beef like texture. I find it stringy but tastey. So... don't let it sit in the freezer! Get out a package and make something. If it tastes bad give it to the dog and try again. Letting it sit until freezer burned is a waste... it won't improve with age. : ) lyra

I eat lots and lots of venison from Whitetail deer. A friend gave me some Mule Deer venison this fall and I found it fatter and milder. Buffalo is pretty tough but the huge grill sized steaks are impressive. I think elk is probably the finest venison I've eaten and fully equal to the best beef. A local game farm has been selling culls at prices comparable to beef. Some city hunters only want horns so the meat is gifted to hungry locals. If I can get up tomorrow morning I can probably shoot a Whitetail walking up my driveway which they use as a trail. Wish I knew which one ate my tomatoes last summer... I'd love to blast that one in particular. The single most important thing is to keep the hair out of the meat! Deer hair has skin oils that spread out when cooked and give the meat an awful taste. Just one hair in the frying pan will give the off flavor to the whole batch. If you are gifted with venison rinse it under cold running water and inspect well for any stray hairs. I butcher my own deer with a knife so no bones ever in my venison. I've had venison steaks with bone in and not noticed any unusual flavor. Membranes, what I think some are calling "silver" don't have much affect on flavor. They are tough so they make cutting a steak difficult. I get the thick ones with a fillet knife just like I'd skin a fish. The reason I butcher with a knife is to be cheap. I'm practiced at it so it only takes a couple three hours for me to go from whole deer to everything in the freezer. If you are not practiced probably the best thing you can do is have a butcher take care of it. It costs to have it cut, wrapped, ground with pork fat, and frozen. I've become a huge fan of blackened cajun seasoned venison... black on the outside and very rare on the inside. Very sweet and tender to my taste. I prefer to fry mine in bacon grease but vegtable oil works. For some reason vension cooked with tomatoes takes on a very particular and stronger taste. Venison chili will have a remarkable venison taste. To my taste beef and venison don't mix well. Pork and venison do go together very well. My grandfather's favorite burger was half pork and half venison. Older animals tend to be tough. Tame rabbits over a year old can be so tough you can't take a bite! There is good reason people prefer lamb, fryer chickens, and veal. The young ones are tender and taste milder. They also have a better feed conversion ratio... that is the amount of feed needed to produce an amount of meat. It is better for the environment to eat young animals. Most people I know that don't like vension don't like the idea of eating a deer. If you don't care for the flavor but want to eat some to keep peace with the family hunter put some steak sauce on it... lots of steak sauce. Good Hunting! : ) lyra When I was younger I'd skin and pickle the tounge to show off to the guys... lifting it whole from the pickle jar I'd proclaim that I got a "buck"... LOL! Jessy can help you figure what part of a buck the pickled tounge resembles.