Red Wine Braised Venison Roast
What Is Braising?
Braising is a French cooking technique that combines both dry and wet cooking methods. Meat is seared before being simmered, low and slow, until it is fall-apart tender.
The searing locks in the flavor and gives the meat a bit of a caramelized crust.
That seared meat goes into a covered pot with lots of aromatic vegetables and a little liquid.
Then it cooks low and slow, working all that flavorful moisture into the meat as it becomes fall-apart tender.
Braising is the perfect cooking technique for tougher cuts of meat. So, we like to turn to it when we have a venison roast that might need a bit of TLC.
(If you don't have venison, grab a beef chuck roast. Any tougher cut of beef is perfect for braising, since the slow cooking method will tenderize it too perfection!)
Slow Cooked Venison in Red Wine
This recipe has become a deer season favorite in our house.
Low and slow cooking is the perfect method for venison, because it gives the meat plenty of time to tenderize. And, the red wine in this recipe not only gives great flavor to the meat, but it acts as an additional tenderizer as well.
That means SUPER tender and flavorful venison roast!
How To Make Braised Venison
The initial prep work isn't too difficult: just a quick sear of the meat and a saute of some veggies.
Then, into the oven it goes. We've cooked roasts from younger deer as short as 1 ½ hours. But, older deer can benefit from 3-4 hours of braising.
It can be hard to wait that long, because the smell is incredible!
When it's time to eat, get ready for tender meat and caramelized onions in a wine sauce that had mellowed to a robust reduction.
Serving Red Wine Braised Venison
We like to serve our braised venison with potatoes. Good old mashed potatoes or baked potatoes are always a hit. But really, any potato will do.
They give a nice balance to the flavorful roast and are great to soak up the juice!
If you like this recipe, you need to try our Beer Braised Venison Roast recipe too!
Red Wine Braised Venison Roast
Slow cooking in a French style brings incredible tenderness and flavor to this Red Wine Braised Venison Roast.
This recipe is easy to scale up if you have more mouths to feed, or want leftovers!
Ingredients
- 1 ½ c red wine, (any will do, we like Merlot)
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tablespoon thyme
- 2 teaspoon olive oil
- 1 lb venison roast, cut into serving sized pieces (or beef chuck roast)
- 1 onion, quartered and sliced thin
- 4 celery stalks, chopped
- 5 carrots, sliced
- 1 c beef stock (we prefer low sodium)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- In a medium saucepan, mix the red wine with the garlic and thyme. Simmer, uncovered, over high heat until the wine has reduced by about half.
- While your wine is reducing, sear your meat in a large cast-iron skillet, or Dutch oven. Heat 1 teaspoon of oil over high heat. Salt and pepper the venison and sear on all sides until deep brown. Remove the meat from pan.
- Add another teaspoon of oil to the pan and add the veggies. Saute over high heat until the onions are golden, 3-5 min.
- Add the beef broth into the pan, stirring to loosen all of the stuck bits in the bottom of the pan.
- Return your meat to the pan with the beef broth and vegetables. Add the hot, reduced wine mixture. Cover the skillet or Dutch oven and place it in the oven for 2-3 hours, or until the meat tender.
- When the meat is tender, remove your pan from the oven. Let stand 5-10 minutes before serving.
Notes
This recipe from 2012 was updated in October 2017. We made the roast even more flavorful!
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
3Serving Size:
⅓ of recipeAmount Per Serving: Calories: 479
This is one of the recipes from the early days of Curious Cuisiniere. We've made this many times and updated our pictures a few times since we first made it, but we've left some previous version here, in case you've found us in the past and are looking for that old, familiar image.
Sarah founded Curious in 2010 as a way to save her recipe creations and share culinary experiences. Her love for cultural cuisines was instilled early by her French Canadian Grandmother. Her experience in the kitchen and in recipe development comes from over 10 years working in professional kitchens. She has traveled extensively and enjoys bringing the flavors of her travels back to create easy-to-make recipes.
Is the thyme dried or fresh.
Fixing this right now...
Really need to know. Oops
Hi Donna. We use dried. If you have fresh on hand you can use double what the recipe calls for.
How many minutes per pound? I have a much larger venison roast.
Hi Daphne. Typically for this dish we cut the roast into serving-sized pieces. And, doing this the time should be nearly the same, since your pieces will all be roughly 1/4 - 1/3 lb. Even if you want to leave the roast whole, we have found that 3 hours is still a good time to braise even a whole 4 lb roast, since you are cooking it low and slow it's not so much about getting the meat 'done' as getting the temperature up slowly to break down the tougher fibers. Enjoy!
Can this be tweaked for a crock pot. I get home too late to do it in the oven for three hours but would love if I could have it cook while I'm at work.
Hi Jessica. Yes, you should be able to do this in a slow cooker on low for 6-8 hours. If you give it a try, let us know how it turns out!
Mine came out bone dry 🙁 I had a good lid on my pan, all the right ingredients in the right measurements, and cooked 2.5 hours. Trying to figure out what I might have done incorrectly
Hi Sarah. I'm sorry you had trouble with this. It typically is quite reliable. How deep was the liquid when you put the pan in the oven? One possibility is that your pan was too wide which didn't allow for a depth of the liquid, so it evaporated quicker.
@Sarah Ozimek, I was suprised when I read the recipe that 350 Farenheit (c. 180 C) was considered "low and slow". For "low and slow" I would use 160 C at the most. A slow-cooker on high would only reach about 150 C, and significantly less for low. Is something missing from the recipe about turning the oven down once the venison goes in? This may be why the venison turned out dry?
Hi CM. While not as low as a slow cooker, we are not using a searing or higher roasting temperature in the 400s. We, and most readers, have never had this turn out dry when cooked at 350F, as you can see in the comments. If you feel that a lower temperature may be more preferable to your tastes, feel free to try it. Just be aware that you may need a longer cooking time.
Great Recipe! My wife and kids loved it. This was as tender as any roast beef I’ve ever had. This will be one of my regular venison meals from now on...assuming I’m successful again this season.
So glad you and your family enjoyed it!
I made this recipe with a 2lb roast. I didn't have 3 cups of wine, when I doubled the recipe, so I compensated with broth and a bit of vinegar. Additionally, my pot wasn't big enough to hold a double batch, so I split all ingredients in half between a stainless steel pot with glass lid and Lodge 10in dutch oven with lid. I placed them in both at the same time. After a couple hours, both came out of the oven tasting outstanding! We thought it was interesting that the dutch oven version had very little liquid left, while the stainless steel version had a decent amount left. No matter, we chopped the meat into cubes, and combined them, and it was a stew. No matter, we'll be saving this recipe and doing it again soon. My husband said he he'll request more roasts next time we process a deer. And, we both thought the flavor was great, and while we don't mind game flavor, we could've fooled anyone into believe this was a beef roast.
So glad you enjoyed the venison roast!
Can you let the whole roast sit in a crockpot for 8 hours? Will you get same, tender results?
Hi Peter, We've actually never done venison in the crock pot. (Something to add to our list!) But, I don't see why this wouldn't work quite well on low for 8 hours. If you give it a try, definitely stop back by and let us know how it turns out for you!
This looks wonderful and I'd like to try it -- however, why do you cut the meat into pieces? I was planning on serving it as a roast and braising the roast in the way suggested here. Do you think this will work?
Hi Mary, We cut it into pieces for easy serving. You could definitely braise the whole roast like this if you prefer. I would use a Dutch oven in this case and make sure you add enough beef stock to cover the roast. Enjoy!
This dish is amazing! I got a buck a few weeks ago, and brought it to a butcher to make sure to maximize the cuts from the animal. I received 2 decent-sized roasts in the mix, which I had never gotten before, and had no idea what to do with them. I saw this recipe, which seemed easy enough, and sounded delicious. I added some small white, red and purple potatoes to the pot as well. My wife loved it. No knife needed for eating, this dish makes the meat fork-tender when done. I have an amazing picture of the completed dish, which I wish I could share here.....I will be making the other roast the same way.
Congrats on your buck! We're so glad you enjoyed our recipe! If you're on Facebook, we'd love to have you share your picture with our community over there: https://www.facebook.com/CuriousCuisiniere .
YAY - someone chose to do game for the challenge! I finally managed to lay my hands on some moose meat and braised it too! The technique is perfect for making lean game meat tender. Great job and I am so glad you enjoyed the challenge
Braised moose meat sounds great! I would agree that braising is perfect technique to make game really tender. Thanks!
That sounds delicious! I wouldn't throw the braising veggies out either!
Thanks! I do really hate waste in my cooking.