# Elk Brains



## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

My grandmother would cook brains every time we butchered hogs. Soaked them in lye and then rinsed them off in cold water. Then they were rolled in seasoned flour, fried and served with sliced and fried cornmeal mush.

I could take or leave brains...uh, some at work say I leave my brains at home often...................uh, anyway, brains have a really mild flavor. To me they have the consistency, and taste, of paste. I don't go out of my way to dig them out of a skull but if I'm sawing some horns off a freshly-killed deer or elk I might grab them.

I like mine for breakfast, with eggs, fried, with a good dab of hot sauce. But brains are "good" anytime.

Fresh elk brains:


Soak overnight in lightly salted water. Roll in seasoned flour:


Breakfast:


As a precautionary measure to guard against Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) contamination some state agencies warn against eating certain organs from deer, elk and moose. They claim the thymus, pancreas, brains, eye balls, even the liver, should be handled with gloves and not eaten until "further testing is performed and analyzed."

The last I checked there is no scientific proof that CWD has been transmitted to a human, but you can never be too safe and I am not recommending anyone eat elk brains.

.


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## Mr Muleskinner (Feb 14, 2012)

While living in Greece I had the brains and the eyeball out of a sheep. I was the guest of honor with a family and it was considered somewhat of a delicacy and an honor to share with the family patriarch. Since then I have found it better to be the guy that people can tolerate but don't like enough to be a guest of honor.


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## longbow (Mar 31, 2009)

You guys are killing me.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Organ meats - Paleo superfoods

.


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## Dunkem (May 8, 2012)

wyogoob said:


> My grandmother would cook brains every time we butchered hogs. Soaked them in lye and then rinsed them off in cold water. Then they were rolled in seasoned flour, fried and served with sliced and fried cornmeal mash.
> 
> I could take or leave brains...uh, some at work say I leave my brains at home often...................uh, anyway, brains have a really mild flavor. To me they have the consistency, and taste, of paste. I don't go out of my way to dig them out of a skull but if I'm sawing some horns off a freshly-killed deer or elk I might grab them.
> 
> ...


Another good reason to have your game boned out as CWD is also present in the spinal cord,and cutting the chops with a bandsaw will cut through the cord and smear onto the meat.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Dunkem said:


> Another good reason to have your game boned out as CWD is also present in the spinal cord,and cutting the chops with a bandsaw will cut through the cord and smear onto the meat.


Good point........still, no human has contacted CWD. Better safe than sorry though.

Uh..........I debated whether or not to post a brain recipe. I'll wait and see what happens here before I post my bison and elk bone marrow recipes.

.


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## Mr Muleskinner (Feb 14, 2012)

bone marrow is delicious


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## massmanute (Apr 23, 2012)

wyogoob said:


> As a precautionary measure to guard against Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) contamination some state agencies warn against eating certain organs from deer, elk and moose. They claim the thymus, pancreas, brains, eye balls, even the liver, should be handled with gloves and not eaten until "further testing is performed and analyzed."
> 
> The last I checked there is no scientific proof that CWD has been transmitted to a human, but you can never be too safe and I am not recommending anyone eat elk brains.
> 
> .


Good point.

Another thought: I don't believe there have been enough studies on this to say one way or another. If we think about the mad cow disease (*Bovine spongiform encephalopathy* or *BSE*) epidemic in the UK, as of 2009 there were 177 deaths. This is in a human population where millions of people were eating beef every day, and where the infection rate in cattle was, I believe, pretty high. It seems that the risk of dying from BSE is fairly low, even among those who have consumed a lot of beef from infected sources.

If we compare that to the comparatively low number of people eating wild game in the Western US and the relatively low rate at which it is consumed, it seems to me that it would be virtually impossible to have acquired sufficient epidemiological data to say that chronic wasting disease is not transmissible to humans.

On the other hand, there is a form of prion disease in sheep known as scrapie. The risk of transmission of scrapie to humans is believed to be extremely low, bordering on zero. However, one theory about BSE is that it jumped species from sheep to cows, and that this was what was responsible for the BSE epidemic in humans in the UK, so I wouldn't necessarily rule out transmission from sheep to humans or from from wildlife to humans.


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## elkmule123 (Aug 14, 2013)

wyogoob said:


> Good point........still, no human has contacted CWD. Better safe than sorry though.
> 
> Uh..........I debated whether or not to post a brain recipe. I'll wait and see what happens here before I post my bison and elk bone marrow recipes.
> 
> .


Well I cooked up some elk bone pieces for the marrow. My daughter saw the meateater episode where he roasted the moose femur and cracks it open to cook/flavor his camp meat, and she really wanted to try it. So I tried following another of the meateater recipes where he cuts one inch pieces and roasts them in the oven with a sprig of thyme. My didn't pull out of the bone like his did on the episode.  My guess is I over cooked them. I did sample a bit that was between the crust ... boy was I surprised. :mrgreen:

I'd be interested in some recipes that you have wyogoob :O||:


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

elkmule123 said:


> .......................................................
> 
> I'd be interested in some recipes that you have wyogoob :O||:


I don't really have any elk or bison marrow recipes; I was just kidding.

I've eaten a lot of bone marrow but never purposely cooked up a bone marrow dish. Back when we had a full household fresh pork hams and the rounds from beef and big game were cut on a meat saw so there were leg bones with marrow in those cuts of meat. A big round steak would have the bone in the center with marrow for example. I liked it, would eat it, but never tried to "sell" it to the rest of the family. I thought it was a little strong from whitetail deer.

Dangit, now I wish I'd saved a leg bone off my bison.

.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Oh, by the way, some say that eating bone marrow from wild ungulates is bad.

I think driving down Interstate 15 during rush hour is bad. 


just be careful out there


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## elkmule123 (Aug 14, 2013)

Yeah, I've heard that, thanks. Something to with the chronic waste disease, which this elk definitely didn't have.


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## utahgolf (Sep 8, 2007)




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## fishreaper (Jan 2, 2014)

As far as prions go, ungulates deal with CWD, sheep with Scabies, various fish have whirling disease, while humans and perhaps similar primates have to deal with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Of course, cattle have mad cow disease.

A prion is essentially an improperly folded protein, (a chain of amino acids), that can result in further production and alteration of other local proteins. It appears with large areas of "infected" proteins, cell damage and death occurs. 

I imagine that if these prions were to affect enzymes, bio-catalyst proteins which move all across the body, it could do some serious damage. 

However, it still appears unknown whether or not zoonotic diseases can spread across various species, or at the very least, I do not know. However, it seems most species are not immune to this condition

In humans, the consumption of human brains by cannibalistic tribes appears to be among the main transmission, but I imagine water contaminated with feces that contains these proteins may be enough to continue spreading such a disease were it to be poorly filtered or purified. It is my understanding that deer feeders can spread disease by keeping animals in such a close proximity to each other for long periods of time, increasing the amount of feces present in an area where so much is consumed. However, this would only be a problem where CWD was creating a noteworthy issue. I've heard that cattle will typically avoid an infected bovine, which may alter the spread via social circles.


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## brookieguy1 (Oct 14, 2008)

One doesn't have to feel guilty of "wasting game" by not eating the brain. Leave the damned little thing in the animal's skullcase where it belongs. Same goes for every other part of an animal besides muscle tissue. Sheesh.;-)


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## massmanute (Apr 23, 2012)

fishreaper said:


> As far as prions go, ungulates deal with CWD, sheep with Scabies, various fish have whirling disease, while humans and perhaps similar primates have to deal with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Of course, cattle have mad cow disease.
> 
> A prion is essentially an improperly folded protein, (a chain of amino acids), that can result in further production and alteration of other local proteins. It appears with large areas of "infected" proteins, cell damage and death occurs.
> 
> ...


A few comments. One of the diseases you mentioned, whirling disease, is caused by a microorganism, but the rest are prion diseases.

It is known that at least one of the prion diseases can jump species, i.e. mad cow disease, also known as variant Creutzfeld Jakob Disease (vCJD), can be transmitted to humans. How it originated in cows is unknown, but one theory is that it jumped species from sheep (scrapie).

It is not known if chronic wasting disease can be transmitted to humans.

You are right about improperly folded proteins.

In addition to transmissible prion disease (in humans, vCJD and kuru) there is also an inherited form and apparently a spontaneous form as well. There may have been a few cases transmitted via blood transfusions or organ transplants.


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## Bob L. (Jan 11, 2015)

I admire your recipe. I don't know what else to say besides I don't think I could do it.
Rock on!


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