By pan I mean a well-seasoned iron skillet. But an iron skillet should work anyway. The first step is to sprinkle the steaks with a combination of onion powder, garlic powder, pepper and crushed herbe de Provence. Then coat them in flour. Elk is very lean so the flour helps keep the juice in.
Then, quickly fry up some garlic, minced onion and liquid smoke in the pan until nice and brown. Add some olive oil and then add the steaks. Elk goes very quickly from rare to well-done, so keep an eye on them. Regardless of regular meat doneness preference, rare for elk is the way to go. The texture is nothing like beef, instead firm and similar to lightly-seared ahi.
We had a harvest grain pilaf with it. You can generally find this combination at Trader Joes. It includes quinoa and Israeli couscous. Simply fry up the white parts of a bunch of green onions with some minced garlic in olive oil until fragrant. Add the grains, fry until coated. Then add about 2 cups of chicken broth and cover and simmer until done. Then add some green onion tops and sliced almonds.
The other note is about wine. What we’ve found works best is a red blend that contains Shiraz. It should be velvety and spicy and mouth-filling. It’s not hard for game to overwhelm wines. This time we had Daves Raijin Red from the Scatter Creek Winery in Washington. Prior we had a 1999 Meritage from the Dry Creek Winery in California. Both worked wonderfully.
