EP 508. Reviving the Craft of Wild Game Cooking

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where today I have got my buddy Larry White, wild game chef all the way from Charleston, South Carolina, on the line. Larry, how the heck are you this morning?

Larry White: Good, man. How you doing?

Ramsey Russell: I’m doing good. Now tell me this, are you from Charleston, South Carolina? Is that where you’re from or is that where you are?

Larry White: No, that’s not where I’m from. I actually grew up in North Carolina, the foothills of North Carolina. I ended up in a Charleston area with the coast guard. I moved here back in 2006.

Ramsey Russell: Okay, well, you’ve been there a good while now. You can call yourself South Carolinian now if you want to, but born and raised in North Carolina. Now when you describe North Carolina, I usually think of being kind of over on the east side where around Mattamuskeet. That puts me on a map in North Carolina. Where were you relative to Lake Mattamuskeet?

Larry White: I was on the very north central tip of North Carolina, on the border of Danville and Martinsville, Virginia.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Larry White: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So there’s a lot of waterfowl in that part world?

Larry White: I didn’t grow up seeing a lot of waterfowl hunting, to be honest with you. I mean, it was mostly all deer hunters. I mean, I didn’t really get exposed to waterfowl hunting until probably my 20s to be honest with you.

Ramsey Russell: Same here. Believe it or not, as much as I’ve seen and done and is enamored, I am with waterfowl, I really was kind of a late start. I had shot them and hunted them earlier in life, but growing up I was a deer hunter, squirrel hunter, rabbit hunter, things of that nature mostly that was my heartbeat. So I relate to deer hunting. Talk about growing up in the foothills of North Carolina. What are some of your earliest memories of hunting and fishing?

Larry White: Being at my dad’s hip nonstop. I mean, we were together squirrel hunting, deer hunting, bass fishing, I mean, any free second we had. I mean, every single weekend he was waking me up probably 2 hours before the sun came up to drive us an hour or two to a different lake each weekend. And that was just my entire childhood until, he ended up getting into an accident and then we kind of gave up the hunting scene and just fished from then on out.

Ramsey Russell: What did he do for a living?

Larry White: He was a traveling electrician.

Ramsey Russell: Really? Like climbing power poles, that kind of stuff?

Larry White: No, he would wire commercial buildings.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Larry White: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And when he was home, he grabbed his son and you all go hunting and fishing. What did you all – I want to hear some of your – If I say, tell me a story about hunting with your daddy, what’s the first thing that popped in your mind?

Larry White: It’s the first 1^st hunt. It wasn’t successful, but most of the memorable hunts aren’t. I remember the day he gave me my first squirrel gun and taking me out in the woods and just walking for hours and hours, just talking with him nonstop and that was awesome.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what it was really about, wasn’t it?

Larry White: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Just being out there. He just wanted to be out there with you and talk and visit and getting to know you. I don’t hardly know anywhere better to meet with people then in a duck blind. I was saying this the other day, I don’t form the connections and the bonds with people, I don’t feel like if I’m just sitting in regular world than I do if I’m outside, especially with my kids.

Larry White: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What was your first deer? Your first squirrel? Do you remember the moment you went from being a hunter with a gun, a little child to wow, I’ve bagged something?

Larry White: Yeah, his sister bought some land about 30 minutes from us in the country, and that was our stomping grounds. It wasn’t, no more public land after that. So, yeah, I ended up killing a bunch of squirrels the first year she bought that property. And I was probably about 9 years old, somewhere around there. That’s probably my gated greatest memory as far as getting my first animals. And I got my first deer on that property. And we had already been fishing for a while, but I kind of like, cut my teeth on fishing every day. She had a nice sized pond, so I was over her house any spare second I had. Just hunting and fishing.

Ramsey Russell: What was like shooting your first deer?

Larry White: I was prepare for it, I guess you could say. But at the same time, I wasn’t. My dad, we had kind of a weird relationship. He wasn’t the greatest teacher in the world, so I wasn’t prepared what happened after the deer was down? I’m like, what do we do with it now? It was kind of that thing. And then after the deer was down, I was kind of lost. You’re looking at the deer and, like, what’s going to happen? And he ended up walking me through it, and we took it to a processor and got the meat back. And I still remember my mom. She wasn’t really big on cooking game, and they did some whole soaking it in milk, trying to get the gamey taste out, and cooking it in a crock pot. I mean, I still remember that.

A Doe That Opened the Door to a Lifetime of Outdoor Adventures.

And the only picture I got of that first deer was a polaroid snapshot of me looking over my shoulder from the sink with a sink full of deer meat and a bunch of white packages next to me that was my deer, it just reduced down to meat, and that’s it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I can remember finally, very similar experience, which I just showed up at my mother’s cousin’s deer camp in the hills of Mississippi. And we got up bright and early that morning after I fell asleep but the men staying up late playing cards. And in the pitch black dark, we drove up to a big pecan tree, and it had cotton spindles, and I had my little slick cowboy boots on and he sent me scrabbling up there. I was scared to death in a pitch black dart, climbed up cotton spindles to a fork in the tree, where he left me. And just miraculously, a little doe stepped out, and I somehow managed to hit it with a gun I’d never pulled the trigger on. And the rest was history. I didn’t know what to do with it when I walked upon that deer, but he showed me, and we cleaned it. And when the meat came back from the processor, I can remember spending all afternoon, it was my deer. And it was one of the best memories I’ve got. It was my deer. And we bought a bunch of butcher paper, and I spent the rest of the afternoon wrapping it up and labeling it. And the only picture I got of that deer. Isn’t it crazy? In this day and age with social media, where we document everything in our life, what we ate for dinner and what we did and what we killed and what we saw. And the only picture I got of that first deer was a polaroid snapshot of me looking over my shoulder from the sink with a sink full of deer meat and a bunch of white packages next to me that was my deer, it just reduced down to meat, and that’s it. But that’s what I remember. But it brought me into this whole world. Was it a buck you shot or a doe?

Larry White: A doe. I actually didn’t kill a buck until probably 19, I was out of high school. Back in the day, I just didn’t care. I mean, people talked about bucks, I just wanted to hunt. I could care less if it was a buck or not.

Ramsey Russell: So you got out of high school and joined the coast guards. Was that a career move or just kind of a staging move, trying to figure out what you want to do the rest of your life?

Larry White: Yeah, what I wanted to do, like I said, my dad got an accident, and that kind of threw my childhood. I didn’t really get prepared for what was happening after high school, so I ended up moving to Wilmington, North Carolina with a buddy of mine, was going to school for business and just to do it, because that was a thing to do back then. And I ended up meeting a guy that was our neighbor in the coast guard, and he introduced me to it. And then I just didn’t like the direction college was going and just signed up and was like, it’s got to be better than what I’m doing right now.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, when you come to a fork in the road take it. You talked about your daddy getting hurt on the job. Did it put him out of hunting and fishing?

Larry White: Completely out of hunting. So it was kind of a crazy story as a double whammy. So he fell off a ladder, wiring something, broke his hip. And then while he was in the hospital, they found out that he needed a liver transplant. So he literally got off the operating table with a new hip and then went and got shipped straight to Virginia and had a liver transplant, I think, a week later.

Ramsey Russell: That would take a lick out of somebody’s mobility, wouldn’t it?

Larry White: Yeah, it was pretty hard on him. And then, he had a few accidents after that. And he was a Vietnam vet and had some issues with that and his kidneys end up failing, so he slowly took a beating.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Were you all stay still able to go out and fish together?

Larry White: Yeah, I’d say it probably took about 2 years for him to get fully mobile. And then, we still fished nonstop. He just downgraded, which we never had a big boat, but he just had a little 17ft bass boat that was easy for him to launch. And we just used that and still traveled around and fish lakes.

Ramsey Russell: For bass and brim and catfish like that?

Larry White: Yeah, bass, brim, crappie that was mainly what we fished. And then we would take an annual trip in North Carolina coast and would kind of peter around there and fish for flounder and redfish.

Ramsey Russell: That sounds like a heck of a childhood. It sure did. I mean, that was a heck of a way to grow up. So you get into coast guards, then what?

Larry White: Yes, I got in the coast guard, and I got lucky. I got stationed in the Florida Keys in Alamorata, Florida. We did search and rescue, I cooked for a living, and then I had an easy schedule, so we fished probably 4 or 5 days a week after work or catching lobsters, and that was at a small boat station. So I actually wasn’t on a ship at the time.

Ramsey Russell: That must have opened up a whole new frontier going to that part of the world. And now you go from catching fish inshore, offshore to catching lobsters. All kinds of good eats.

Larry White: Yeah, that was a cultural shock. I mean, it was a shock in every other way. I mean, yeah, just catching different fish and being exposed to a different environment, because we called it station vacation. So, I mean, there was nobody, I mean, there were primary residents, but there were people that traveled in and out nonstop. So you were meeting new people nonstop. It was just a total different environment from when I grew up in a small town.

Ramsey Russell: I know you and came to know you off your Instagram. What a crazy world we live in that this algorithm puts people in your orbit, and some people you just connect with. I connect with you. And hearing your story about deer hunting with your daddy and doing a lot of fishing and going into the coast guard and getting exposed to more fishing, I mean, I look through your Instagram page and I see it. I see where this is starting to lead to all this good food. A lot of your recreational time is spent hunting and fishing. And how did you go from just a regular guy, I mean, your childhood sounds a lot like mine, hunting small game and antlerless deer and going hunting and fishing, stuff like that, very similar to mine to you got in the coast guard, and then all of a sudden, now, all these years later, you’re a chef. Where along this timeline did Larry white go from being a coast guard out there, catching lobsters and fishing and having a good time and meeting a lot of people and to being a chef. How did that come on the scene?

Larry White: I mean, I feel like it was bound to happen.

Ramsey Russell: You weren’t the camp cook on the coast guards, were you? This started off in a chow hall. Is that where you started? Was that your job description, was camp cook or the cook?

Larry White: Yeah. See, back then it was called food service specialist, I think they changed the name.

Ramsey Russell: So it did start in the kitchen with the coast guards. Okay.

Larry White: Yeah. I mean, I just had a love for food growing up. I mean, every childhood memory I can actually remember, most of them have something to do with food.

Ramsey Russell: Like what?

Larry White: I think growing up beside my grandma, she was just a phenomenal cook and would just throw down spreads every weekend. The holidays were something out of a movie. I mean, the amount of food she would cook, I mean, I’m a “professional cook” now and the amount of volume of food she put out of her little kitchen, like, I don’t know how she did it.

Ramsey Russell: She did it with love, like all grandma did.

Larry White: I still try to recreate. I mean, I guess some people try to recreate their childhoods, and mine come from that, even the holidays today, I still try to recreate what I experienced as I was younger, and I think that kind of led me into the culinary field. It’s like that made me so happy growing up and gave me so many memories. I want to learn because I’m hungry to learn, but I also want to pass on the happiness that food brought me.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. What kind of food was she turning out? Because all grandmamas are different. Like, this big spread she’s turning out on just any given Saturday at lunch or dinner, what was she turning out?

Larry White: Just southern fare. I mean, chicken and dumpling, cornbread, green beans. But it was all like, she would snap the beans by hand and it was a labor of love, fried chicken, all that stuff. And every Sunday, she’d probably have 3 or 4 desserts and on Christmas, I mean, I’m not lying, she’d probably have 8 different pies and 5 to 6 different cakes.

Ramsey Russell: Boy, my folks were casserole people, and I don’t know, it’s something about those big family gatherings and having 15 or 20 casseroles, I’m not a casserole guy no more, I don’t want sweet potato casserole, I want sweet potatoes. I don’t want green bean casserole, I want green beans. So you find yourself in the coast guards, you’re a food specialist, you’re cooking, and it starts tugging at you. I mean, I can put it all together now. And it all goes back to your grandmama’s kitchen. When you were a kid, were you underfoot? Was she teaching you to cook? Was she showing you how to do this stuff. Were you just sitting there watching and grabbing nibbles off the plate when you could?

Larry White: Just watching and I would ask to peel potatoes and stuff, but I never actually asked to cook. I was just so enamored, wanting to watch. But she was basically my babysitter. So if my mom and dad were at work, she was like my second mom. So I was over her house every day after school, mowing her yards. I mean, I was over there constantly.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great story. And you’re right. It’s funny how food, even as a grown adult, whether I’m on vacation with friends at a street side cafe or sitting at a hunting lodge, or it’s just a regular Wednesday night, and all the kids come over to home and we cook something together, it’s just how so many good times in life center around a meal like that. That’s maybe why I find myself in people’s orbit like yourself, and follow people like you on Instagram. It’s because food means something to me, too. Maybe it means something to everybody.

Larry White: I think it does.

Ramsey Russell: Did you get former training for cooking, or did you just take what you knew from your grandmother and the Coast Guard and get into the food business? How did it progress from there?

Larry White: Right after boot camp, I went straight into culinary school in California. It was outside of Napa, California. But back then, I had no idea what Napa was. So, I mean, it was just training on base. It was a good school. I mean, it was 3 months with a whole lot of information crammed in. Back then it was, you’re learning how to volume cook, learning the basics, I kind of had that. And then I got – first off, military is not known for having great food. So I got stationed my first boss, and, well, two bosses, and neither one of them really could cook, I couldn’t either. I mean, I was still a beginner, but they didn’t really train me well. I learned very minimal technique. So after that, I was really wanting to work by myself. So I applied for an independent duty job with the coast guard. So what that means is you’re basically running the kitchen by yourself, doing all the paperwork, you do all the purchasing, you do everything. So I got stationed on an 87ft search and rescue cutter in Charleston, South Carolina, and I researched as much as I could. I cooked probably a different recipe every single day, every week for 3 years on that boat. And pretty much. I mean, I’m not saying that I was a top chef at that time, but I was at the point where I didn’t really need to go to culinary school, I also went to culinary school afterwards, but I didn’t need to. The main reason why I did is because the coast guard paid for it. It was like a free education.

Ramsey Russell: Sure.

Larry White: I went back. After I got out of the coast guard, I went back to culinary school and got my bachelor’s and worked on a whole bunch of different environments.

Ramsey Russell: We’ve all heard mess hall stories, where something on the plate’s more important than presentation or how it’s prepared. But you were talking about some of the techniques you learned right off the bat when you got started in coast guards. Describe those techniques as contrasted techniques you know now. Boiling instant potatoes versus making grandma’s mashed potatoes? I mean, what are we talking about here?

Larry White: Yeah, that was just volume cooking. So you’re learning how to prep chicken the fastest way possible. And I mean, you’re prepping like 400 or 500 chicken breasts inside of a cold room, you can’t even feel your fingertips. You’re learning their technique, it’s like a fast way of making omelets, because you’re working the chow line. you’re running an omelet station by yourself and it’s a training center, so you got 300 people standing in line and you’re trying to cook all these omelets. It’s just volume. I mean, you learn technique, but it’s not –

Ramsey Russell: It’s technique for feeding a lot of people quick.

Larry White: Yeah, technique a lot of people quick. I mean, you want it safe and as good as you can get it. I mean, some meals there were pretty good, and some of them weren’t, because we do have to use speed, we need speed on our side. So a lot of stuff was can, like the canned green beans, all that stuff, we don’t have time to cook for 700 or 800 people with fresh green beans and stuff.

Ramsey Russell: Just as an aside from cooking, you talk about working on that search and rescue boat? What kind of search and rescue operation did you all get involved with?

Larry White: Most of it were saving ships in distress. I mean, we would have anything from sailboats breaking down, people sailing boats, never sailed a boat before traveling like 5 states. We saved fishery ships stranded out in big storms. We made trips down to south Florida to help with migrant operations every summer.

Ramsey Russell: Is that a real big deal? Like they make out in the media? I mean, they’re really people coming across on Robinson Crusoe rafts and stuff like that?

Larry White: Oh, yeah. We’ve saved people from drowning so many times. I mean, they’ll rig cars up to be able to float and drive them as boats. I mean, I’ve seen two inner tubes tied together with a tarp on top and the whole family on board.

Ramsey Russell: Making 90 or 100 miles across a cross a flat. Oh, my gosh.

Larry White: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: How do you even become aware? I mean, how would the coast guard become aware that there’s a two inner tubes lash together and a family hanging on for dear life? Well, I mean, they’re out there just floating and bobbing like a big old cork. How would that even fly up on you all’s radar?

Larry White: So the ships would take turn doing patrol, and I don’t know exactly how many of us were, but there’d be smaller ships looking for them. And a lot of times, we would just get a spec on the radar and just go check it out. A lot of times, it wouldn’t be anything. And sometimes we ended up finding some people out there stranded or just trying to make it. And we would basically get them on board our ship, and then once we processed everything, we would drop them off to a bigger ship, probably like a 300 some foot vessel, and they would all get processed there. And once they were processed, they’ll get back on our boat, and then we would drive them back to Cuba.

Ramsey Russell: Really? They don’t even touch US soil, they get dropped back off where they started.

Larry White: Yeah. I don’t know, what they get out of it now, but back in the day, it was something like if they touch soil, they would get free health benefits for a year. And I could be wrong, it was around 10 or 15 grand.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I mean, to a poor country, that’s something.

Larry White: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s kind of worth the risk. I mean, if you ain’t got nothing to lose.

Larry White: Yeah. I mean, by the end of our trip, those big ships would – I’d guess, but I bet there’d have to be every bit of 300 to 400 people on there.

Ramsey Russell: You didn’t ever, because kind of the coast guard deals with this, but you all didn’t ever – how would you be out there doing the kind of stuff you’re doing search and rescue and not run across some of the narcotics trade and stuff like that you hear about?

Larry White: Well, yeah, so the coast guard’s huge in a drug interdiction. So we bust a whole lot of people transporting various drugs, mostly marijuana and cocaine. But they bust a lot. That wasn’t our primary job. But those bigger ships, I mean, they do a whole lot of busting.

Ramsey Russell: You’d hear about those stories, though. Is it the pipeline? Is it as bad as they say it is or worse?

Larry White: Like, how many people?

Ramsey Russell: How many illegal people and how many illegal drugs are coming through that gap?

Larry White: So when they make big bust, I mean, there’s several hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of cocaine when they bust these ships. And as far as the migrants, I mean, that was a long time ago for me, but it was busy every single day, and that was just our boat coming down there to help out those guys that are stationed down there, they’re busy nonstop.

Ramsey Russell: What’s the craziest thing you ever saw? I can just imagine some guy buying a sailboat, dreaming of sailing the seas, and he goes to take a short course and then launches his boat running into problems somewhere along the way. That’s got to be daunting.

Larry White: Probably the craziest one is, I think they were sailing from Florida, and we were here in Charleston, and I think he bought the sailboat in Florida, him and his wife, and they were trying to sail to Connecticut or something. Never sailed before in their life and didn’t have a backup engine, all they had with their sails. Well, their sails busted and they were just stranded out there. And that was like, my first flabbergasted that people would actually attempt to do something like that with no sailing background and no backup engine.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, that’s crazy. That’s just crazy. The sea don’t play.

Larry White: No, not at all.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you go from techniques that taught you to turn out 50lbs sacks of mashed potatoes on a chow line to culinary art school in California. Was that a cultural shock?

Larry White: So that specific training in California was for the mass cooking.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Larry White: So when I got out of there and done with that first station, that’s when I got on that smaller ship and started teaching myself the techniques from just studying and reading, and that was smaller. So it was myself and 12 other members. So it was on a small enough scale that I could teach myself stuff and actually learn. But it that was a busy boat. We had one sister ship that would take over, when we weren’t on duty and that boat was broke down almost all the time when I was stationed there. So we were out nonstop for 3 years.

Ramsey Russell: So how did you go into real culinary art school? Or did you?

Larry White: Yeah. So I knew I was learning more on the ship, but I would go out to eat randomly in town, Charleston, South Carolina, is a culinary mecca, and I would taste this food, and I was like, mine’s good, but it just doesn’t taste the same, there’s something and again, it comes back mostly to techniques. And then I was just like, well, I want more training, and then I want to work under the best I can once I get out. And then while I was in, I was still trying to get further training. So I actually was a personal chef my last year in the coast guard. So I made a website and cooked in people’s homes for private parties and stuff while I was in the coast guard as well, trying to just up my game and teach myself as many fine dining techniques as I could before I actually got into culinary school.

Ramsey Russell: Unbelievable. Would the menus you did as a private cook be described? Similar to what your grandmother was turning out?

Larry White: No, it switch pretty significant. I mean, it went from straight country food to doing sauces that are made with wine and making more expensive cuts of steak and just these kind of fancy sauces or whatnot. I mean, that’s what everybody was looking for back then.

Ramsey Russell: What do you do now? Like, do you run a restaurant? Are you a caterer?

Larry White: So I run that blog full time, and I make content for companies, and then I’ll do some cooking on the side. If somebody hires me to cook for a wild game dinner or just even a regular dinner, I’ll do that on the side. But primarily, I’m all in on the wild game cooking as of now.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I can tell you’re all in. I mean, and your Instagram page shows you’re all in. Here’s a question I’ve got is, why wild game? Why not beef, chicken, pork, store bought fish? I mean, you’re a wild game gourmet. What is it about wild game as compared to beef or chicken?

Larry White: For me, it started off in a couple different ways. So once I got out of the restaurant scene, I got out of that because my wife was pregnant at the time, and I opened a restaurant, didn’t like how things were going with the business partner, so I sold my share, got out.

Ramsey Russell: Was it a family restaurant or was it like a chain restaurant you all were doing?

Larry White: No, it was a family restaurant, but it was more geared towards, I would say, probably like your 20 to 40 year old. It was kind of like one of those beer gardens. So we had upscale bar food with a whole bunch of beer, like –

Ramsey Russell: There in Charleston?

Larry White: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Boy, Charleston’s got some good restaurants, doesn’t it? It’s a good restaurant scene.

Larry White: It’s a good restaurant scene. Is very cutthroat. I can’t remember the statistic, but I think there was, like, an average back in the day, it was, like 30 restaurants open up a year here. obviously, some have to close to another ones up, but it’s very competitive.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Okay. So you started a restaurant, and you got tired of that and sold out your share.

Transitioning from a Food Truck and Restaurant Life.

And then just with that and then my hunting background, it just kind of, one after another led me into the realm of wild game. And so me and my wife lived in the city at that time and then once I got out of the restaurants or whatever.

Larry White: Yeah, I sold that. I had a food truck, too, at the same time, sold my food truck. And while all this was going on, I was kind of – I mean, I still ate unhealthy food, but I was kind of a health nut. I was really big into lifting weights and everything, and I’ve shoved more farm meat down my throat than most people. I think I tried to do the math one time, and I think in my lifetime, I think I’ve cooked over 100,000 eggs just between military cooking and me eating, like, bodybuilding style. And I just got burnt out on the aspect of just eating food that wasn’t clean. I guess it came with age. I’m like, this stuff can’t be good to put in your body at that volume. And then just with that and then my hunting background, it just kind of, one after another led me into the realm of wild game. And so me and my wife lived in the city at that time and then once I got out of the restaurants or whatever, we both had a conversation, she was tired of eating all that food and the hustle and bustle, and I was, too. So we sold our house in the city and then moved out in the country. So we’re on, like, 40 acres right now, right next to public land, so I can hunt my property, and then I can jump on public whenever I want, there’s about 200,000 public acre lands around here.

Ramsey Russell: I tell you what, you said a mouthful there. Maybe it does have a lot to do with getting older, and maybe it has to do with just being a hunter. But I got in a conversation recently with somebody talking about – because I’m starting to see a lot of these local grown beef producers, crop up, and it’s becoming more of a conversation about local sourced food and knowing where your food comes from. And it just occurred to me as I was talking to this rancher, well, if you buy his beef, he can tell you exactly what pasture came up, what the feeding routine was, and how old the cow was, and da-da. But versus I go buy a nice steak at a grocery, I have no idea where it came from or how. I have no idea but that it’s red meat on my plate. And that’s different. I mean, we eat a lot of deer meat, we eat some bear meat from North Carolina, by the way, and a lot of fish and wild game at our house, and we know where it comes from, and I don’t know, it means something different. It’s more of a whole food, you know what I’m saying? It feels more nutritious even, just knowing where it comes from than buying something sourced from God knows where at the local grocery store.

Larry White: Yeah, we’ve gone away from that. I mean, we probably, myself, I probably 90% of wild game, and my wife is, she’s honestly probably closer to 99% she will not budge. Sometimes if we go out to eat, if they don’t have a wild fish on the menu, she’s eating a salad. Like, she’s holding her own on that one.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Larry White: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And that’s all coming from – were there health issues in you all’s past that led to that or just this just getting older and being more cognizant eater?

Larry White: Well, so this whole thing, I guess if we go backwards, kind of started with my dad. I watched him being sick and unhealthy, not by his choice. He ended up having a few heart attacks and I think that was the southern food. But that put me, in my early teens, kind of health conscious. So that put me on the big health kick. And then once we made the leap in a wild game, I mean, I think that was more on me because she heard me talk about health benefits of wild game and just being healthy in general. And we’re both like, this is the pinnacle of meat is wild game, that’s the healthiest you can get. And then we just kind of came together, I was like, let’s do this together and eat as much off the land as we can.

Ramsey Russell: I’m right there with you. This is an interesting topic for a hunting type podcast like this because I’m raising both my hands saying I’m that hunter, that forever ate a lot of fast food. And boy, I tell you what, my blind bag was slapped full of junk food. You know what I’m saying? Just because it was convenient, it was easy, it was quick, something to eat in the blind. But as you get older, you start looking around, you become aware and you read things that food as it was presented to us, especially in the USDA food pyramid is not really food. I mean, there’s a lot of misconceptions. If you start looking at seeing a lot of the world and looking at the people around you, looking at the health indices of the people around you, as you start aging America, it’s almost like that USDA food pyramid is wrong, that our government led us down the wrong path, and maybe they were influenced by big ag or lobbies or something that were trying to sell more sugar and stuff like that. Point in case I just got back from a legitimate week of vacation to kind of celebrate my 30^th wedding anniversary, we went to France for a week. No shotguns involved, just a whole lot of walking and a whole lot of eating and a whole lot of sightseeing. And this is crazy. For example, subway bread in France is, they can’t classify it as bread, it’s a pastry. It’s got so much sugar in it, it’s a pastry. But over there, I found myself eating those baguettes, and it’s like, I’ve never eaten bread ever in my life before until I sunk my teeth into a fresh baguette. And as you start asking around and looking at it, by law, it’s protected under some kind of cultural iniquity, there can only be 3 or 4 ingredients, and it’s got to be baked on site. So every time you sink your teeth into French bread over there, it’s baked on site that morning with a minimum of ingredients. And I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me. You know what I’m saying? So it takes this whole food conversation to a different level than what I was expecting. But it’s the truth. You know what I’m saying? I mean, I don’t know that real food that’s healthy for you comes from grocery stores, unless you’re kind of walking on the outside in the meat and produce, you start getting off and inside, there’s no telling what’s inside those boxes or those ingredients that we consider food because it’s sold to us as food. But I mean, it doesn’t have the nutritional density of wild duck or wild venison.

Larry White: No. And ever since we had kids, I mean, that’s kind of, they’ll have some processed food, but I try to get as minimally processed as possible. And yeah, we spend our time on the outer skirts of the grocery with vegetables and fruit and all that. Like I said, we live about an hour outside of Charleston, and people think we’re crazy, but we spend more money on food than most, and I travel about an hour to the grocery store just so I can have my hands on the best produce and everything I have. And that’s not from a fancy cook standpoint, that’s just from a health standpoint.

Ramsey Russell: Well, it’s healthy and taste. I’ve seen that. I mean, boy, you showed me a homegrown tomato that’s always going to be better than one that was, I don’t know, ripened artificially at the grocery store. You know what I’m saying? Speaking of which, that’s one of the – I live in duck season somewhere, so I’m always in duck season somewhere all the time, and only just in little weekly and daily spurts of my back home. And, boy, one of the downsides of duck season somewhere is duck season don’t fall during fresh tomato season. You know what I’m saying? And I miss that. That’s a delicacy of the good fresh home grown tomato. Do you all have a garden, too?

Larry White: Yeah, we’ve got a small garden. I don’t keep it up year round because once hunting season comes in, it goes. But, yeah, I grow a whole bunch of different peppers, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, just kind of the basic stuff and have a giant herb garden.

Ramsey Russell: I want to talk about how we’ve talked a lot about your background and hit on a couple of topics, but I’m going to jump in and talk about some of your cooking, some of your wild game gourmet cooking. I’m going to start with North Cockaleekie, goose leg confite. Cause you don’t post a whole lot of waterfowl. And first off, what the heck is North Cockaleekie? What is a Cockaleekie?

Larry White: So growing up, we would just joke around. Cause in North Carolina, I might not have it as much as back in the day, but we have some funny accents. So instead of calling it North Carolina, we would call it North Cockaleekie. Just to make it simple. But, yeah. And so that recipe came inspired from a North Carolina whole hog style barbecue because we usually use a vinegar based sauce. And I wanted to do something along the lines with waterfowl legs.

Ramsey Russell: Amen. Talk about that confit process. Because I don’t have – I struggle to think of a way I like to cook duck legs or turkey legs or a lot of different things other than confit. That is some of the purest and finest and succulent way of cooking something I’ve ever enjoyed. And I’m thankful that at the ripe old age of 50 something, somebody turned me on to it.

Larry White: It’s great, and it’s really easy to prepare. You just got to have a little time. But traditionally, you’re salting goose or duck legs to get the moisture out. And you can kind of throw in herbs or whatnot that’ll kind of be sucked into the protein to get a little bit extra flavor. And the purpose of the salt is to get as much moisture out of there, and that does two things. You’re helping preserve the meat, because when this was first came about back in the day, it was used as a preservation technique. And then also the less moisture that you have into your fat during the cooking process, you’re less likely to ruin the fat, and you can actually reuse it for another batch.

Ramsey Russell: And you can reuse that fat. I’m not a professional chef like yourself, so a lot of the duck fat I use, you can buy it at Walmart, you can buy it commercial fat. But I tell you what, I have taken to – Mr. Ian, and I got started with the duck leg kick, putting a bunch of duck legs in the crock pot, covering them with fat, and smothering them, and then deboning them and cooking them all various different ways to include the barbecue sandwich, like what? Our picture didn’t look as pretty, our presentation, but it was tasty. And a lot of wild turkey hunters, I know I was young and dumb and killed some turkeys one time and tried to chicken fry those legs one time and realized they were just too tough to eat that way. And once I learned how to confit something, I would take those turkey legs and quarter them up, put them in a crock pot, cover them with duck fat, let them cook down, pull them steel cable tendons out. And then I had some good succulent meat that I could chop up and reheat and season and do what I wanted to be in tacos, street tacos, barbecue sandwiches or something else. And it’s really my favorite part of a turkey are the legs cooked that way. I’ve never cared much for chicken breasts or turkey breasts, it’s just a little too dry.

Larry White: Yeah. I’m about with you on the same page. I try to teach anybody that asked me, how to cook turkey legs, and I’ll either do it that way confit or I’ll slow cook them in a crock pot. And I’ll let them rest overnight in the cooking liquid. Now, actually throw them into a really low smoker, and then smoke them till they get a nice smoke on them. That’s probably one of my favorite ways to cook them.

Ramsey Russell: You cook a lot of fish, too, nowadays, don’t you?

Larry White: Yeah, good amount. A lot of speckled trout and red fish. We got a few ponds on the property, and we’ll cook up bluegill, crappie, not too many bass. And we’ve got a boat, and we take it out to the river a few times a year. And I try to load up on catfish as well.

Ramsey Russell: What are your favorite ways to cook catfish?

Larry White: Top two is blackened and fried. I’ve smoked a few, and they’re pretty good. There’s my top two. And one technique I learned here is, I’ve always just fried just a big filet or nuggets or whatever, but I found this restaurant here that, I can’t remember the name of it, they shave them super paper thin and bread them in cornmeal and fry them, and that’s probably one of my best catfish meals I’ve ever had.

Ramsey Russell: Cornmeal. Now you’re talking southern, and I’m listening, because you’re talking about fried catfish, I’m all in. That’s my favorite way to eat fish. And I’ve eaten it other ways, will eat it other ways. I love black and red fish, for example, but I love a fried fish. And I was up north with some friends, and they were the big fishermen, they ice fish, and I’m going to go up there and do that with them one day, I promise. I promised them I would, so I’m going to do it. Go sit on the ice and catch some perch. But they brought some perch by, talking about how good they were. And my host, I’m like, have you got what we need to fry them? He goes, oh, yeah, I’m good to go. And super dude, great guy, great goose guide, a bachelor. And I go, get everything ready, start frying. I go, where’s your cornmeal? He goes, my what? He said, I got some flour. I said, I need cornmeal. And it was hard to find cornmeal in that part of the world. I’m going to tell you what, we found some. And because that’s the only way I know to fry fish is with cornmeal. And I’ll usually like yourself on some of those fish, just fry them whole or fry the fillet. But I do like a very thinly shaved filet where it crisps up. I liken it to not quite, but almost like nibbling on the tail of a brim that you whole fry, I like that. When you fry a fish, I just got to ask you this, when you fry a fish, are you a vegetable oil or a lard guy?

Larry White: My top two are probably lard, and I’ll use avocado oil. That’s probably like my 1^st choices, if I have to choose.

Ramsey Russell: Amen. I’m a lard guy myself. And I just shun anybody says my cholesterol is going through the roof, it ain’t. I’ll show you my lab results. It just tastes good. I like to cook with animal fat. I don’t know why, but it gives it flavor. When you start talking about your grandmama cooking and some of the food she turned out, it’s what we call around here soul food. And it’s got to do with just the right combination of ingredients and a whole lot of time, not terribly complicated to cook, you know what I’m saying? She cooked with a lot of love. And I just think that when we start talking frying fish and things like that, we’re kind of getting off into that caveat of food groups. And I grew up eating fried chicken and fried fish and fried everything, eating the deep south, but it was cooked with lard. And I just don’t think these seed oils compare in flavor or performance. I just don’t think they compare at all. But it’s getting hard to find those ingredients. You can’t just go down to your local grocery store and buy a gallon of lard. You got to go to the bacon section now, or you got to go to a Hispanic grocery store to find what you need. Have you noticed that?

Larry White: Yeah, the Hispanic markets are about the only place I can find right here. I’m sure there’s some, but –

Ramsey Russell: Because they know how to cook.

Larry White: But luckily, we’ve got a hog problem. So I usually render off some every year and use it.

Ramsey Russell: Really? You make your own lard?

Larry White: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Heck yeah. I noticed you don’t have a lot of waterfowl on your page. Do you not waterfowl hunt a lot?

Larry White: No, I just didn’t grow up with it. And any of my friends, that are hunters, I mean, they just weren’t waterfowl hunters. I would randomly meet people out there were die hard waterfowl hunters, but we just never end up hitting off being friends and never hunting together. And then, I’m more of like a wanderer style hunter, I’m not your everyday tree stand, I guess you could say, so most of my hunter friends aren’t coming along with me, and it’s just really just me. I’ve probably got two friends that, that kind of hunt like me.

Ramsey Russell: Which is what? You say wandering. You kind of a steel hunter, stop, spot, and stalk type guy through the woods?

The Joy of Still Hunting and Discovering New Areas.

I’m kind of a steel hunter, and I just like discovering new areas. So I’ll still hunt my way in and just try to find different locations.

Larry White: Yeah, I’m kind of a steel hunter, and I just like discovering new areas. So I’ll still hunt my way in and just try to find different locations. We’ve got a lot of public land here, and nobody really uses it, it’s pretty thick. So, I mean, I’ll still hunt my way in and pick a spot, and if nothing turns out, the next time I’m going somewhere completely different. And it could be 500 yards to 3 miles in. And a lot of people here don’t hunt like, this is a big baiting. South Carolina is a big baiting state, and it’s fine, I don’t have anything against it, I’ve got 40 acres, and I barely even hunt it, which is crazy to most people. I’m on public land 90% of my hunts.

Ramsey Russell: What’s your favorite way to cook venison? Favorite ways, I should say.

Larry White: Pretty simple in all honest. I mean, if I’m cooking just to everyday dinner at home, I mean, usually it’s going to be a steak from the hind leg, simply prepared. If I get a little bit fancy, I’ll smoke one of the cuts from behind leg and believe it or not, most people think I’m crazy, but the loins, I usually, I do a quick cure on them. I cure them in salt with a little bit of sugar and herbs for 3 days, and they firm up really good. And you literally just slice it and eat it like that, you don’t cook it or anything, that’s probably my favorite way to eat.

Ramsey Russell: Wait a minute. Say that again. Is it kind of like a quick cured prosciutto, or would it be like a carpaccio?

Larry White: Kind of. That’s a good. Yeah, probably a cross between the two as far as texture goes. Yeah, it’s a quick cure. It’s got some give to it. You can kind of pull it apart a little bit more than prosciutto, and it’s got a lot more flavor than your normal carpaccio, but it’s delicious. I think I started putting it on my feed quite a few years back, and I’ve had a lot of people message me, and, like, man, that’s one of my favorite ways to eat loin now. And I wasn’t expecting a lot of people to enjoy, but it really is good.

Ramsey Russell: I’m crazy like that. I used to hunt a lot with my friend, the late Mike Morgan, and we all got kidded by Terry Denmon a lot about we’d eat anything. And I asked him one time, I said, Mike, is there anything you won’t eat? He goes, yeah, I don’t eat blue food. I mean, you don’t eat blueberries? No, I eat blueberries. I ask him blue cheese? No, I eat blue cheese, and I got thinking about that, just like, what the heck is it just blue, you know what I’m saying? Nothing. So he’d eat anything, and I would too. We were adventurous and eaters and traveling over into Europe off and on through the years, I’d never heard of carpaccio until somebody ordered it, and I love it. And over in France a couple weeks ago, beef tartare, and I like it. And, of course, some of the people at the table are like, nah, I ain’t eating no cat food. Yeah, but I like that kind of food. So I want to get this recipe you’re talking about. When you’re talking about cooking these loins this way, are we talking about the inner loins or the back strap?

Larry White: Back strap.

Ramsey Russell: Yes. That sounds like it’s got me all over it. Have you ever tried to cook carpaccio or tartar with fresh deer? Is there a secret to it?

Larry White: Not really. I keep it as simple as possible. A lot of people want to groove in, but I’ve eaten venison for so long now, I don’t really beef that, I honestly feel like, especially grass fed beef has a stronger flavor than deer. And people might not agree with me, but that’s kind of what I think. So, like, when I’m cooking deer now, I mean, I’ll have some kind of fancy dishes, a lot of ingredients, but mainly, especially with carpaccio, I try to keep it simple so you can kind of still taste the deer.

Ramsey Russell: How fresh does it have to be to cook carpaccio?

Larry White: I mean, if you’re hunting it and harvesting yourself, you process yourself. I mean, if you stored it in your refrigerator properly, I mean, you would have close to pushing it a couple weeks to be able to do it, which sounds great. But, yeah, if you’re getting something out of the store, I mean, that would be cut down quite a bit. But yeah, you’d have longer than you think.

Ramsey Russell: Can you ever freeze venison and thaw it out and then still make good carpaccio? Or do you need it fresh and unfrozen?

Larry White: I’ve done it both ways. I mean, if it’s stored proper, I mean, you won’t notice too much of a difference. And then the quick cured, I’ve done that both ways. But I will say I do prefer the quick curd version. I don’t know if it’s just in my head, but I do prefer that fresh. So usually when I get a kill, I’ll let the loins hang out in the refrigerator for about 5 days, and then I’ll throw them in the salt mixture and cure them.

Ramsey Russell: So tell me how you make carpaccio with venison.

Larry White: So, for mine, as far as the technique goes, I mean, if you want to get it kind of the shape you see in the restaurants or whatever, you can roll it up and plastic wrap and get a tight cinch on it, and it’ll turn your loins into a circular shape. I’ll pop that in the freezer for maybe hour, hour and a half, just to get a little bit of firmness on it. And then I shave it pretty thin, about 16^th of an inch. And then I’ll just lay that out every how you want to lay it out on your plate. And then I usually serve mine pretty simple. I mean, it might be some chopped onion and some olive oil and capers or some herbs, very basic.

Ramsey Russell: When I’ve eaten carpaccio and how I best like carpaccio would be thinly shaven beef and olive oil, pine nuts, capers. That’s pretty much it. Let the meat speak for itself. Let everything speak for itself. And I was in Holland recently, and they know I love this stuff. And he put a different spin on it. He called it carpaccio, but it was what I would call tartar. So it was more like a hamburger texture, right? Minced meat. But they had put the pine nuts and the capers and maybe the olive oil, a few other seasonings, and made it burger style. And it was very dense, it’s got to be lean. And he put it on his green egg cooker just long enough to color the outside where it looked like a hamburger patty. But once you bit into it, you realized it wasn’t cooked. But it was absolutely fabulous. And the two men I was eating had never had it before, and they ate the whole damn thing. They go, wow, that cat food is pretty good, one of them says, it’s pretty good. But I did have some somewhere over there, I ordered it one day for lunch, and they put some kind of white truffle mayo or something on it, just ruined the whole thing. It was terrible.

Larry White: That’s kind of been my experience, is that a lot of the fancier restaurants will put the truffle mayonnaise on it, and it’s good, but you don’t taste it, and it just tastes like mayonnaise –

Ramsey Russell: Tastes like truffle mayo. And I’m a mayonnaise snob, being from the deep south, I’m a mayonnaise snob. It’s got to be just the basics, like my grandmother’s homemade mayo, that duke’s mayo, I think comes from your neck of the woods, is kind of about the only mayonnaise I’ll eat unless I get crazy and adventure some and try to make some myself. And I see where over in Europe, they put just a whole lot of sugar in it, so it really doesn’t even taste like mayo like, I think a mayonnaise being, tastes more like this miracle whip or something, I don’t care for it either.

Larry White: Yeah, I can’t stomach that stuff.

Ramsey Russell: Do you have a favorite way to cook waterfowl?

Larry White: Kind of along the same lines. I cook a lot of goose, Canada geese. I’ll kind of do prosciutto with the breast a lot, or I’ll smoke them and then the legs kind of the same way. I’m either doing confit or I’m slow cooking it and then putting a light smoke on there, probably, I’ll throw it, like, 180° to 200° smoker and smoke that till it gets a little nice bark on there and some color and that’s my top place to eat them.

Ramsey Russell: You mind walk me through just generally speaking, how you cook prosciutto with goose breath.

Larry White: Oh, how to make the prosciutto?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Larry White: So kind of the same deal with the venison. You throw a salt mixture on there, salt and sugar if you want. And then you can throw any kind of aromatics, herbs, peppercorns, whatever you want. Let that cure, and then once you get that out –

Ramsey Russell: How long does it have to cure.

Larry White: It really depends on the texture you like. I mean, minimum 3 days and the most I would let it in the salt would be maybe 5 days, that’s my preference. I mean, you could give or take that and then once I rinse that off and dry it with a paper towel or whatnot, I’ll roll that up in cheesecloth, kind of get a firm turn on it, so it’s kind of compact. And then I’ll hang it up in my fridge, and then that’s definitely kind of up to the hunter. You could leave it up there for two weeks, and it’s still got a little bit of a give to it. Or you could let it hang in there for two months, and it’s going to get a lot more firmer and a lot stronger taste.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. And how do you serve that? Like, what will you do with that finished product of goose breast prosciutto?

Experimenting with Japanese Seasonings for Duck.

I mean, just very simple or I’ll do it on a salad with a homemade vinaigrette that’s lightly flavored. And then last year, actually cured mine in some Japanese seasonings. And I learned this technique from where I learned to make duck prosciutto at Peninsula Grill in Charleston, South Carolina.

Larry White: So, for me, that’s honestly really even simpler than I would do a carpaccio that’s either just maybe like, some type of light mustard, and on kind of like, I guess, more of like a bland cracker, not a flavor cracker, I mean, just very simple or I’ll do it on a salad with a homemade vinaigrette that’s lightly flavored. And then last year, actually cured mine in some Japanese seasonings. And I learned this technique from where I learned to make duck prosciutto at Peninsula Grill in Charleston, South Carolina. A chef named Graham Daley walked in, and he had a blowtorch on his prosciutto, and I was like, what in the world is he doing? And so he would render off some of fat on the exterior of the duck after it was cured, and it just gave it this most awesome flavor I think I’ve ever tasted. So 90% of the time, I’ll kind of get a little torch. But when I did that with the Japanese seasonings, I was kind of thinking along the lines of sushi nigiri. So I would take the prosciutto, shave it really thin, and I would put that on top of a little form, kind of rice oval rice ball. Like you would use for nigiri. And then lightly brush with some good olive oil and some chives or whatever and just very basic.

Ramsey Russell: Very good. Have you got a favorite wild turkey recipe?

Larry White: Man, that’s a toss up between the smoked legs and the smoked breasts. I tend not to like the breast, but if I take the time out to brine it and smoke it and pull it at the right temperature, I mean, that’s kind of hard to beat for me.

Ramsey Russell: When you’re smoking those legs, are you wrapping it in butcher paper? Is that how you to get it tender to where you can pull those steel cables out? Is that kind of the process of that?

Larry White: I’ll do a 2 step process. You don’t need to follow it completely, but I’ll slow cook them mostly in a crock pot because it’s easier to control. And I’ll get them just until a fork will kind of penetrate.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Larry White: And then I’ll put those in a low smoker between 180° to 200°. And then I’ll get a little bark on them, but then I’ll baste the legs a little bit with the cooking liquid just to keep them moist. And this doesn’t take, but like maybe an hour and a half. But yeah, you could too, if you’re happy with what you got, you could actually, if you want them a little bit more tender, you can get some smoke on there and roll them up in aluminum foil with a little bit of liquid and kind of steam them if you want them a little bit more tender. But that’s kind of what I do with all my turkey and waterfowl legs.

Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. And finally, I noticed that you almost have an abundance of wild hogs over in your naked wood, just like we do over here. What do you do with wild pig?

Larry White: It kind of depends on the pig. If it’s a really good tasting pig, I don’t really process it too much. I’ll smoke the shoulders, the hams, most of the time, I actually turn those into an actual ham, a smoked ham. I’ll make just straight up pork burgers and, or some mild sausage. If it’s kind of a pig that has a little funk to it, I’ll usually just turn it into chorizo breakfast sausage or something like that.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Wonder why some of those hogs are have that funky talking about. It’s been my experience when you clean a wild hog, and at times we have an abundance of them. You got to be real clean, real careful, real precise, you can’t be sloppy when you skin them because you can contaminate and taint that mate real quick. And that’s just been my personal opinion. And honestly, if I shoot a great big old boar hog, I’m just going to drag him off somewhere, I’m not going to personally fool with him. And I really do have always liked those 150lbs, 200lbs better, if I’m going to fool with them at all. And is it a lot of trouble to make a real Easter type ham of wild hog?

Larry White: No. It’s leaner than a farm raised pig. So, yeah, you can’t cut the brine short. My mistakes I used to make back in the day is I wouldn’t brine it long enough. And you’ve got to definitely use a digital thermometer. Like, you got to pull it at the right time or it’s going to be dry.

Ramsey Russell: So, what do you brine them in and for how long? So I take a ham, I’m assuming you debone it or not, and I brine it. What am I brining it in for how long and then what do I?

Larry White: For the brine, I mean, it’s kind of up to you, but I’ll do like brown sugar molasses, something along those lines. Maybe maple syrup, salt, sugar, a bunch of, I guess I call them like holiday herbs, I’m doing thyme, rosemary, garlic and onions. But that’s just my personal preference. And then that, I would say a minimum you’re looking at, if you want it to actually taste like a ham, a minimum will be 5 days and upwards of 10 days.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I think it’s an art to doing something like that. The first time I ever had kind of a wild Easter ham was warthog. I never in a million years would have guessed you could have turned something like that into something that succulent and that good and that delicious. And I’ve always wondered how hard the process must be to do that.

Larry White: It takes time, not a lot of hands on work, but it takes time. And if you cut them short, you’ll know in the finished product because it either won’t taste like a ham or it’ll be dry.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I tell you what, Larry, you must be a welcome sight coming into hunting camps. A guy with your skill set, you might have invites galore to come to hunting camps. You’re invited to come to mine anytime you want and just bring your kit with you. But to me, one of the greatest tributes to wild game is properly cooked wild game. A lot of people, have fallen out of, I hear all the time people don’t really like duck or they don’t really like something about wild game. And I think it’s really got to do more with the way it’s cooked. And I don’t know if it’s just that cooking wild game has become a lost art or cooking in general is becoming a lost art, I don’t know which it is, but I just know that as somebody that spends a lot of time in a lot of hunting camps, I have come to really appreciate and enjoy good cooked wild game.

Larry White: Yeah, I think you’re right. I think cooking wild game is a lost art. I’ve got quite a cookbook collection of old school cookbooks that are mainly teaching wild game. And some of the techniques they go through in there is a lot more detailed than what’s being taught these days. And I would say the biggest problem with wild game is most people have heard this, you’re either undercooking it or overcooking it, and that’s what’s going to throw off. You’re either going to have a bad taste or a bad texture. And once you learn those techniques, it just opens you up to a whole another world of wild game cooking.

Ramsey Russell: I think a lot of it is technique, too, Larry. We started off talking about when you killed your first deer, no differently than when I killed my first deer. And mama was struggling, she didn’t grow up cooking a lot of wild game, you know what I’m saying? And soaking it in milk, trying to get rid of the gamey flavor. But is that really what we’re trying to get rid of? You know what I’m saying? I mean, things have changed. I trim my meats perfectly, I do my stuff differently, but I’m not really trying to get rid of the masky flavor. A lot of how I prepare that meat and how I cook that meat is what produces a gamey flavor. The point in cases, waterfowl, if you overcook waterfowl, it’s going to taste like liver and not like good liver, it’s going to taste like bad liver, and it all goes to how you cook it.

Larry White: Yeah, I’ve had the same experiences. I’ve had numerous people around here tell me I’m crazy for eating Canada goose. And I’m like, it’s delicious. Just don’t overcook it, you know? And they still don’t believe me. Most of them will still refuse to actually eat Canada goose breast.

Ramsey Russell: I do got a bad Canada goose story, I will tell you that. Shooting resident birds and chicken frying them or grilling them or poppers or whatever we were doing at the time. And I did tie into one, I had carried some meat out for some friends of mine, and cooked out in out west, they’re not hunters, and boy, it was good, until that one goose. He had been cubed up and grilled and scattered throughout the bowl. When we served it, we all knew, we hit that, everybody was bragging how good that Canada goose was until we all got that one bite, and it’s just like it was so old, it must have been older than any of us, because the more you chewed it, the more that meat unwound in your mouth like a big old furling cotton ball. But some of the best Canada goose I’ve ever had was the absolute most simply prepared. It was a friend of mine back in college, we had spent the time, and boy, let me tell you what, that was a chore for two college kids to whole pluck perfectly that bird and roast him just real slow cook him in the oven and when it came out, it was extremely rare. The skin was browned up just nicely, but it was just a rare goose when we started carving him like a turkey, and it tasted more like roast beef than anything wild I’d ever eaten. It was some of the best Canada goose I’ve had since that day. But anyway, Larry, we talked about a lot of recipes and some of your cooking techniques. Do you get in depth on a lot of this using your blog? I mean, is that where I can find more information on some of your techniques, some of your recipes and things of that nature is on your blog?

Larry White: Yeah. So primarily, all my recipes will be on my blog. And there’s various ones on there. There’s easy ones that anybody can make pretty quick, and then there’s some that are technique driven. So I’ll kind of have all the techniques for that certain recipe laid out for you to go back to and study if it’s something you want to cook at a later time.

Ramsey Russell: How can we connect with you? Tell everybody listening how to find your blog online and how to connect with you.

Larry White: Yeah, my blog is wild game gourmet. I think it’s the wildgamegourmet.com. and if that’s too much of a mouthful, if you just Google my name and just type in Larry White or Chef Larry White on my website and everything will pop right up. And I’m on Instagram @Larrywhite as well.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’ll have links to your blog on the caption below for anybody listening. You all can click to it and connect with him. Anyway, Larry, I appreciate you coming on. I always enjoy meeting with guys like yourself, hearing your story and learning how to cook, man. I mean, I did not see carpaccio coming. And I’m excited. I’m excited for deer season again, because that’s one of my favorite ways to eat beef or eat red meat, is that carpaccio. And I appreciate you, I appreciate your time, appreciate you sharing your story.

Larry White: I appreciate you having me on. And speaking of deer season, today is our opener, so I might be getting out there this evening.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, you all do have an early season, don’t you? How many deer can you kill in South Carolina?

Larry White: If you don’t do any lottery hunts, I think you’re close to 13. And then if you get lottery hunts, they’re not included in the tags that you’re able to get. So you actually get those as well. And there’s a couple other hunt opportunities you can do. So, I mean, if you were a top notch hunter and one of the fewer freeze, I mean, you’re pushing upwards of 20 deer if you took advantage of every opportunity.

Ramsey Russell: My good. Well, I mean, we’re sitting here, we’re recording in late August, and you all’s deer season is open. That’s crazy. That must be one of the earliest deer season starts in the country. It’s got to be.

Larry White: Private land. It’s open for gun and bow, and then public will start archery here. And my game zone anyway for around September 15^th.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Well, good luck if you get in stand today. And thank you again, Larry, for coming on board, folks, you all been listening to my buddy, the wild game gourmet, Larry White. Check them out link below, or you can connect with them on Instagram. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, we’ll see you next time.

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