Venison Backstrap Recipes

Venison backstrap is one of the prime cuts of meat from a deer. All deer have two backstraps, giving you enough meat to make a couple of venison backstrap recipes.

If you’re fortunate enough, you’ll hopefully harvest more than one deer, because for me there are always way too many things I’d like to make with backstraps.

Here is a list of venison backstrap recipes, that I’ve made recently and found they’re worth sharing.

Butterfly Steaks

Butterflied venison backstrap is a staple across many households that cook venison.

This is a classic way to make venison steaks. The idea behind butterflying the steaks is to make them larger.

If you harvest a particularly large buck or an elk, you wouldn’t need to butterfly the backstrap.

For the average deer butterflying the backstrap steaks makes for a larger steak.

Once you’ve butterflied the steak, you gently hit it with a meat mallet to even it up, this also helps to make it even a little larger in diameter.

After that, you can cook the steak as normal. The recipe linked above makes a great sauce to go with the steak, it also has a great venison steak sandwich using the backstrap.

Roasted Backstrap

Oven baking backstrap is one of the most classic ways to make a venison backstrap.

What’s great about this recipe is you get complete control over the flavor and the cook.

This recipe makes it easy to monitor the temperature of the venison so you can make a nice medium or medium rare backstrap.

It’s also a great way to impart flavor through a marinade. You will see below I will talk about why I don’t use a marinade for grilled venison.

But, for oven-baked backstrap, I always use a marinade. One method uses the cooking technique to impart flavor directly, the other uses the ingredients to influence the dish.

Baking a backstrap is one of the easier ways to make a juicy venison dish. 

Once you nail the cooking time, keep the venison moist, and get the right temperature, you will be left with a delectable dish.

It may sound intimidating, but it’s one of the easiest backstrap recipes, and I have plenty of guides to help you, some of which are linked to above.

Venison Stir Fry

This recipe can be made with just about any cut of venison, but I like to use venison backstrap for stir fry or most Asian dishes.

The reason for using the backstrap is because it’s tender and I find it readily absorbs flavor easier than tougher cuts.

If you’re not keen to waste a backstrap on stirfry I completely understand, I get a couple of deer each year, so I can afford to do this.

You can still make this recipe using other cuts if you use the velveting technique.

To make a stirfry you need to fry the venison in a wok at high heat. The cooking session is short.

After frying the venison for 3-5 minutes, remove it from the heat and rest while you cook the other ingredients before returning the venison.

The whole process takes less than 30 minutes. There are not many dishes that you can make in under 30 minutes that are this tasty.

Now you can see why I put this recipe in as one of my favorite backstrap recipes.

This can be done with most Asian dishes such as Mongolian venison, or chowmein.

If you use a tougher cut than backstrap, the velveting process will add time, another reason why I use the backstrap. 

Grilled Backstrap

For those who dare, this one is for you. 

It takes a brave cook to decide that they will toss a whole backstrap on the grill.

But if you do, I doubt you will find any better way of cooking a backstrap.

I’ve tried backstrap in multiple ways, including all the ways on this list. 

But for pure unadulterated venison, the grill is the best for a backstrap.

I would go a step further and say a charcoal grill is the absolute best.

The flavor from the charcoal, the high heat, the searing, and the resting all lead up to a juicy, intense-flavored backstrap.

You can marinade the backstrap beforehand if you like, but 9 times out of 10 I don’t and prefer to use a rub just before cooking.

I want to bring out the flavor of the coals and increase the flavor of the venison through cooking.

Deep Fried Backstrap

This is one of those recipes that many people want to try but are afraid of ruining a prime cut of venison.

Well, let me tell you that is entirely possible, and the first time I made this I did just that.

But, perseverance paid off and I nailed it the second time around. 

So, learn from my mistakes. When you get this dish right, you’ll realize not only is it worth using the backstrap, but you’d even use a tenderloin for it.

Deep-fried venison backstrap is that good.

The first thing you will need to get right is the marinade. I first made this with just a dry rub, but the flavor is lost in the cooking process, with a mild flavor in the coating.

Marinading the venison gives a much better flavor. The ideal marinade here is a milk-based flavor. 

Any regular milk will work here as we’re not trying to make the meat any more tender.

Add in all your favorite dry spices or follow the recipe linked above.

Lastly, ensure the meat is thoroughly dried before coating it. 

This is better than any fried chicken recipe, and in my opinion worthy of a backstrap.

Venison Jerky

Venison jerky is a classic. But not many people are willing to sacrifice a backstrap for jerky and I get that.

But, hear me out.

The backstrap is one of the least flavored cuts of venison right along with the tenderloin. They are both the most tender cuts, but pale in comparison to say the flat iron for flavor.

So, what you have is a cut of meat that is super tender (great for jerky), that needs marinading for most recipes (like jerky does), readily adapts flavor, is pretty lean, and easy to cut with or against the grain.

You can see all the reasons piling up for why backstrap makes great jerky.

Pan Fried Backstrap

Another simple yet tasty way of making venison backstrap is simply pan-frying it.

Although this method is very similar to butterflied backstrap, the difference is in the cooking method.

For butterflied backstraps you cut them into individual steaks before cooking, for pan-fried backstrap, you cut the steaks after cooking.

Cooking the whole backstrap on the pan has the benefit of being easier to get an even cook.

You also have the option of doing a reverse sear to get a juicy backstrap with a fairly even cook.

Another benefit of pan-fried backstrap is you can marinate the backstrap before cooking.

You can see how this simple backstrap recipe can be quite versatile, hence making it onto this list.