Kill it, grill it: Nugent on the Palin diet

Moose burgers? Well, yes, wild game - though not widely hunted, served or sold in urban areas - is the name of the game for many Americans, including people like Republican vice-presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin and hunter-rock-star Ted Nugent.

“Venison is perfect food,” says Mr. Nugent (who, by the way, is a huge Palin fan and called her “a political savior” in a recent column for HumanEvents.com) via e-mail from Jackson, Mich., where he’s recording an audio version of his book “Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto,” which comes out later this fall.

Jackson is also where Mr. Nugent hunts.

“We hunt, fish and trap all legal renewable game,” Mr. Nugent says.

This includes rabbit, fox, elk, grouse and his favorite, venison.

“Young venison over hot coals, smothered in garlic and butter, rare, with family and friends in the great outdoors around a fire, with a slug of good African red wine,” Mr. Nugent says of his favorite food and setting.

• Click here for the Nuge’s recipe for Bubble bean piranha a-la-Colorado moose

His method of hunting?

“We celebrate all legal methodologies,” he says, indicating that he tracks, hunts from blinds and traps, using bow and arrow as well as firearms.

OK, so that’s wild man Nuge’s way.

For the rest of us, who don’t hunt but might go to a place like Whole Foods (which sells a variety of game) and buy a cut of venison or buffalo, how to prepare it?

“In general, it’s not hard to prepare game,” says Sarah Kagan, food editor at Epicurious.com, a Conde Nast food Web site with more than 35,000 professionally tested recipes, “but you usually have to lower the cooking temperature and marinate the meat to get the gamey flavor out.”

There’s a difference between game bought at places like Whole Foods (which is farm raised) and wild game (the type the Nuge would prepare and eat).

“Wild animals basically have a tougher life,” Ms. Kagan says.

The tougher life makes for tougher meat.

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