Michael Symon Urges You To Serve These Underrated Meats At Your Next Party

If you are hosting a party, you'd be lucky to have Michael Symon roasting the meat. The Cleveland-born chef is one of the accomplished culinary stars in the country, winning both a James Beard and Food & Wine Award, hosting Food Network shows, and opening over a dozen restaurants in his four-decade career. Like any good professional chef, he has some opinions about what gets overlooked in the culinary world, especially when cooking at home. So when asked Symon about something special to prepare for a big holiday, he zeroed in on a favorite from his own life: game meat.

It's not that Symon doesn't love traditional centerpiece roasts. As he told us, "I think turkey is underrated after Thanksgiving. Obviously everybody eats it on Thanksgiving." However, he also explained, "My father-in-law used to be a big hunter. So any of the game I think is very underrated."

The term "game" covers a pretty wide variety of meats. Generally speaking, it encompasses any non-domesticated animals that aren't typically raised on a mass-market farm. These fall into one of two categories: either hunted in the wild or kept in enclosed pastures and on homesteads. Hunted wild game is actually illegal to sell in the United States but can be used for personal consumption. So, your best bet for getting your hands on some might be making friends with a hunter or finding specialty retailers that sell farm-raised game meat.

There are a few types of game meat you might already be familiar with. Venison and duck are both considered game, despite the fact many are farm-raised and plenty of grocery stores carry them. Deer might be the best place to start, as there are many cuts of Venison good for a party, and it's a red meat that isn't that far off from beef. However, game venison will be leaner and have a more grassy or earthy taste than beef. So it pairs better with sweeter sauces, especially those made from fruit like cranberries or blackberries. Crispy roast duck is also easy to cook because of how rich with fat it is, and while it does kind-of "taste like chicken" it will taste like the best, most flavorful dark meat chicken you've ever had in your life.

Move beyond the more common game meats and you still have plenty of options. Smaller game birds like squab or quail can be individually prepared for your diners, much the way a Cornish game hen would be. Bison is also considered a game meat and is probably more widely available than venison these days. On the more challenging end something like wild boar can take a more experienced chef who knows how to handle the lean meat, but you know what's easier and feeds a crowd? Wild boar ragu. Dropping the name alone will be a holiday showstopper.