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….

Sometimes, it’s lonely business managing a company.

Caught up in the top-line numbers and the bottom-line results; the push for distribution and the pull for approval; the accounts receivable and the advertising and the articles of incorporation and the, well, you get the picture. With all of these corporate constraints cluttering up the company cartography, it’s easy to lose sight of the ultimate destination for our products: our customers.

I was thrilled to be reminded of that recently when a particularly heartfelt note from just such a soul landed on my desk, by way of the “contact us” form on the Carmen Creek website.

The note was from a Manitoba mom who had been introduced to Carmen Creek at a birthday party over the summer. The party hosts had included a mess of our tasty bison burgers among the menu items for this celebration, much to my letter writer’s ultimate delight.

The woman, whose name is Caroline, explains in her e-mail that she is mother to a boy who is not only an incredibly picky eater, but an allergy sufferer. Indeed, her son has life-threatening allergies to a range of common foods, including milk, eggs, nuts and fish.

With that kind of backdrop, it’s no wonder Caroline responds to a filial endorsement of any good-for-you foodstuffs with wild enthusiasm.

And Carmen Creek bison burgers, to our great good fortune, appear to be among the latest to make this critical cut.

“Upon trying your product, my son immediately said, ‘These are the most AWESOME burgers I’ve ever had!’” Caroline’s letter breathlessly reports. And even her clarifying response, delivered with trepidation as the dreaded follow-up to her boy’s show or enthusiasm, was met with more fervor.

When she revealed that the source of her son’s gastronomic pleasure was in fact bison meat, and not the run-of-the-mill barbecue fare that usually gets trotted out around the summertime grill, he was as pleasantly surprised as he was delighted. Ever since, says Caroline, her child has begged for more. 

And who could blame the boy?

Anyway, the corollary to this burst of surprise and support for Carmen Creek was that Caroline subsequently struggled to find any retailer in her city that carried our bison burgers.

“I am desperate to find them, as they are much healthier and higher in protein than beef, and as I mention, my picky son LOVES them,” she laments, before signing off.

I was happy, in my note back to Caroline and her family, to report that she could find our products—including our seasoned burgers—at Safeway stores in Winnipeg. And I told her to expect a box of our newest creations,—pure burgers and pure mini burgers—arriving at her door in short order.

Bank statements, boards of trustee and bookkeeping can only sustain a person for so long, regardless of their particular corporate focus. From time to time, it does a company executive well to lift off the business speak and remember the buyers.

And the bison.

Ah, the humble hamburger.

The inspired gastronomic explosion that sets off in our mouths when bread meets meat meets mustard meets bread. This “fortified town” of a meal (I looked it up) which traces its beginings back to the dying days of the nineteenth century, when the Old West was shutting down and the Gold Rush was starting up, is the epitome of comfort food.

Before Ray Kroc got his hands on the thing or anybody had tarred it with the fast-food smear or the world had decided that meat was an enemy, the hamburger dominated the dinnertime spotlight faithfully, enjoying year after well-deserved year of steady admiration.

It was pure, simple, delicious.

A staple, a standard, a mainstay.

My first love.

Like most folks, burgers have been part of my life from the start. Their dressed-up heartiness has cycled through my collection of menu-item darlings for as long as I can remember, and nobody’s ever turned their nose up at their condiment laced attendance at my table. I never imagined, though, the breadth of delights that would one day be available inside the confines of this basic meal.

I mean, time was that a burger was just a slab of grilled ground beef slathered with condiments, topped with a few slices of something and squished between two halves of a bun.

How quaint.

Today’s hamburger is in a different league altogether. The latest iterations of this mealtime essential have stretched the limits of imagination and forced us to reconsider the hamburgers potential.

Who would have thought, way back in the day, what a truly brilliant thing a bison burger could be? Bison, that is loaded with nutrients and an excellent protein source; bison, that is the healthy, sumptuous heir apparent to its more conventional cousin; bison, that is the tastiest thing to squeeze between a loaf since peanut butter saw jam.

And the story just gets better. We were over at our burger processor the other day sampling new recipes and we’ve got an interesting one lined up, I’ll tell you. And we just held our annual planning meeting, where we conducted yet another taste test in pursuit of a new recipe for our seasoned burgers (hey, it’s a living). We now have a much friendlier ingredient deck for these that reflect our brand more faithfully: no gluten; no M.S.G. and no soy isolate. More on all of this in time. 

Bison burgers can be prepared pretty much the same way that beef burgers are, with a few notable distinctions. Because bison is leaner than beef, it’s a good idea to brush or spray both sides of the burger with olive or vegetable oil to avoid the stickies. Also, bear in mind that bison cooks up pretty quickly, so you need to keep an eye on the thing or score yourself a thermometer if you’re unsure.

And if you are looking for further inspiration, take a scoot over to our recipes page and scroll the recommendations for making the most of your meat. Nothing, I’ve come to appreciate, beats a juicy bison burger. And there ain’t a thing humble about it.

There’s a little Fred Flintstone in all of us.

After all, whose mouth doesn’t water cartoonishly at the sight of the enormous platter of ribs that threatens the very stability of this modern stone-ager’s automobile?

I was casting back to those crazy cave folks recently (hey—it was a slow day) and it occurred to me that the origin of that delight to the prehistoric palate was probably bison, a delicious beast that roamed the wilderness abundantly back when Fred and the gang were up to their barefoot hijinx. It’s a nifty little gastronomic tidbit, for those who like their dinner to be historically accurate.

Anyhow, fast-forward several thousand years: The bison still roam, though in less prolific supply, and the taste buds still quiver in proximity to these slow-cooked marvels.

Meat lovers overlook bison at their peril. The meat of this ancient animal, which can be dropped in as a superior replacement to pretty much any recipe starring the other red meat, is tender with a full, rich, non-gamey flavour that knows nothing of toughness. The heir apparent awaits your discovery on all fronts, but I wanted to talk particularly today about the simple, sweet miracle that is a bison rib.

Tastier, nuttier and leaner than their beefy counterparts, bison ribs are a bit of a revelation.

As with all Carmen Creek bison goodies, the ribs are low in fat, high in protein, low in cholesterol, loaded with iron, swimming in zinc, no hormones or antibiotics – ever, and a delightful conversation piece around the dinner table.

Mind you, while bison can generally lay claim to possessing half the fat of its bovine cousin, and even less fat than skinless chicken or turkey, the rib cut of this tasty dinnertime staple is – admittedly – on the more corpulent end of its scale. But bison ribs still take the ribbon for being more meaty and less greasy than the rest.

Because bison meat is so lean, it needs a bit of extra care in its preparation to avoid overcooking. So turn down the oven and pick up a good red: short ribs are best cooked low and slow over a moist heat. This patient approach tenderizes the meat brilliantly, fills the house with the most aromatic sense of anticipation, and allows enough time for the cook to get pleasantly stewed on the latest Bordeaux.

Braising is a good bet for this cut of meat, which sees exuberant chefs searing its exterior and then cooking the rest – slowly – inside a covered pot in a pool of seasoned broth (see my favourite, insanely delicious recipe for coffee-marinated bison short ribs, lifted shamelessly from Epicurious.com, below).

You’ll know the ribs are ready to make the acquaintance of your lips when your salivary glands are kicking into high gear and the meat is falling exquisitely off the bone (don’t go by colour: bison is naturally darker than beef). Bison ribs are best cooked rare to medium, and getting them there generally takes at least three hours.

Go for it with these bison beauties, say I.  And put your inner Wilma to shame.

 COFFEE BRAISED SHORT RIBS WITH ANCHO CHILE

Relish each step of preparing coffee – and chili – braised short ribs: Searing a brown crust on the ribs before they bake adds a deep caramelized flavour; sautéing the aromatics (onions, peppers, garlic) in the drippings makes the sauce base really fragrant. (I have made modifications allowing for bison meat)

 2 tablespoons olive oil

5 pounds 1-inch thick flanken-style short ribs

 1 large onion chopped

1 large red bell pepper, chopped

1 large jalapeno, seeded, finely chopped

6 garlic cloves, chopped

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

1 ½ tablespoons ancho chili powder*

2 teaspoons dried oregano

1 ¼  teaspoons ground cumin

2 cups strong freshly brewed coffee (not espresso or dark roast)

1 14 ½ ounce can diced tomatoes in juice

1 tablespoon tomato paste

 Chopped Fresh Cilantro

 Preheat oven to 300°F. Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Sprinkle short ribs with salt and pepper. Working in batches, add ribs to pot and cook until browned, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer to platter.

 Add onion, red bell pepper, and jalapeno to drippings in pot. Reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook until onion is tender, stirring occasionally, about 6 minutes. Stir in garlic and sauté uncovered 1 minute. Add brown sugar, ancho chili powder, oregano, and cumin; stir 15 seconds. Stir in coffee, tomatoes with juice, and tomato paste. Bring to a boil, scraping up browned bits. Return ribs and any juices to pot; bring to a boil.

Cover and bake until meat is very tender, about [3] hours. Spoon any fat from surface (remember, this recipe was created for the other red meat so you shouldn’t see too much fat). Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cool slightly. Chill uncovered until cold, then cover and refrigerate. Re-warm, covered, over medium heat before continuing).

Transfer ribs to platter. Spoon sauce over and sprinkle with chopped cilantro.

* Available in the spice section of most supermarkets and at Latin markets.

Makes 6 servings

Bon Appétit

October 2004

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