Cooking with Kokanee Quinn: The Animal Gave Its Best, So Let’s Drink Some Good Wine, Too

Every hunt earns its ending at the table, and Kokanee Quinn has just found her strongest closing argument: Easy Wine-Braised Antelope Shoulder Roast from Harvesting Nature, a recipe that treats a bone-in pronghorn shoulder with all the ceremony it deserves — a kosher-salt sear, garlic cloves tucked into slits like secrets, a bold slather of mustard-and-spice paste, and then, in a gloriously committed pour, nearly an entire bottle of red wine. Five or six patient hours on low finish the work, leaving the roast moist, tender, and perfumed with cardamom and cumin while potatoes, carrots, and onion drink up the evidence below. It is coq au vin’s wild-country cousin, and Quinn’s discovery proves the oldest truth in field-to-table cooking: the animal already gave its best, so the least we can do is braise with wine worth drinking.

Easy Wine-Braised Antelope Shoulder Roast

Recipe by Chase Waller

5.0 from 1 vote

Course: Wild Recipes

Servings

6servings

Prep time

30minutes

Cooking time

5hours 

Cook Mode

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Ingredients

• One bone-in antelope shoulder (or any big game shoulder roast)
• 1⁄3 cup yellow mustard
• 1 medium sized mustard leaf, chopped extremely finely (optional) or use 1 tbsp of your favorite herb like rosemary or thyme
• ½ tsp each of cardamom, ground cumin, paprika, and cayenne
• 5 cloves garlic, cut in half lengthwise
• Kosher salt
• 1 bottle red wine
• 1.5 pounds red potatoes
• 1 medium onion
• ½ pound carrots, peeled and cut into large pieces
• 2 bay leaves

Preparation

• Mix the mustard, mustard leaf, cardamom, ground cumin, paprika, and cayenne in a small bowl until you have a paste.
• Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Swirl a small amount of olive oil in the bottom.
• Rub the meat down with kosher salt. Sear on both sides.
• Remove the meat and deglaze the skillet with a splash of red wine. Spoon contents into the slow cooker.
• Cut small, evenly spaced slits into the meat and insert cut garlic.
• Slather the meat with the mustard paste and place in the slow cooker.
• Pour in the wine until the meat is just barely covered by liquid. Add bay leaves.
• Set slow cooker to low. Check after 2.5 hours. Add veggies and top off the liquid with water or stock if necessary. Some venting will be required as the alcohol evaporates off. Cook for an additional 2.5 hours or until the veggies are cooked.
• Remove meat and veggies and allow to rest before slicing. Spoon a small amount of liquid over the meat.