Sometimes, when you stumble upon a good thing, you feel behooved to spread the good word, compelled to share an extraordinary discovery with those yet to make its acquaintance, driven to expound on a delight so excellent you have no option but to kick aside the bushel and let loose the light.

So it is with bison.

A secret to too many people for too many years, even in spite of its ancient origins, bison is a culinary marvel that needs to be on everybody’s lips.

It’s why Carmen Creek joined forces, along with other bison marketers and the Canadian Bison Association, to participate in the Canada Export Centre.

The Canada Export Centre was founded in Vancouver in 2004 to facilitate trade relations between client companies from Canada and potential buyers the world over. A private firm that works with all levels of government, the centre is committed to increasing trade to and from our fair land along lines that might not otherwise be so well travelled. Among other services, including the performance of market research and competitive intelligence studies, the centre serves as a kind of matchmaker for those on the hunt for something particular, wherever they might be, and those with that something particular to offer.

The centre employs a store-front, permanent trade show approach that’s unique in North America. Located in Vancouver’s downtown business and hotel district, within spitting distance of the World Trade Centre and the Vancouver and Exhibition Centre, its more than 17,000 sq. ft. provide spectacular showcasing for hundreds of Canadian products and services.

As for Carmen Creek and its equally busting-at-the-seams-over-bison comrades, this kind of alliance can only be a good thing. Through its powerful sales and marketing reach, the centre will surely open the gates for lovers of this succulent meat to discover its Canadian roots.

To that end, and in recognition of a partnership that will invite outsiders into the miracle that is up-north bison, a decidedly Canadian recipe:

Grilled Maple Bison Tenderloin

1 1 1/3 lb (650 g) bison tenderloin (or steak)
Pepper

Maple Sauce:
3 tbsp (45 mL) butter
2 tbsp (30 mL) shallots, finely chopped
2/3 cup (150 mL) red wine
1/4 cup (60 mL) maple syrup
1 cup (250 mL) game stock or demi-glaze sauce
1/4 cup (60 mL) cream 35 %
Salt and pepper

Instructions

Pepper bison tenderloin. Cook on an oiled barbecue grill over medium-high heat for 15-20 minutes, until preferred doneness, turning occasionally. Do not overcook. Pour a generous amount of maple sauce into a serving dish and add the tenderloin on top, having carved a few slices. Serve with steamed broccoli and grilled sweet potatoes.

Maple Sauce:
In small saucepan, sauté shallots in butter for two minutes while stirring. Pour in the wine while scraping the bottom with a spatula. Simmer until reduced to half, stirring occasionally. Stir in the maple syrup, game stock and cream.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer until the sauce has reduced to half. Serve with red meat.

Silk worm larvae. Bat wings with hot chili relish. Uterus of frog, served inside a melon. These are some truly exotic foodstuffs. 

A slab of bison steak, keeping company with some roast spuds? Not so much. 

It never fails to surprise me, even all these years into the bison game, how alarmed some people are at the notion of eating outside of their comfort zone. Admittedly, bison is not a pork chop. It’s not a hamburger or a prime rib or a plate of macaroni and cheese. But neither is it cow intestines, sprinkled with dried oregano and chili. 

Personal growth comes by way of experimentation and courage. And it’s not like taking a bison for a short foxtrot around your dinner plate is any great feat anyway. It’s merely a delicious means of expanding your culinary horizons a little. Taking a swing with something a little less traditional. 

Bison is a tasty, healthful meat course that asks little of its indulgence. An open mind. A sensitive palate. A taste for turning convention on its ear. 

Nobody’s looking for lunacy here. No one’s calling for you to eat a balut (a fertilized duck or chicken egg with a nearly developed embryo inside that’s boiled and eaten in the shell) or slurp some menudo (cow stomach soup, a festival for the mouth of rubbery tripe chunks, served at breakfast to cure hangovers in Mexico) here. Nor are they standing by with a frosty cup of calpis water (read: cow pee) with which to wash it down. 

Nope. Nothing scarier here than a rich, red slab of heaven in the form of bison steak. 

Get yourself a thick one, at least an inch and a quarter.  Consider smashing some fresh garlic cloves or dry mustard powder into it, or leave it bare-naked. Heat your grill and brush your steaks with some vegetable or canola oil. Crack some pepper across them and rub in some coarse sea salt. 

Keep an eye on your cooking creation throughout. Bison is leaner than the meat to which your grill typically plays host, and can burn and dry out quicker. It’s important that your ’cue be sufficiently heated up, so invest in one of those newfangled grill surface thermometers. Shoot for a surface temperature, whether yours consumes gas or charcoal, of some 600F before making a commitment. 

Brush some oil across your grill and sear each side of the steak for about two minutes, lid down. From there, count on further cooking of between two and three minutes a side, depending on your tastes for well-doneness. (Note: bison is best enjoyed medium rare – and not past medium)

In any case, it’s wise to let your sizzling hunk of suppertime staple sit for a good 10 minutes before ripping into it. The meat will continue to cook for a bit, and the juices looking to spring from its searing interior will not drain onto your plate.

So maybe it’s not casu marzu—rotten cheese swimming in fly larvae, a favourite among Sardinians. But thank goodness for that. And for someone newly introduced to the foody adventure that is bison meat, call it an impressive little foray through a new gastronomical gateway.

Progress does not always lead to an improved state of affairs. One need only cast a glance across the thick and blackening waters of the Gulf of Mexico to confirm that. Or swing open their snack cupboard for an eyeful of the chemically complicated ingredients lists that populate the packages within.

There’s much to be said for embarking on the occasional journey back through time, to simpler days when options were limited—and that was a good thing.

The foods with which our ancestors filled their tummies were of the earth, free from the human intervention that has sent modern-day scientists scrambling into their labs to determine the extent to which humankind will eventually suffer this interference. Grains and fish and—yes—glorious bison were humanity’s staples back in the day. And we were all the better for it.

The Aboriginal diet—or the modernized version one Dr. Atkins assumed—encourages the gastronomical behaviour of our hunter-gatherer ancestors: as much protein as you can jam down your gullet, a whack of animal fat, a sampling of nuts, and a low-glycemic selection of plants, fruits and the occasional grain.

Not convinced? Just ask Rod Bruinooge, a Conservative MP for Winnipeg South who is making a lot of noise, of late, about having shed some 60 pounds by adopting just this culinary regimen, glorying in the spotlessness of a native Canadian diet before it was sullied with the refined sugars and processed additives that would go on to steal the physical wellbeing of so many of us.

Bruinooge, a native Cree who’s shrunk from 223 pounds to around 165, was determined to sidestep type 2 diabetes, a disease Aboriginal Canadians are three to five times more likely to experience than non-Aboriginal Canadians. Sticking to a menu modeled on that of his native ancestors and giving fat and sodium a wide berth, Bruinooge has been eating mostly bison, fish and other indigenous animals since New Year’s Day.

“It’s a healthier diet,” says Ben Genaille, a culinary arts instructor at Vancouver Community College. “It’s eating local, eating fresh, eating what’s in season, eating what you gather, eating what you kill. An Aboriginal diet is an outstanding thing.”

Genaille applauds particularly the inclusion of bison in this everything-old-is-new-again regime. The meat is leaner, he says, because the animals are always on the move. “They’re getting their exercise; releasing their daily stress by walking around and enjoying life, as opposed to being cooped up in a pen.”

None of this is news to the Indigenous Diabetes Education Alliance, which took shape in 2001 to help diabetic Native Americans living on Indian reservations by furnishing them with bison meat. The organization is hopeful its results will convince people of the benefits of a more traditional diet, and that the bison program will eventually become standard among all diabetics living on reservations.

Genaille hopes the good word on bison will spread, too, and is doing his bit to that end in his Aboriginal culinary arts course—North America’s only such syllabus. Participants in this 12-month program, undertaken in partnership with the Four Host First Nations to showcase aboriginal culture during the Vancouver Olympics, emerge schooled in the ways of ooligan oil, bannock, fiddleheads and brilliantly braised bison.

Happen to find yourself in the vicinity of Wild Salmon, the school’s affiliated student-run restaurant? Stop in for a taste of the past.

I was looking back to my childhood the other day, and reflecting on how small it was.

Don’t get me wrong. I had as big a growing-up as the next kid, filled as it was with Oreos and vast skies and hopscotch chalk. But it was constricted in one sense. I am talking, of course, about hamburgers, and the skinny little experience I had with this staple over the course of my formative years.

When I was a girl, a hamburger meant one thing only: two halves of a bun embracing a slab of meat whose origins could only have derived from a single beast: a cow.

I’m not alone in having this narrow band of experience.  I can imagine that few of my back-in-the-day peers stepped far from the confines of the same well-defined path. To order a burger was to order a pickle-and-tomato-adorned encounter with the meat of a dairy cow.

Seems such a simple existence.

When discussing the miracle of a burger today, of course, all bets are off. Your dinner could just as likely have hailed from an ostrich farm as a barnyard.

Hamburgers come in all stripes now, as clever restaurateurs who have painted themselves in their diversity will tell you. Add pork, chicken, turkey, lamb, veggie and—natch—bison to your repertoire and now you’re talking burger, in all its varied glory.

It does a person good to look back to the provenance of that which she is about to mash between her molars. Herewith, then, a brief history of the hamburger, a journey back to the bleak, imperfect days before—gasp—a bison burger was available to your average carnivore.

Everyone knows it was some guy in 18^th-century Germany who first cottoned onto the idea of injecting meat between bread and calling it dinner. The folks of Wikipedia talk of even earlier encounters, fetching back to Genghis Khan and his 13^th-century practice of flattening meat scraps between saddle and horse, later to be consumed—raw—by pressed-for-time warriors.

Fast forward through a slew of other developments, including the controversy of multiple cities vying for the distinction of “birthplace of the burger,” the invention of the meat chopper and the development of a means to mass produce the little devils, and know that this hamburger notion had legs from the start.

By the time that clown in the yellow pantsuit and oversized red shoes got his hands on the thing, the hamburger was a going concern. In a blink of human history, a food standard had entered our lexicon—and our bellies—and suddenly no one could imagine a world without it.

Again, though, it was all about the beef.

A more enlightened today provides a different picture altogether. Put in a request for a burger and you’ll just as likely be asked what type of meat you want as what type of condiments.

It’s a good thing, this meaty development. It makes our world better.

And bigger.

Enough with the printed tea towels and salad tongs already. This Mother’s Day, give your very best gal a bison.

The gift of a Mother’s Day bison can take many forms. Certainly, if you have the right connections and a spacious enough patio, you can score mom an actual bison. Bison’s as pets are surely poised to be the next big trend, and wouldn’t it be rad if your mother helped to usher it in? Of course this option can prove tricky to fit in the trunk, to say nothing of the complications that’ll arise when it comes to picking which of your kids gets him on her bed at night.

More practical, then, might be a “virtual” bison, acquired via the World Wildlife Fund’s adoption program. Making a Mother’s Day donation in her name scores you a gift bag which includes a photo, stuffed animal, adoption certificate and species info card. Your donation goes to bison preservation efforts**. See: www.worldwildlife.org/ogc.

Or consider acknowledging mom with an article of bison-inspired clothing. Didn’t know there was such a thing? Check out the surprisingly wide selection at www.cafepress.ca/dd/21141355, a bison lover’s stash that includes t-shirts, hoodies and tote bags, all decked out with iconic “bison crossing” signs. Whose mom wouldn’t welcome a trucker’s hat with a bison on it?

Or just pick up an overpriced card and treat the woman to the gift of a homemade meal that celebrates her maternal triumphs—along with the taste of some bison-inspired delicacy. Load her up with an order of bison meatballs with a cilantro yogurt sauce dip, say. Or fire up the grill and recall childhood misdemeanors above the sizzle of a couple of coffee-rubbed bison steaks. Recipes for both follow.

 Middle Eastern bison meatballs with cilantro yogurt sauce, courtesy of Bon Appétit, February 2008

 Cilantro-Yogurt Sauce:

• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
• 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh cilantro
• 1/2 cup whole-milk Greek-style yogurt*
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh sage
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Meatballs:

• 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 1 cup finely chopped onion
• 6 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs made from crustless French bread
• 1 tablespoon whole milk
• 2 tablespoons minced seeded jalapeño chile (about 1 large)
• 2 tablespoons whole-milk Greek-style yogurt
• 1 1/4 pounds ground bison (often labeled buffalo)
• 1 large egg, beaten to blend
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh sage
• 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

Preparation

For cilantro-yogurt sauce:
Toast all seeds in small skillet over medium heat until aromatic and slightly darker in color, stirring often, about 2 minutes. Cool. Finely grind seeds in spice mill or coffee grinder. Place cilantro and all remaining ingredients in blender. Add 1 teaspoon ground seeds and process until smooth sauce forms, scraping down sides frequently. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover sauce and chill. Reserve remaining ground seeds for meatballs. DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep refrigerated. Store remaining ground seeds in airtight container at room temperature.

For meatballs:
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in heavy small skillet over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and sauté until soft, stirring frequently, about 7 minutes (do not brown). Cool. Toss breadcrumbs with milk in small bowl to moisten. Place cooled onion mixture, breadcrumb mixture, reserved ground seeds from cilantro-yogurt sauce, jalapeño, and yogurt in processor. Using on/off turns, process until coarse puree forms. Transfer mixture to medium bowl. Add bison, egg, cilantro, sage, 1 teaspoon coarse salt, pepper, and allspice. Using hands or fork, mix until just blended. Using damp hands, form bison mixture into 1 1/4-inch balls. DO AHEAD: Can be made 6 hours ahead. Cover and chill.

Preheat oven to 300°F. Heat remaining 2 tablespoons oil in heavy large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Working in 2 batches, cook meatballs until browned on all sides, about 8 minutes per batch. Transfer meatballs to rimmed baking sheet. Place in oven to keep warm up to 15 minutes.

Serve meatballs with cilantro-yogurt sauce for dipping.

Coffee-Rubbed Bison Steak

Ingredients

• Thick, juicy bison steaks

• Coffee rub

Rub:
2 tbsp. dark chili powder (Mexican chili powder’s got a nice kick, if you can find it)
1 tbsp. finely ground coffee or espresso
1 tbsp. cocoa
1 tsp. coarse salt
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Combine all the rub ingredients in a bowl, and then pat the powder mixture over both sides of your room-temperature steaks.  Let them sit for 10 minutes, or until you can’t stand the anticipation anymore.

Slap the steaks onto the barbie and grill for about two minutes per side. Bison is lean, and it can burn easily, so keep an eye on the proceedings. It’s a good idea, once you’ve removed them from the grill, to let the steaks rest for a bit (under a foil covering to retain their heat), to ensure the rub’s commitment to the meat before serving.

 **Bison are no longer on the endangered species list partly due to commercial breeding efforts and the demand for bison meat

I read recently that they’ve added bison to the menu at Wrigley Field. How civilized.

Now Chicago Cubs fans, starting with this week’s home opener against the Milwaukee Brewers, can walk right on past the usual overpriced and under-tasty sports’ arena franks and wilting French fries in favour of a steamy, all-natural bison footlong from one of the park’s standing grill carts, served with a side of bleu cheese coleslaw and a mess of buffalo sauce.

It’s no wonder the Cubs won 9-5.

What better sensual accompaniment is there to the crack of a bat and the smell of mitt leather than the rich, heady flavours of hot bison meat in a stadium bun? OK, I’ll admit that maybe I’m waxing a little effusively on the ol’ bison-in-a-ballpark concept here. But with the sun high in the sky and the boys of summer scattering their muscular selves beneath it, well, a gal can’t help but let her mind wander to the finer things. 

Bison, after all, is an eminently leaner, healthier option for baseball fans than the standard cardboard-and-ketchup fare. And I, reporting from a city that is, alas, bereft of a Major League team, call this progress.

And there’s more gastronomical good news running the bases at the nation’s ballparks than that which is steaming up Wrigley.

Find Atlanta’s Turner Field, for one, the 49,000-seat behemoth that’s also pulled a double switch (it’s a baseball term: look it up) on its home crowd, having served bison-meat hot dogs to Braves fans for a few seasons. This thoughtful addition to the menu is not surprising, considering the stadium’s namesake and his passion for bison (media mogul Ted Turner is owner of the United States’ largest private bison herd, with 50,000 head). 

At the Indians’ home stadium in Cleveland—Progressive Field—folks wash down their Dortmunder Gold Lager with a bison burger with cheese. 

Fans at Louisville’s Slugger Field, meanwhile, home to the city’s Triple-A baseball team, The Bats, can take a post-game stroll over to Park Place on Main for a bison hit, if they’re so inclined. This red-brick Victorian offers upscale dining on the concourse side of the stadium, and is remarkable for a recent makeover that included the introduction of maple sugar-cured bison accompanied by blackened Hawaiian prawns. 

Who couldn’t down some sugar-cured bison as a close-out to a perfect ball game? 

And Sportservice Corporation, the foodservice provider for Miller Park in Milwaukee, long celebrated for dishing up some of the best ballpark cuisine in all of sportdom, also has a progressive-minded bill of fare this season that features such better-than-the-usual menu items as marinated grilled portabella mushrooms on a foccacia roll, fish hoagies and—yes—grilled bison burgers. 

Even minor league parks are suiting up for this trend. Among the baseball-lovin’ crowd at Hohokam Stadium in Mesa, AZ, watching the Cubs spring-train for the show and feeling puckish? Tuck into a bison dog. Because you can. 

I’m not going to close off with a reference to baseball having scored a home run with this new addition to its concession grub because that’s simply too easy and I’m better than that. 

But I’m thinking it.

Fear is a funny thing.

Not funny as in watching a cat using the toilet on YouTube or seeing a guy get his head stuck in a fence outside your office window. More funny as in witnessing your old boyfriend on his way out of a hair restoration clinic or watching the face of someone expecting beef alter radically as the realization that they were this close to eating bison dawns on them.

Truly.

It never ceases to amaze me, even years into the game, how genuinely afraid people can be of trying new things, whether they be parasailing, acupuncture or—yes—bison meat.

There is no shortage of anecdotes from which I might draw to make my case here. Too many instances of smiling people approaching me and my platter of succulent samples at food shows, eagerly looking forward to a taste of what they believe will be their old friend, beef.

But when they discover that it is, in fact, a morsel of hot, marinated, scrumptious bison at the end of my pretty little toothpicks, they shudder and turn away.

I so wish they wouldn’t.

It is my genuine desire, for their sakes more than mine, that people would allow themselves the chance to expand their gastronomical horizons just a little bit. That they would stash preconceptions about this lean, lovely meat long enough to let it linger on their tongues a bit. Long enough to allow taste to overpower bias.

Long enough to be transformed.

There are, after all, so few opportunities in life where risk-taking comes at so low a cost, and with such a potential for reward.

Truth to tell, we are taking some ground here. The idea that one might actually permit a piece of something no less exotic than bison past their lips, chew it and swallow it down is not nearly so bizarre as it was even a few years ago. Thanks to a growing swell of recognition of the value of this tasty source of protein among retailers and restaurants alike, the public has tamed its flinch response somewhat.

With blessed frequency, folks are sharing tales of best-ever bison burgers and sweet-as-anything bison steaks—and not being met by looks of horror in return.

Too many, though, still regard the concept of bison as a viable meat staple for their families as an extraordinary proposition. A novelty, even.

Which explains the shudderers who still find their way to my booth. A booth that plays host, after all, to a foodstuff that is utterly delicious, that is packed with nutrients, that is poised for greatness—unfamiliar though it might be.

Funny, eh?

Bison for Gold

It is, of course,  in honour of the ever-loving Olympics, that wonderful, unifying display of international excellence, that wild, muscular ride from which we are all about to surface, that frenzy of athletic aptitude that gripped our airwaves and attention for the 17 days it graced our shores, that I dedicate this blog.

BRONZE

The bronze this year is awarded to Bison Tarts, a bit of a bite-sized, kid-friendly culinary miracle that’s as delicious as a dinnertime headliner as it is an after-school treat. You can freeze the things, too, and trot them out when your little Olympians are at a low ebb.

Ingredients

• 1 lb. (900 grams) ground bison
• 1/2 cup (120ml) finely chopped onion
• 2 tsp. (10ml) Worcestershire sauce
• 1 -10 oz. (284 ml) can of mushroom soup
• 2 cups (500ml) grated cheddar cheese
• Whole wheat bread

Remove crusts from bread slices and butter them. Place bread, buttered side down, in tart tins. Brown bison meat; fry onions; add Worcestershire sauce, soup and grated cheese; mix well. Spoon mixture into bread shells and bake at 350° F for 35 minutes.

 SILVER

Everyone knows that the Achilles heel of bison meat is its tendency to cook dry. Bison patties can suffer this dusty fate easily in the absence of special juicy-making attention. Herewith, the silver medal to two Juicy Bison Burger recipes featuring just that kind of attention. In one, juicy lamb provides the damp; in another, butter does the job.

Juicy bison burgers with a lamb injection

Ingredients

• 3 lb ground bison
• 1 lb ground lamb shoulder
• 1/2 lb of grated cheese (Sauvignon? Farmer’s cheddar? Your choice.)
• 2 whole chipotle peppers from the can, diced
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 cloves of garlic, smashed
• 1 tsp hot mustard   

Mix everything together with your hands and form into burgers.

Juicy bison burgers with a butter injection

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb unsalted butter

• 1/4 lb Roquefort cheese, grated
• 2 lb ground bison
• 1 egg, beaten
• Ground pepper
• 1 clove garlic, smashed
• 1 tablespoon hot mustard

1. Mix the cheese and butter in the food processor and form into a 3”-diameter tube, wrap in plastic and freeze for at least two hours or overnight.
2. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a bowl with your hands.

3. Form burgers with a ¼” slice of compound butter in their centre. The butter will melt and lube your burgers nicely.

 GOLD

And the gold medal (warm up the anthem) goes to Pemmican Bites, a variation of a native staple, Pemmican, that sustained nomadic tribes through a thousand brutal prairie winters. These bison meatballs are a mixture of ground dried bison meat, fat and wildberries. Make them special with a glaze of melted blackcurrant or chokecherry jelly.

Ingredients

• 1 lb lean ground buffalo (or ground beef)
• ½ lb ground pork
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp crushed allspice berries
• 2 cups fresh Saskatoon berries, blueberries, cranberries (or a mixture), whole or roughly chopped
• 1 cup finely minced onion
• 1 tbsp dried juniper berries, soaked in boiling water to soften, then drained

Glaze

• 1 cup melted currant or chokecherry jelly

Combine all ingredients, except jelly, and work lightly with your hands. Roll into walnut-sized balls and place in a baking pan.  Bake at 350°F for 30-40 minutes, until well-browned and cooked through.Drain accumulated fat and toss meatballs with 1 cup melted redcurrant or chokecherry jelly. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve warm with toothpicks. Makes about 40 meatballs.

Bison is, admittedly, still kind of a new idea for some folks. While the notion of eating beef (yawn) is as old as the hills and just as commonplace, the gastronomic pleasures to be derived from those lumbering, ancient beasts some of us still struggle to even identify as bison have yet to be fully appreciated.

And even so many who have discovered the miracle of this succulent meat limit their appreciation to the hallways of the ordinary. Perhaps feeling reckless enough just to be eating bison over beef, they curtail their explorations to the standards: bison steaks, bison short ribs, bison burgers, bison chops. 

Tasty as anything, yes. Better than the alternative, too. But, alas, still pretty conventional. Whither your bison fajitas? Your bison shish kebab? Your bison tartare? 

I notice that, sometimes, when I drop into conversation some of the more creative applications I’ve found for this versatile meat, people look at me like I’ve got two heads. Take the other night, for example, when I put browned ground bison over spaghetti squash. Wipe that look off your face. It was to die for. 

That’s the thing, you see, that’s fantastic about bison: that it can find happy application in so many different settings. And think particularly of those conventionally thought to be committed bedfellows of beef. 

Tacos, for one, are an easy target for a bison overhaul. So is stew. And who ever said sloppy joes were to beef exclusively wed? Bison joes are the bomb. 

Comfort dishes are a good place to explore in your beef-to-bison exchange project. A tangled bed of spaghetti nestled under a steaming blanket of meat sauce—with ground bison in the starring role—is just about the best thing to find on the table in front of you on a chilly winter’s night. 

Ditto lasagna, with its rich, layered secrets, not the least of which, in this case, is delicious, seasoned ground bison. 

Bison haystacks are a yummy mix of ground bison, tomatoes, and pork and beans. You can dump the creation onto a tray of chips, if you like. Or just tie on a bib and dig into the pot with a fork. 

With bison nachos, the meat that’s scattered across a platter of gooey-with-cheese nacho chips and accented with peppers and salsa is bison. Whodathunk it? 

Bison meatballs in a crockpot, strips of sizzling bison meat with cheese and veggies in a wrap, bison ravioli under a mantle of marinara. 

The list goes on. 

I’ve got a great recipe, too, for chili and for meatballs. I’ll share them with you if you twist my arm. 

OK, consider me twisted. Have a look, and follow these ordered steps: Prepare. Savour. Grow a second head.

 Carmen Creek Bison Chili

Carmen Creek Marvelous Meatballs

 ~

Bringing bison back

The great and majestic beast that is the bison is finally getting its due.

Recently, Parks Canada tabled a proposal to reintroduce bison to Banff National Park. Specifically, the park’s management plan called for a reinstatement of a breeding herd of plains bison into the front ranges of the park.

The idea thrills me. Unfortunately, I’ve got some opposition.

If ever there was a mammal mascot to the prairies, it would be the bison. The largest land mammal in North America, an adult bison can weigh as much as 2,000 lbs and stand as tall as six feet. Two hundred years ago, between 30 and 70 million of these hairy beauties roamed the continent. They provided food, clothing and shelter to the area’s first human inhabitants. Today, they’re every bit as impressive. And, thanks to an awakening trend toward raising bison for food, we’re more in their debt than ever.

Anyway, the idea is to load up the national park with a full suite of the region’s naturally occurring species. Without the bison, say park officials, the deck is incomplete.

There used to be bison in Banff National Park, and I lived there when they did. The space they occupied at the base of Cascade Mountain was large, but they were fenced in. They don’t plan to fence the bison this time. They moved that herd in 1998 because they felt the airport and cadet camp near the enclosure were restricting animal movement in the park.

This time, same kind of thing.

Parks Canada says it wants the animals to roam freely, but some conservation groups feel the big beasts cover too much territory for that to be practical. They’re worried that the bison might wander off the park’s boundaries and onto provincial land, a possibility that somebody from Alberta Sustainable Resource Development was quoted as saying would “create fairly significant management issues.” What’s more, he expressed concerns about the impact this move would have on Alberta’s elk population, public safety and outdoor recreation.

Bison can be dangerous, admittedly (though not that much more than a beef bull). They can also be very destructive to property. I think that’s the biggest concern.

But if the park has a mandate to keep the animals in the park and a management strategy that involves the towns and adjacent landowners, just as they do for the elk, these challenges can be put to rest. Education and tolerance is key in this situation.

There’s a park in Saskatchewan, Prince Albert Park, that has a free-ranging population of plains bison—the first in a national park—and the animals are thriving there. The bison have GPS collars to track movement, and the park has cameras set up to watch them. There’s no reason we couldn’t get the same thing going over here.

Bison belong here. Indeed, it could be argued that bison are better adapted to the prickly local climate than European cattle are. And because plains bison evolved as part of prairie grassland ecosystems, these animals are potentially more compatible than beef cattle with the rest of the region’s native fauna and flora.

And it would be exciting to see bison roaming the park. It’s really quite something to watch these amazing animals that were once on the endangered species list lumber in plain sight. And it’s only right that they reclaim the space.

After all, they were here first….