Moose stew with potatoes: A favorite of a Soviet leader (RECIPE)

As far as the history of moose stew, it’s known that Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had a great love for dishes made with this meat. According to eyewitnesses, in the 1960-70s Brezhnev visited the Zavidovsky hunting farm (130 km from Moscow) almost every week. At that time, the place was a closed and protected nature preserve. Brezhnev enjoyed hunting, entertaining guests and treating them to various exotic dishes. One of those recipes was a moose stew with potatoes. 

Today, moose remains popular among Russian hunters due to the country’s large number of forests. It’s a fairly large animal, whose height can reach up to two meters, and weigh up to 400-500 kg.

If you like to keep healthy and fit, then moose meat can replace the usual lean chicken breast with buckwheat. Doctors sing praises about the benefits of moose meat: the low amount of fat, the complete absence of carbohydrates and its leading position for protein content. This meat is distinguished by a large number of vitamins (E, PP, group B), polyunsaturated fatty acids, micro- and macroelements.

Moose meat has its own unique flavor and taste, and doesn’t require complicated recipes. At the same time, the male moose meat is tough, therefore it requires soaking for several hours. You can use plain water or a light marinade based on a weak solution of vinegar or lemon juice. The female moose meat is much more tender, so it can be soaked in less time or even cooked without pre-soaking.

To improve the taste of the moose meat, before placing it in a large cooking pot fry it until golden brown. Then, it should be stewed for a long time together with vegetables and seasoning. 

There’s a festive version of this recipe. The base (meat and potatoes) is the same, but you should add carrots, as well as some dried apricots and apples cut into large pieces. You can try this version, too. Today, however, we’ll make our moose stew with potatoes, onions and carrots. 

Ingredients for 8 servings:

• Moose meat (filet) - 1 kg
• Potatoes - 1 kg
• Onion - 3-4 pieces 
• Carrot - 1 piece
• Garlic - 4-5 cloves
• Spices for meat - to taste         
• Salt and pepper - to taste

Preparation:

1. Carefully clean the moose meat of any film and tendons; then cut into large pieces, sprinkle with a little salt.

2. Fry the meat in butter with the addition of vegetable oil until you get a characteristic brown crust. The meat should be put in a very hot frying pan with sizzling oil and fried on the highest heat in order to retain the juice as much as possible. The meat doesn’t need to be cooked completely. If you overexpose it or reduce the intensity of the heat, the juice will leak out and the meat will become tough. Remove the meat from the cooking pot.

3. Cut the potatoes into large pieces.

4. After that, fry the potatoes in the same oil in which the meat was fried.

5. Cut the onions into cubes, garlic into slices, carrots into circles.

6. After the potatoes have turned brown, remove from the pan and start putting the ingredients in pots, or better, as they did in Zavidovo, in one large cauldron, layer by layer. 

7. First of all, lay out the third part of the onion, then on top of it – all the potatoes, which are sprinkled with a little salt.

8. Then, on top of the potatoes put the second part of the onion, garlic, carrots, black pepper and spices. Last but not least is the moose meat, which is covered with the remaining onion, garlic, black pepper and spices.

9. Fill the pot with boiling water or meat broth by a third and put in a preheated oven at 200°C for about an hour and a half. If you know that the moose is old or the meat has not been soaked long enough, the cooking time should be slightly increased.

10. Moose meat should turn out to be very juicy. And potatoes are the best side to go with this delicious and unusual dish. Enjoy!

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