Bear meat is some of the best eating wild game. Those that don't like it most likely did not take care of it properly or it wasn't cooked right.
I love backstrap roasts, and I also can it for french dip and shredded tacos.
Here is a post of mine from another thread on some bear pepperoni that I made last week.
We did a little meat grinding this weekend. My father made 30 lbs of burger and 30 lbs of Polish Sausage. I did 50 lbs of breakfast sausage (two types and some as patties and links) and since I had a fairly successful season I decided to try my hand at making homemade pepperoni. I chose Eastman Outdoors snack stick kit.
This kit comes with the spices, cure and casings. There are two types of spices (Hickory and Spicey) and it does 15 lbs of meat (or so it says). There were not enough casings in my kit and we had over 3 lbs of meat that we could not stuff. I used two thirds bear meat and one third pork shoulder butt roast.
I forgot to take pictures while grinding and stuffing, but I did manage to take some near the end of the smoking phase.
Normally when smoking I use a double burner hot plate but as we have had high temps below freezing I am using my propane burner. I smoked the meat for a couple hours and then just heat for 6 more hours for a total of about 8 hrs at 160 degrees. I just took it out for the evening and may have to cook a small batch of the thicker pieces for an additional couple of hours.
Overall, right now, I think that I would use this kit again, if I found additional sheep casings. In the next few days I will know for sure...depends on the taste...LOL
In the first pic you can see the hot plate underneath the burner. I put the shelf in about halfway through the proccess to disperse the heat better.
This is how it hung for most of the time. I did rotate the batches up and down as well as from front to back to help it cook evenly.
For the last hour and a half the meat laid on racks to help cook the meat where it hung over the sticks. Again I rotated the batches.
