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

While I love a good steak and potatoes meal, sometimes it's fun to use steak with other dishes... especially when you're working with such deliciously tender steak as bison! So, here you'll find an awesome recipe for Steak Fajitas. This gives you plenty of food to serve 2-3 people and is quite easy to make. The first step, obviously, is the steak. I've used a 10 oz. Bison NY Strip Steak, which will leave you with perfectly tender slices.  On both sides, I lightly sprinkled the steak with garlic salt, black pepper and cumin. I cooked my steak over low heat in a cast iron skillet, prepared with olive oil and lime juice.  The NY Strip should be cooked quite slow to allow it to reach it's maximum tenderness, keeping in mind that bison has much less fat than beef steaks, and therefore cooks through much more quickly.  For my rare steak, I cooked it over medium low heat, COVERED for 10 minutes on each side.  And look at this beautiful...

So this summer, after a lot of waiting, my company, NebraskaBison.com, finally got in a product I have been working towards for a long time: Bison Italian Sausage Brats . Since then, I have been enjoying testing them and creating some new dishes with them as they are so so so tasty! You may have already seen my post for Pasta with Bison Sausage and Vegetables  and today I am bringing you a homemade pizza recipe using our Italian Sausage! First, a couple cool things about this Italian Sausage, because they aren't just any other sausage. 100% bison meat: we don't use any other meats or fats in these sausages. They are just bison meat and seasoning. Simple as that. No MSG. No added Nitrates or Nitrites Come in Mild and Hot flavors. You can see why they are already off to a great start. They have a lot of positives, and once you taste their great flavor, you'll be hooked! So, back to the pizza. I already knew these sausages were great on the grill, and gr...

I am so excited today! Today I got to take a pasta dish I've made for a long time and upgrade it to bison! I've long had a Pasta with Sausage and Vegetables that I've made... every once in awhile I would substitute the Italian sausage for little bison meatballs, but it is just so much better with sausage. Well, this summer, we've finally introduced our Bison Italian Sausages at NebraskaBison.com, so I can finally start making this dish with Bison! There it is in all it's colorful deliciousness! And it's pretty straight forward to prepare. Ready? Great! For this dish, I've used the Hot Bison Italian Sausage that we've just released over at NebraskaBison.com. It has no MSG, no added nitrates or nitrites, no added preservatives and is ALL bison meat – no added pork or beef! Start by taking your frying pan and adding about a tablespoon of olive oil to it and turn on to medium heat. Add sliced onion and sliced green onion and 2 ful...

Are you ready for another slider recipe? I sure am. I have been really into sliders lately, and sure been enjoying the heck out of them! This one (like all of them really), was crazy easy to put together, and the taste was just perfect! Really all there is to this recipe is making up your meatballs, toasting your slider buns with melted cheese and then putting together the simple sandwich! 1 lb. of Ground Bison should make about 8 meatballs. I used my pretty basic meatball recipe for these sliders, adding a little extra crushed red pepper for a bit more of a kick. If you like things with a little more heat, feel free to add even more! I cooked these meatballs in my Dutch Oven with my sauce, after browning them with some olive oil. 25 minutes on 375* oven will do the job. Letting the meatballs cook and simmer in the sauce really allows the meatballs to soak up the sauce which is key in a good meatball sub. Another important step in these little sliders is makin...

Making little bison sliders really allows you a chance to be creative with your burgers, as you only have to commit to a smaller portion size and not a whole giant burger! For this slider, I went towards some toppings that would add some spiciness to the slider, but without being too overpowering. To create the cream cheese topping spread, I finely chopped some jalapeño peppers and mixed them into softened cream cheese along with some minced garlic. Divide your meat into equal portions for the amount of sliders you want to serve. 1 lb. of ground bison should make about 6 sliders. Place sliders on a hot grill and grill for 3-4 minutes on each side. Remove from grill and serve on a toasted bun with a generous helping of cream cheese topping.  For a little extra crunch or kick, add some jalapeño slices on top as well.

Last night about 8 o'clock I really wanted something I could knead for awhile. I'm certain that I'm in the minority in this, but there's just something about making things from scratch with my hands that is really satisfying to me. And I love kneading dough. It's a great stress / tension reliever... very peaceful for me. So... I went to Barnes & Noble and looked at bread cookbooks and pasta cookbooks and came back with The Pasta Book (Williams-Sonoma) . About this Cookbook I chose this book because in the first section there are detailed instructions AND illustrations for making pasta by hand. Something I've tried to do unsuccessfully a couple times already with the basic instructions that have come along with my pasta machine.  Additionally, this book has a number of tasty looking pasta recipes for using with the noodles you create, as well as even more recipes for cooking with dried pasta noodles. Even further, this book goes into things li...

While searching for ideas for bison sliders, I knew I wanted to make one with a cheese I normally don't use in my cooking. I've had brie before a few times, and have really enjoyed it, so while perusing my local grocery's artisan cheese section, I decided to go that direction with this slider. I actually created the slider in two different variations: a brie stuffed slider and a second with the cheese on top, both with cabernet onions, both of which worked very well and in following this recipe, use whichever serves your preference. The first stop is preparing the brie. You'll need to cut it into small cubes if you'll be going the path of stuffing your cheese (which was probably my favorite way) . If you're planning to put the cheese on top, then you'll want to slice the cheese. After preparing your cheese is a good time to prepare your onions. Cut a yellow or white onion into slices and then cut in half. Add with a small drop of olive oil to a ho...

This awesome slider was inspired by a Bison Burger I enjoyed a restaurant while visiting my sister in Des Moines, Iowa last year. I didn't get it quite right... part of that was their phenomenal brioche bun... but this one certainly isn't too shabby.  This slider is quite simple: a grilled bison burger slider, with melted cheese, a slice of poblano pepper and topped with pico de gallo. The one thing I would change about how I made this slider, is that I didn't cook the pepper slice at all. It probably would have been a little better if I had either grilled or sautéed the poblano pepper slice and made it more tender.  While you could use store bought pico de gallo, I recommend making it. It's quite simple, and then you can use fresh vegetables! All you need is: tomato, onion (red or yellow), cilantro, green onion, jalapeño peppers, a sprinkle of lime juice and a pinch of salt. Chop and mix all these ingredients together in a small dish and that's reall...

Bison Burgers. Ah... one of my favorite parts of summer.  I love cooking bison burgers. One of the reasons is because, there really isn't anywhere else around here to get a good bison burger other than my kitchen, but another is because it's so easy to cook anyway, and you can make a perfect burger just the way you like it! So here's my quick post on my favorite way to cook bison burgers to help you get started. Of course, the whole point of cooking for yourself is to make food the way you want it, so be creative and make the burger your own. Just use mine as a launch pad! As you can see here on the right, I like to start with big, meaty hand formed patties. If you're going for easiest way possible, my site does sell pre-formed bison burger patties that are wildly popular. I, however, prefer a larger, 1/2 lb. patty and so I prefer to form mine myself from the Ground Bison. I do not add anything to the meat before I form the patties. If you like, you can season ...