[bear roaring behind the rock]
[bear growls] [man screams in pain]
[man whistling]
[offscreen] Hurry up, Pearson! We're starving.
[Pearson] It'll be ready! When it's ready...
[sound of spoon in a bowl]
[sound of man slurping]
Hey there, folks. Welcome back to Bingin' with Babish.
I'm Arthur Morgan, standin' in for Babish, 'cause he was too yeller to come out to the woods
So I'm makin' Pearson's special: wild game stew. First things first, we gotta build us a roarin' fire.
You can do this however y'like, but I prefer to go for a sort of teepee effect.
I think in the long run, this concentrates the heat better in the center of the fire.
Anyway, we're gonna light that up- and not pay attention to the watch that we forgot to take off-
And then it's time to set up our cookin' rig.
I dunno how t'work these damn fangled things.
Normally, I'd have Pearson do this, but his head's so far up his ass he's fishin' for cowpies.
Anyway, once we got that all set up, we're gonna build up our fire. We want a fire of good strength
'Cause the first thing we're gonna be doin' is searin'
and then we're gonna let her burn down a little bit so the stew can simmer.
Now, back to the butcher block, we're gonna get our vegetables ready
We're gonna start with a sweet Spaniard's onion and y'aint gotta cut it up all fancy 'n fine
We're not cookin' fer the Queen here
Anyway, we're gonna get that out of the way, so we can make room for some celery,
-ain't a stew without celery.
And then next up, I'm gonna teach you a trick for peeling carrots.
If you ain't highborn, and you don't have yourself a vegetable peeler
you can just use the sharp edge o' yer knife and just watch those carrots jump out of their skins.
And then we're gonna cut these into nice big chunks,
'cause we don't want 'em breaking down in the stew none.
And there y'have it, the basic vegetables. If you wanna be a real fancy boy about it,
you can add some rough chopped garlic, and maybe some herbs, like a bay leaf or thyme.
I personally don't give a damn, but I figure this what Babish woulda' done.
And then it's time to get t'work on our meat.
First up, we got the hindquarters of a white-tailed deer
Gonna cut 'er into appropriate stew sized chunks.
Then next up, we got ourselves a cottontail rabbit
Which is, admittedly, a little frozen.
I know that's not exactly period-appropriate, but the damn thing just wouldn't defrost!
In the end, it actually helped make it a little bit easier to chop up in to little stew-size pieces.
I'm gonna keep the legs in there, I think that's gonna add a little bit of flavor.
But now it's on to the main event: Genuine bear meat.
Now bear meat is regarded as pretty greasy, so we want t'get rid of as much fat as possible.
But don't throw that fat away,
'cause we're gonna be rendering some of it out to brown up the meat in the stewpot.
Anyway, with that I...
I think I gotta...
stop doin' this 'cause it's really hell on my throat,
and slowly, but surely, return back to the 21st century....
Ok, so anyway, we're setting up a heavy Dutch oven over our fire, then we're stoking the fire a bit
because we want it to be super hot for this stage, because we're gonna sear up our meat.
Now I'm gonna use a little bit of water to make sure that our pan is spitting hot - and it is.
So now is the perfect time to utilize our bear fat. We're going to add it to the hot pan,
letting it sizzle and crackle for about 15 minutes
until we've rendered out maybe a quarter cup of liquid fat, eagerly awaiting the reception of our meat.
But before those flavors join the party, we've got to dig out our fat scraps
and perform a little prep work on our meat.
We're gonna combine them all together in a Dutch oven or a bowl, if it's 2018, and bowls are a thing
and we're going to season them generously with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.
Don't worry, I pre-ground the stuff before I left home-
and a generous sprinkling of flour. We want this to form a gummy, sticky surface on the exterior of the meat
which is going to help thicken the stew down the line.
Mix it all together until it's evenly coated and then lay it down in a single layer.
We're getting both color and flavor on the meat, and guess what else we're getting? That's right, fond.
[Arthur] I dunno what "fond" is, but this Babish fella's really got a hard-on for it.
[Babish] Arthur, chill. This is a...family show.
Anyway, we're doing this in two batches so that we can make sure that all the meat is well-browned.
But this is optional - if you only brown half the meat you're still gonna get a ton of flavor.
Either way, once everybody's browned and happy, take a look at that stuff that we got on the bottom of the pot.
Arthur's right - I am totally hard...core for fond.
And just like most stews, now's the time that we add our onions, give them a little stir,
We're just sweating these onions,
which means that we want them to become translucent around the edges and maybe pick up a little color.
Once they have, we're adding the chopped garlic and celery and just sauteing for another minute until fragrant.
And then finally the highlight of my day. It's time to deglaze.
And if you've watched the show at all, you must know by now that
we're gonna scrape up all that good stuff off the bottom of the pot
then we're gonna bring back our three different kinds of wild game to the party
and all these flavors are about to really get to know each other - like, become best friends.
The stew in the game looks red in color, which to me says Brunswick stew:
a stew that has a base of water or beef broth and crushed tomatoes.
According to this loving tribute, the first-ever Brunswick stew was made in 1898,
and the game is set in 1899, so Pearson was kind of a trendsetter.
So, along with these three bay leaves, we've probably added two cups of crushed tomatoes
and about four cups of beef broth.
And now we just gotta let it stew for about an hour.
This is a good time to sit down
and sort of reflect on the great questions in life.
[Arthur] Like why does almost all bear meat contain trichinosis?
[Babish] That is - that is a good question, and it's true. Most bear meat contains trichinosis parasites,
but all we have to do is cook the meat above 145° Fahrenheit, which we are going well above and beyond.
Now, with 30 minutes to go, we are adding the potatoes and carrots.
We gotta let this stew for 30 more minutes and do - whoops!
Maybe find a more structurally sound log
upon which to sit and wait until the carrots and potatoes are nice and tender,
and your stew has taken on a very stew-like quality.
And there it is: venison, rabbit, and bear stew.
It it even looks like the one in the game, even though I recognized that there were mushrooms
in the one in the game and I forgot to get mushrooms, so I'm sorry.
But let's talk about the meat.
The venison was from Colorado deer, they were probably feeding on grain,
and thus they weren't that gamey. And then the bear.
The bear was like a sweeter version of the venison,
not at all greasy, like it is often described, because we removed most of the fat.
And not only did the rabbit taste like chicken, it looked like chicken.
Overall, it was a pretty good stew. I mean, it's essentially a recipe dating from 1899.
It is basic, wholesome, filling food that does the best that it can
with a meat as tricky as wild game, and it might not have joined my clean plate club, but let's ask Arthur.
[Arthur] Babish, yer a city boy, and it's turnin' me soft.
[Arthur] The only thing I don't like about this stew is that Pearson makes it.
[western outro music]
[yelling] LENNY!