The Bison Girl :: a lifestyle of good cooking, good eating & living well

So I've had Bison Short Ribs in my freezer since summer, and this week I finally decided to start using them! I haven't struck luck in the past when cooking with Short Ribs, so this time I turned to the internet for help. I spent quite a lot of time researching and looking for ideas, until ultimately, Gordon Ramsey decided to help me out.  Here's a link to the video recipe that convinced me this was the way to go, and here's a link to the written out instructions. Since he was using beef, I had to update the recipe slightly for my bison, but other than that I followed his recipe pretty closely. After settling on this recipe and buying the few ingredients I needed, it occurred to me that I didn't have the cookware to get the job done. So, I got a new pan... and honestly, I don't know how I haven't had a good dutch oven like this before. I can easily see this becoming my new favorite pot. (Sorry for my disgusting oven...) Another note on this aw...

So, fall has been very kind to us in Nebraska so far. It hasn't been until today, that the weather reminded us that winter is just around the corner. The wind has been howling all day and the temperature finally dropped before 40*.  But luckily I was ahead of the game, and had the perfect meal to warm me up today... Bison & Vegetable Soup made with a Bison Chuck Roast and Bison Bone Broth. (If you don't have the patience or desire to make your own bone broth, you can of course substitute a beef broth instead.) Although this recipe took a little bit of time (mostly just waiting for the bone broth), it was quite easy to make and a recipe that I'm definitely going to hold on to! Bison Bone Broth Instructions Again, if you prefer to skip this step and use beef broth instead, that is totally acceptable. If you prefer to use the homemade bison broth, here are my steps; and here's a link to get the bones you need. I placed 4 bones in my crockpot...

Christmas will be here before we know it! Even though it's hard to believe since it's still 60* out during the day. Doesn't really even feel like Thanksgiving should be next week, but I'll take it! The good news is that I can help make your Christmas shopping easier this year and you can send Christmas gifts that will definitely be a hit! Send Bison Meat Christmas Gifts to your favorite Meat Lovers this year! My company, NebraskaBison.com, has been sending Christmas gifts on behalf of customers across the country for the past five years, and there's a reason we see an uptick of orders during the holiday season as well as customers coming back for gifts year after year – people love receiving these gifts! I've put together a short guide with ideas and our most popular gift items to get you started. If you'd like to check out our full Bison Meat Gift Guide , this has deadlines and tons of gift ideas for you. Small Gift Ideas These small gi...

Holy cow! It's August! The summer is just flying by... before you know it, we'll be making chili and watching football. But we're not quite there yet. We still have one glorious month of summer left. And every August I celebrate Bison Burger Month. While I may have made that designation up, it's a great time, because my company, NebraskaBison.com, spends each August celebrating the most popular and common cut of bison meat... Bison Burger! We do that by having month long sales on our Ground Bison and Bison Burger Patties at the best prices that we offer all year. In addition, we post all kinds of recipes and cooking tips on our social media sites and blogs to help introduce people to bison meat or inspire others to branch out in their bison cooking. So... 1. Check out the awesome deals on Ground Bison and Bison Burgers on my site . 2. Check out our Instagram or Facebook feeds to follow along with all the ground bison inspiration we post throughout the month. ...

It's always a treat when I get to take some time to go visit the Missouri Bison Ranch and spend some time down there with Randy and Jane. This summer, we decided it was time to update some of our bison and ranch photography, so Nate and I scheduled a trip to spend a couple days down there so he could take pictures. One of the best parts of this short trip was that we got to meet "Buster", the most adorable little bison bull calf who Jane has bottle-fed and taken care of this spring and summer. Born a twin, Buster's mother wasn't able to take care of him. Randy and Jane rescued him and he has quickly become part of their family, living in the barn and melting the hearts of anyone who gets the chance to meet him! I thought you may enjoy some of the great bison pictures we got from the trip and especially some of the pictures of Buster.  Bison are a truly awesome creature and always so fun to see out on the ranch where they have TONS of room to roam and gr...

So, my appetite for meatballs seems to only continue to grow, as you can probably tell from my Instagram feed . And bison just works so great for meatballs. The meat is tasty and it really kicks up any pasta dish. So, despite the fact, that I'm planning a pasta and meatballs lunch with my grandma and cousins this weekend, I decided to try a new meatball concoction for lunch today! I've been thinking about this for awhile, but just hadn't put it into action until now, but I wanted to try out making cheesy meatballs with a bit of a kick - and I really liked how these turned out! As usual, this recipe is super easy, and really doesn't take much... just a little time. And, although I usually bake my meatballs, in the spirit of trying new things, I decided to cook these in my cast iron skillet.

Lately, I've been really into cooking with Bison Roasts. There's just so much you can do with them, and so many fun meals to try -- other than your classic roast and potatoes. This post is going to detail my process of making a tenderly amazing Bison Chuck Roast into delicious burritos in my own kitchen! Obviously, the star of the show is this delicious Bison Chuck Roast which I seasoned using NebraskaBison.com's exclusive Steak & Burger Seasoning. Normally, I would do a little more prep work on the flavors of this roast before sticking it in the oven, knowing that I'm going to make it into burritos, HOWEVER, since I only cook for two, I had plans to get two meals out of this, and for the second meal, I did NOT want my meat burrito flavored. So, I cooked the roast plain and added the burrito seasoning at the end.  Not included in this shot is the sliced onion and water I added to the pan before cooking. And this is how it looks when it...

So it's been about a week since my last bison meal and I was really anxious to make something new I could post on my Instagram feed as it was feeling a little neglected.  I wasn't really sure what to cook this evening. It has been one of those days where nothing really sounds good. I had some ground bison in the freezer as well as a couple bison flat iron steaks. So, after a bit of pondering, I settled on taking out one of the Flat Irons with a plan to make a nice, light bison steak salad. I don't often do salad as a main course, particularly at dinner time, but when I do, I do it right. :) Bison Steak makes a great addition to salads, and the flat iron is a good match as it is quite thin and wonderfully tender. 

Did you know how very easy it is to have your own fresh noodles the next time you want pasta? I sure didn't! I've thought about getting a pasta maker for a long time, but only recently (when I had a Bed Bath & Beyond Gift Card) did I take the plunge. I bought a decent, $35 hand crank pasta roller and cutter which comes included with a spaghetti and linguine attachment.  Let's start with the finished product. I sure do love spaghetti and meatballs! I did a little research, and over the weekend decided I was ready to give it a try! Since I was going to be using homemade noodles, it didn't feel right putting from-the-jar red sauce over my hard work, so I decided to make a homemade sauce as well. Spoiler alert: I have never been able to make a proper red sauce. I don't know why. I have tried many different recipes and I never like them. It must be my lack of Italian blood. But! I did make delicious noodles (for a first try!) as well as awesome B...

Okay, so let me start by saying that this post will not have the recipe for the bread I'm going to show you. That wouldn't be fair to the author or publisher -- and quite frankly probably isn't legal. :)  So, if you think this bread looks delicious, you'll either want to find a similar recipe online or find this book (which I highly recommend anyway, for it's plethora of other delicious bread recipes!) Here's the link to it on Amazon. What I will show you, however, is my process in following Reinhart's instructions - my opinions on how easy it was to follow and how my finished recipe turned out! That way, you can see how truly easy bread making can be! Here's a slice of the finished product:

While, I mainly like to keep the focus of this blog to recipes and information about bison meat (as that is my biggest area of expertise...) I do have some other cooking and baking interests and I'm thinking we'll start branching this out a little bit. And today's a good day for it. The whole city is basically shut down, and I've been holed up in my apartment all day, giving me the chance to spend some time working on some projects that have long been on the back burner. *Ahem* ... cleaning my kitchen and organizing the cupboards... *Ahem* My apartment kitchen is quite small for my normal use. (Just the other day I joked with my mother that we could both have a room completely dedicated to kitchen cabinets and still not have enough cupboard space -- and she agreed.) So, taking the time to get that cleared up, has cleared up some of my much too little counter space so I can get back to baking and cooking comfortably! So, I wanted to start a series of posts tha...

Earlier this week, I showed off the delicious bison fajitas I made with leftover bison brisket . I promised to show another delicious meal I made from the same brisket as well. So here it is: a Hot Bison Brisket Sandwich -- even easier to make than the fajitas! I don't know what it is, but lately I've been really into hot sandwiches, particularly meaty ones. It's probably the lack of burgers in my life due to winter, I suppose. So, once I had the original meal of bison brisket with potatoes and gravy and the second meal of brisket fajitas, there was enough of the bison remaining for about 2 of these sandwiches. Although since it was just me this evening I only made one. You can see from the picture, this is no small sandwich and has quite a lot of meat on it. It's no skimpy sandwich, that's for sure. The assembling of these sandwiches is super easy. And it's one of those things, you can be free with and make your own! I'll put what I did in the...

For New Year's Eve, I finally got the chance to make my bison brisket that's been torturing me from my fridge for quite some time. We needed to use it for a photoshoot for my site, which is one of my favorite parts of my job, as that usually means I get a delicious, albeit, slightly cold dinner out of the deal. However, this brisket was a monster 5 lb. hunk of meat, which meant after we were done enjoying brisket, roasted potatoes and gravy I put most of the bison brisket back in the fridge to save for later... and thus, the plotting began! The following day, we were planning to have a couple extra people over to celebrate the New Year, so I thought I would use the leftover bison brisket to make a special meal: Bison Brisket fajitas. My first step was to take out the remaining brisket and cut it up. (Fun fact: There was so much brisket left over, I didn't even use all of it here. Stay tuned for another post.)