It sounds as if the meat processor cut you chops bone-in. If so, this will leave bone meal on your chops, but it is not the same as fat or tallow.

We cut all our deer chops boneless, so we us a knife and not a band saw. This way, there is no bone meal on the chops.

And we agree with you that fat/tallow from a deer will lead to a gamey taste in the meat. We try and trim all the fat off of the deer chops when we cut them by hand. And we pretty well get 99% of the fat off. If there is still some fat on your deer chops, you can trim the fat off yourself after they thaw out and before you cook them. If there is bone meal on the "face" of the chops (not the edges), you can run a knife over the face to scrape (not cut) the bone meal off. If that does not make the chops taste less gamey, then there are some other factors that can cause a gamey taste in the deer meat besides the fat/tallow being left on the meat.

Another factor in the gamey taste would be how the deer was handled between it being shot and when it was brought to the processor. If it was over 24 hours on "warm" temperature between the deer's death and it being hung in the processors cooler, this can also lead to a gamey taste, and there is not really anything you or the butcher can do to remove this gamey taste besides using a marinade to help cover up the gamey taste.

In summary, if the butcher says that the deer fat won't make a deer cut taste gamey, I would have to disagree with him. Deer fat will make the meat taste gamey!

Monday, October 13, 2003 02:04 PM