How to Cook a Moose (25 page)

As a sort of interesting aside, after mating season is over, the moose's antlers fall off and are eaten by rodents, who crave the calcium in them.

Because moose are shy and solitary, as well as increasingly rare, it's not especially surprising that I have so far only had one encounter with the official state animal of Maine. Along with so many other species, moose are now endangered in most parts of the United States, their numbers thinned by climate change. Warmer winters mean more ticks, and ticks love moose; too many of them on one animal can kill it. They're especially pernicious in New Hampshire due to longer autumns and shorter winters. Sometimes a single moose carries as many as 150,000 of the little bloodsuckers; they bleed out, literally, until they're little more than ribs, antlers, and loose skin.

Moose also die of overheating in the increasingly warm winters. They pack so much fat on their torsos, they have trouble cooling themselves when the weather isn't cold enough, as it increasingly isn't. In Minnesota, the average winter temperatures have risen 11 degrees since the mid-twentieth century. And if the heat and ticks don't get them, brain worms might. Which is why in New Hampshire (as well as out in Minnesota and Montana) the once-plentiful moose populations are dwindling fast.

But right next door in Maine, whose borders go much farther north, the current number of moose was estimated to be as high as 76,000 in 2012, which is a robust population; but this year, in 2014, they've fallen closer to 65,000, so it's happening here too, although moose hunting in Maine is still a going thing. This year, moose-hunting permits will be issued to only 3,095 lottery winners in Maine (it was 4,110 last year) out of about 50,000 applicants, only 10 percent of whom can be nonresidents.

Reputedly, moose are far more difficult to hunt than deer because of their elusiveness. And because they like to wade in shallow water, nibbling on the aquatic plants they find there, many hunters have reported shooting and killing their game, only to have to drag it from a pond or lake, an enormous, ungainly, soaking-wet carcass, before they can even begin to address the subsequent work of skinning, gutting, and butchering it. Moose hunting is therefore not for the weak of heart or body or mind. It is challenging enough to find the moose, let alone get it out of the woods.

The increasing endangerment of moose begs the question: Should we cook a moose at all? Or rather, should we hunt it? Many animal-rights groups would ban the practice. Moose are threatened, after all. But there are also some compelling traditional arguments in favor of hunting moose, the first one being economics: One butchered and properly stored moose can provide up to four hundred pounds of
meat, which will feed a family for a very long time, with meat to spare to give away. As long as the population sustains itself, hunting moose controls overpopulation and allows those that remain to have additional resources. Moose hunting also reduces moose-car collisions, which are almost always fatal to both moose and driver.

Even so, few issues seem to polarize Mainers as much as the hunting question, which pits “flatlanders,” typecast as bleeding-heart liberal urban-dwellers, against northern Mainers, people who learned to hunt from their parents, who learned from theirs, and so on, back to the seventeenth century. Hunting is a way of life up here. Many families depend on it. Hunting lodges' economies do, too. It's an ongoing dance between practical necessity, tradition, and beloved and formative cultural activities on the one hand, and progressive, protective, ecological concerns on the other. The recent anti-bear-baiting referendum on the Maine ballot brought a record number of voters to the polls in a state known for very high voter turnout; it was defeated by a wide margin, proving that for now, the die-hard traditionalists outnumber the progressives in Maine.

Although moose hunting in Maine is legal (if declining) for now, who knows how long the moose population will last in this rapidly warming climate? Like the lobster, that other iconic (and delicious) animal of Maine, we may find ourselves mourning their local absence in our lifetimes. The lobster is already gone from waters south of Maine; the moose is almost gone from states west. At the moment, Maine exists in a fragile and likely temporary state of grace.

Although I count myself among the tender-hearted and ecologically concerned progressives, I have (possibly hypocritically) vowed to eat moose every chance I get, anytime I come across a generous hunter willing to share. It's already dead; I don't want it to go to waste (and yes, this is the same argument that allows animal lovers to buy secondhand fur coats).

Moose is as delicious as lobster, and as versatile and easy to prepare. Moose venison, being lean, high in protein and minerals, tender, and flavorful, can be eaten with minimal preparation. There's a long tradition of eating moose in the northeast corner, and a long history of appreciating its fundamental ease of preparation. It seems that the most common Native American moose recipe, besides pemmican, was simply “moose steaks.” In addition to being roasted or grilled over an open flame and dried and preserved with fat and berries in pemmican, moose meat was also traditionally cooked in stews with onions, carrots, and potatoes, or hung and smoked, then sliced and eaten.

The tongue was the part of the moose most highly prized by many Native American tribes. In times of plenty, hunters snared their moose, killed it, and then discarded the entire carcass after cutting out the tongue. In leaner times, of course, the entire animal was put to use, from snout to hoof to liver to hide.

One old Alaskan homesteader recipe, called Jellied Moose Nose, calls for a “moose jawbone,” pickling spices, and onion and garlic. The directions are short and to the point, labor-intensive and a bit grisly, but also oddly poetic:

Jellied Moose Nose

Cut upper jawbone of moose just below the eyes.

Put in large kettle of scalding water and parboil 45 minutes.

Remove and cool in cold water.

Remove hair and wash thoroughly.

Put in fresh water with onion, a little garlic, and pickling spices.

Boil gently until tender.

Cool overnight in same juice.

Remove bone and cartilage.

Slice thinly and pack in cans or jars; cover with juice.

Chill; slice and serve cold.

It turns out that moose nose is an old delicacy. In his 1916 compendium of all things moose, aptly named
The Moose Book
, Samuel Merrill gives what might be the definitive treatise on how to cook a moose, including his own views on “moose muffle,” or rather, the “fibrous flesh of the cheek, and the gelatinous prehensile upper lip.” He compares the elegant, luxurious taste of “stewed muffle” to turtle soup, and pronounces it far better than pigs' feet. He quotes an early-eighteenth-century monograph on the moose by a gentleman he calls Judge Dudley, who was a son and grandson of governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: “‘The moufflon, which forms the upper lip, is very rich, juicy, and gelatinous. This is cleaned and dressed in the manner of a calves' head.'”

To forestall the inevitable shock and revulsion on the part of the uninitiated, Merrill proffers the following eloquent, if slightly baffling, defense of muffle-eating: “The moose's muffle is not merely an olfactory organ: it is a member which is used as deftly as a man would use his hand in picking off twigs of considerable size from trees, the moose often reaching high in the air and breaking down the tops of saplings by this means. Like the beaver's tail it is a useful substitute for a hand, and like the beaver's tail it is the choicest tidbit which the animal can furnish for the table.”

The Reverend Joshua Fraser, a military chaplain, describes a dish of muffle after a dinner at an Indian camp on the upper Ottawa thus: “The crowning dish was that grandest of all dishes, moose muffle. This is the immense upper lip and nostrils of the animal, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing it one of the most toothsome and savory of all the dishes within the range of the gastronomic art. It is white and tender as spring chicken, yet firm and substantial as fresh beef, with a flavor combining the excellencies of both.”

The Moose Book
also advocates spreading raw or roasted moose marrow on bread or using it to thicken stew, extols the deliciousness of moose feet, liver, and tongue, and compares the crisp, rich flesh of a moose's roasted, well-basted upper lip to the “crackling” of roast young pig. Merrill adds that moose meat is the only type of venison suitable for pickling in brine. Evidently, pickled moose meat is as tender and flavorful as the best corned beef.

However, “the fat is indigestible and unpalatable,” he writes, “and should be trimmed off and thrown away, its place being supplied by pork or butter.” Moose steaks should be thick-cut and served hot and rare, seasoned only after cooking. “If a piece of meat has hung a day or two too long to suit an over-fastidious taste,” he suggests helpfully, “the gamy flavor may be corrected by adding a little jelly—any kind which is not sweet—and a dash of port or sherry.”

Merrill's recipe for moose stew is the most direct and unfussy one I've found:

“Saw the marrow bones in pieces two inches in length; cut the meat in medium-sized pieces; add three slices of pork cut in quarter-inch squares, and three or four onions sliced; add pepper and salt, and a piece of butter as large as an egg. Boil three hours. Add three or four potatoes, quartered or sliced, in time to cook. When done add two or three tablespoonfuls of flour in a pint of water, stirring till it boils. For dumplings, use batter as for cream of tartar
biscuit, put into the stew five or ten minutes before serving, according to size.”

He adds, “Small pieces of tender meat, too small for the broiler, may be utilized in pies—made as chicken pies are made—or in Hamburg steak.” He provides a recipe for Moose Steak in Chafing Dish that involves another egg-size piece of butter, melted, a seasoned steak, seared and then cooked, covered, for ten minutes, and then a tablespoon of port or sherry and a little currant jelly for each person.

All these recipes sound delectable, especially the ones involving an egg-size piece of butter, but nothing sounds more strangely weird/sublime than moose muffle. Someday, if I ever manage to accompany a moose hunter into the woods, and we further manage to kill a moose, I will claim the jawbone, bring it home, and discover for myself what all the fuss is about. Moose muffle strikes me as the most economical of foods; it puts into literal practice the old French animal-husbandry technique now popularly known as “snout to tail.” Eating the moose's snout, which nine times out of ten is discarded by hunters in the woods and left for wild carnivorous animals to scavenge, seems to me to confer on the animal the highest respect. I remember the moose I saw several years ago on the dirt road in the woods by the lake; its upper lip was distinguished by its size, its length. It was a finely wrought, useful upper lip, muscular and hardworking and prehensile, as Merrill pointed out.

When I look at it that way, eating moose muffle is not disgusting at all. It's beautiful. The snout is the most important part of a moose, the part that enables it to forage for food and stay alive, the part that comes into direct contact with the world, that most clearly communicates its will to live.