Venison jerky?

Class teaches how to turn a trophy into food

GAME. Venison 101 isn’t for the faint of heart.

For $99, a hunter, cook or anyone who is curious can spend a day at Penn State’s meat laboratory in State College, Pa., to learn the ins and outs of what to do with a prized carcass.

“It was great!” says Janet Huber, a sheep and cattle farmer from Bedford. “You really learn a lot in this class.”

The daylong session covers everything from dressing and skinning a deer to slicing and dicing the carcass for
steaks and sausage.

Class organizer Catherine Cutter helps teach a section on canning and making jerky.

An outgoing chef who could be mistaken for a Food Net-work personality offers lessons on cuts of meat and grilling, all for the sake of venison.

“You can’t really take this on the road,” says Cutter, a food science professor. The hands-on experience, she says, is what makes the class stand out.

“You guys are all stabbing it like you’re street fighting,” Bill Laychur, the university’s executive chef, complains as participants struggle with cutting up a beef shank in a kitchen. Dairy calves are used in this session because they are cheaper than venison.

Like deer season, the class comes around just once a year, usually in late September at the university meat lab across the street from Beaver Stadium. It’s so close to the stadium that a visitor can see the bronzed statue of coach Joe Paterno from the lab parking lot.

The afternoon brings what Cutter considers the day’s highlight: hands-on training in how to prepare different cuts of meat and sausage. The entire sausage making process typically takes 12 hours, so students cannot take their creations home, though there are plenty of door prizes, and previously prepared and packaged venison to carry away.