Hunting Series Part 4: Asian Bear Curry
Daring to blend ingredients
Food is a powerful way to connect with one’s cultural identity.
When I first started hunting and attempting to cook game, all the recipes I could find within hunting magazines, articles, videos, or word of mouth were things like venison jerky, meatloaf, stew, and pot roast. For a few years, these were the recipes I was always using to share hunted meat with my roommates.
Perhaps it was just my lack of culinary creativity, but one day my girlfriend now wife was helping me cook some stew from the bear that I had just harvested in Maine (longer story to tell in another post) The ingredients primarily consisted of onions, potatoes, and carrots to compliment the meat. One day I was was standing over the pot with a bottle of Worchestershire sauce, she stops by hand and instead throws in Japanese curry packets for the flavoring. Instantly, the dish felt more flavorful, familiar, and delicious for my Korean American taste buds. In addition, the curry flavor was incredibly effective at covering any ‘gaminess’ of the meat.
Using the curry packets was such a simple shift that had profound impact within my experience of hunting. I realized that I was timid to break away from older ‘traditions’ of ‘American’ hunting while not realizing that I am part of adding to tradition. As someone who also had not yet really embraced the beauty of being different as an Asian American, I didn’t feel like I had anything special or unique that I could proudly bring to the literal and metaphorical table.
The cool part is that my non-Asian hunting friends really enjoyed the experience of eating different flavors with their wild game. And for my Asian roommates and family members who have never hunted, the bear curry felt like a more hospitable way to invite them into my experience of the recent hunt.
Creating asian bear curry challenged me to see how the experience of embracing my Asian American identify can gift me and others something beautiful, novel, unifying, and tasty.