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Ritzy Mulligans
Really ritzy mulligans are made with snapping turtle meat in 1-inch cubes and/or squirrel, rabbit, prairie chicken, marrow bones and salt pork-always salt pork if you can beg, buy or steal it. Big dice of carrots, turnips, onions and potatoes go in. A can of tomatoes. You put the vegetables in just as soon as the meats begin to boil, then simmer until everything is done, salt and pepper well and pass around in emptied tin cans or cups.
A camp stew with no quantities, no times and no yield — the proportions are whatever the day produced. A few things are worth knowing before you build one.
- Add the vegetables later, not soonerSquirrel, rabbit and turtle are working muscle and need 1½ to 2 hours of gentle simmering before they give up. Root vegetables cut in "big dice" are done in 20 to 30 minutes, so putting them in at the first boil as written leaves them collapsed. Hold them back until the meat is nearly tender.
- Salt porkStill sold, usually near the bacon, as fatty cured pork belly or fatback. It is much saltier than bacon and is the seasoning as much as the fat here — render it first, brown the meat in the fat, and go easy on added salt until the end.
- Marrow bonesAsk a butcher for cut beef shank or femur. They contribute body and gelatin rather than meat; a couple of pieces is plenty for a pot this size, and the marrow should be scooped back into the stew.
- Turtle and prairie chickenSnapping turtle harvest is regulated or closed in many states and the meat is rarely sold; greater prairie chicken seasons survive in only a handful of plains states and the bird is protected elsewhere. Check your state before either goes in the pot. Pheasant, guinea fowl or dark-meat chicken stand in for the bird.
- Wild game handlingRabbit and squirrel should be cooked through — 165F at the thickest part — which a long simmer accomplishes easily. Wear gloves when dressing wild rabbit; tularemia is transmitted through cuts in the skin, not through properly cooked meat.
- The can of tomatoesCanned tomatoes came in several sizes, so the quantity is loose; a modern 14.5 oz can is a reasonable stand-in. Because acid slows the softening of potatoes, hold the tomatoes back until the vegetables have started to soften rather than adding them at the outset.
- Serving vesselsSkip the emptied tin cans; cut rims are sharp. Enamel mugs do the same job.
- ScaleAs a rule of thumb, 2 to 2½ lb of meat, 4 oz salt pork, and about 2 lb of mixed root vegetables fills a 6-quart pot and feeds six.