Souse your steak to ward off cancer
After spending all day leaning against an abandoned shed in the woods with just a rifle and a 
flashlight, my husband got his doe.
That means lots of deer burger, a few roasts and several steaks are now stuffed in our freezer to feed us cheap for a while.
I’m new to the taste of venison and really hate the way it smells when it's browning, but my husband makes a delicious teriyaki marinade that covers the gamey taste of those deer steaks perfectly.
He leaves mine on the grill until it's well-done. That’s how I like it. I think more rare meat has a stringy/gummy texture that is most undesirable.
I know my preference is among the minority, though.
My food microbiology professor boasted of eating his steaks near raw: As long as the steaks haven’t been pierced before cooking (which would allow any bacteria on the outside to get inside the meat), the cook only needs to sear the surface to be rid of most things that could make him sick.
Some people shy away from well-done steaks because meats cooked to high temperatures form heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAs). These HAs are thought to contribute to some types of cancer.
There is hope for the devout well-done crowd, though. Food chemists in Portugal have found that the formation of HAs is significantly reduced when beef steaks are marinated in red wine or beer for six hours before being pan-fried.
I wonder how it does with venison?
http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/admin/trackback/109641
Marinating venison in red wine works really well. It reduces that gamey taste a good bit, and also helps tenderize the meat.
Interestingly, this is something that has been done for at least 500 years. I've got a fifteenth century Dutch recipe on my website which is essentially venison stewed in red wine.
http://recipes.medievalcookery.com/venison.html
On a related note, that recipe also calls for cinnamon (very common in medieval meat recipes). I've recently read a paper that discussed the anti-microbial properties of spices and I'm now curious as to how well cinnamon, cloves, and such would inhibit the growth of pathogens in meat pies. If your Professor or any of his associates are interested in such an experiment, let me know.
The professor I mentioned, Dr. Daniel Y.C. Fung, mentioned his work with his graduate students on the antimicrobial effects of spices several times in class.
Here is one news report of their findings: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/07/980721081028.htm.
More info about Dr. Fung and his work can be found at http://www.k-state.edu/media/mediaguide/bios/fungbio.html