Slow Cooked Deer Shoulder Recipe - Senegalese Venison Shoulder (2024)

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What can you do with deer shoulder? Lots of things, but it all depends on the deer. I shot a Coues deer recently, and, as you may know, they are very small deer. So small I decided to slow cook a whole shoulder in one shot.

I love doing this. When you have a cut of meat small enough to fit in a pot or roasting pan, you really owe it to yourself to leave it on the bone and cook it whole. Why? You get the benefit of all that connective tissue, and the meat stays moister when it’s on the bone. Still, with venison shoulder, you need to cook some sort of pot roast.

Slow, moist cooking is the way to go because it will melt all that connective tissue in a deer shoulder without drying out the meat. This process takes hours.

Which route you take is up to you. I already have a fantastic venison pot roast recipe, that uses Polish cuisine as a base. But I prefer to use venison neck for that recipe. While deer shoulder can certainly be used for that Polish-style dish, I decided to look more south for inspiration this time. Really far south. As in Africa.

Senegal, to be exact. Before you click away, thinking this must be too weird to even try, it isn’t. Senegalese food is heavily influenced by France, which was the country’s former colonial overlord. And while there are some cool Senegalese touches you can add to make this more “African,” the basic recipe is easy to make.

You salt a deer shoulder and then jam garlic cloves into it. You then smear it with a mixture of Dijon mustard, cumin, and black pepper. Slice a bunch of onions to serve as a bed for the deer shoulder, then sprinkle dried thyme on them. Set the meat on the onions, pour over a little stock, seal the whole shebang and cook very slowly until tender.

In Senegal, this is called dibi-style lamb. Normally done with young lambs at a very low temperature, you need to modify it for deer shoulder. I got my inspiration for this recipe from Chef Pierre Thiam’s cookbook Senegal: Modern Senegalese Recipes from the Source to the Bowl,which is a great introduction to one of the most interesting cuisines of Africa.

Notice that there are no “weird” ingredients yet? You can “Africanize” this by using red palm oilinstead of peanut oil, and intoxicatingly aromatic selim pepper instead of regular pepper. But it’s not necessary.

Lamb or venison shoulder can then be served with Senegalese tamarind Kani Sauce, which is essentially a tomato sauce with tamarind and Scotch bonnet peppers in it (recipe below). But many Senegalese just serve it with more Dijon mustard.

What to serve it with? Well, good bread is normal. You can also serve your deer shoulder with rice, or with sweet potato-plantain fritters. Or really whatever you’d like.