This weekend we had a dinner party and I decided to make use of the last big leg roast from my buck but had no idea how I was going to cook it. I ended up combining about 3 recipes to get the final result which was awesome so I thought I’d better document it for future use.
I started where I always start, Hank Shaw‘s Buck, Buck, Moose which has been my goto cookbook since last October, everything we’ve made from there has been fantastic. Following his Roast Leg of Venison recipe he has a side-bar on Smoke-Roasting a Leg of Venison which is what I wanted to do. Hank gives 3 options to deal with this in a smoker:
- Roast it entirely at 350 in the smoker.
- Smoke it until close to desired temp then finish in the oven or grill at 450 to get a nice crust.
- Smoke really high at 400 for 20 minutes and then drop the temp to 300 to finish.
I decided to pursue the 2nd option in a modified form after reading this post on the Bradley Smoker forums. One of the posters there said to smoke at 250 until 115 degrees and then stick it in the oven for 15 minutes. I didn’t want to use the oven so opted for the grill to finish, plus I had other stuff to grill. The dry rub on that post didn’t do it for me so I looked for a different rub option and found “The Ultimate Dry Rub for Wild Game” on the Field & Stream site. This one I liked since it had paprika and juniper berries plus a bit of heat. Even that I modified a bit and here’s my final recipe.
Smoke-Roasted Venison
- Venison leg roast, mine was 3 lbs.
- Dry Rub, below
- 2T Dijon mustard
Dry Rub
- 2T salt, I used Hawaiian Red Alaea Salt, not kosher
- 2T black pepper, ground
- 2T smoked paprika
- 1T brown sugar
- 1T dried thyme
- 1T juniper berries, ground
- 1/2 t. cayenne
Get venison out of fridge and let sit about 30 minutes, after I got it out I started heating the smoke element on my Bradley so it would heat up for that 30 minutes. I then applied the rub, covering the roast with Dijon and then patting on the dry rub. After applying the rub I turned the oven on for the Bradley and got the first briquette smoking. The venison sat with rub while the smoker temp got to 250.
Once the smoker was up to heat I put the venison in and closed the door. I kept checking the temp and had to adjust the vent and the oven temp to keep it smoking as close to 250 as I could. I expected it to take 2.5-3 hours to get to 120 but it managed to hit that temp in about 1.75 hours so I opened up the smoker and let it just rest in there while I got the grill turned on and up to 450.
Once the grill was hot I removed the roast from the smoker and got it on the grill. I grilled each “side” of the roast for about 4 minutes so a total of around 15 minutes of grill time. Once the roast had a nice crust I took it inside, sat it on the cutting board and tented with foil for 30 minutes. While the roast was resting I grilled asparagus and we finished the other side, Smashed Root Vegetables.
Once the roast was rested I sliced in, absolutely perfect and it was the hit of the dinner. I’ll be making this one again in the future.