I've never cooked elk, but I spent 12 years cooking venison when I lived in western NJ. This is the procedure I used for deer tenderloin:

1. Wash and dry it. Then put some garlic powder in a cup of water with a tablespoon of lemon or orange juice. Put the tenderloin in a ziploc bag and add the mixture, coating it completely. Let it sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour, overnight is best, but if you cook it slowly, you'll be fine.

2. This is very lean meat. Wrap it in bacon. (Of course, what meat doesn't taste better with bacon?)

3. Slow cook it with indirect heat on a barbecue grill or in the oven at 250 degrees until you get to 135 degrees in the deepest part of the meat. Cook it 5 minutes longer and then pull it from the cooker. Let it stand, covered, for 20 minutes or so.

I only have had elk once prepared by someone else, and I found it not gamy at all. that tenderloin won't be tough and I would brush it with olive oil and maybe insert a few slivers of garlic into slits in the meat and cook on the grill until medium rare. if you cook it more than that it WILL be tough. I think 135 is too hot...I would aim for 120 when you take it off the grill.

Thank you both. I've got it marinating now in garlic and lemon with some olive oil.

Don't leave it too long in lemon juice or you will "cook" the outside of the meat and make it spongy.

thanks just a little lemon with the garlic and oil. Not enough to cook it.

I really like elk (and oddly I'm not that fond of venison), I'd rather have ground elk than ground beef. But I have to admit to using bacon on an elk roast too, they are just too lean (or maybe its my cooking skills that are lean ;0)) to cook thoroughly and still have the roast be moist. I've made a lot of swiss steak from elk, we enjoy those with rice or mashed potatoes.

I've cooked hamburgers to medium doneness using ground elk, but I've never served wild game rare or medium rare.

Morz, it's funny you say that because, although I can eat rare to med rare beef and lamb, I feel a bit queasy about rare wild game. The only way I've eaten venison was a million years ago when a friend owned a bar and a group of us would close down the bar, go to his house and he's start cooking venison and onions in a Swiss steak manner, pour over a bunch of red wine. Let them cook for quite a while we would drink some more, eat at 4 a.m. sleep until noon. It was the best food ever. Not sure I will appreciate it 40 years later and sober! But maybe I should just cook the elk that way.

I think the risk of contracting toxoplasmosis is much greater for anyone emptying a kitty litter box, or digging in a garden where a cat defecates than it is by eating medium rare elk!

The only thing I know about Elk, is that Smudge, our 16-yr old Maine Coon loves his Elk and Pheasant raw food mixture.

I agree, LindaC, but the government does not. That's where the warning comes from. I ignore it, of course, but if I were serving it to my aunt who is undergoing chemotherapy or one of the grandbabies, I'd be a bit more careful.

And, believe it or not, there seems to be MORE disease with farmed cervids and less in wild animals.

Annie

I think anything is good sliced thin with veg and teryaki sauce over rice!

I thought I posted to this thread yesterday. Guess it didn't take.

Olychick - What did you do with it and how did it come out? I was given some elk tenderloin as well, and like you I was a bit skeered of it and as a result overcooked it. 135 SV and a quick sear, and it was well beyond where it should have been. I'll drop that five maybe ten degrees next time, now that I know it's not some crazy funky tasting meat. Excuse the brutal photography.

I should have reported back - sorry. Well, I think I'm not a game eater. I just couldn't bring myself to cook it. Totally nonsensical because I eat beef, lamb and pork, chicken, etc. I feel really, really guilty about not using it, but the animal wasn't killed for that piece of meat, so I just have to let it go.

I appreciate all the input and hope this thread will be informative to someone else someday if they search for cooking elk. Thank you!

I hope you either froze it or passed it on to someone who could enjoy it.

No, I wouldn't feel so guilty if I'd have done that. Not many in my circle would have eaten it and that's how I ended up with it in the first place....now I know just to say no thanks.

Oh dear, that's too bad. It would have been good sliced thinly and served with horseradish sauce, probably no one would notice the difference between that and grassfed beef, by the time you sauced it. If the flavor is what scared you, fajitas would have been a possibility too.

Annie

Annie, I think it's much more esoteric than fearing the flavor. It's a complicated mess of values and being detached from the source of our meat...even though I try to buy locally sourced, humanely raised meat, eating wild game (Bambi, if it were) just is too hard. I KNOW it's crazy. But sometimes we have to defer to our craziness.