My Alaska Delivery of Halibut and Salmon Arrived In New Hampshire

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Ed Hale

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I purchased some Alaskan Salmon and Halibut from Tanners Alaskan Seafood.

My 24 hour Alaskan delivery arrived frozen, as promised. Here are the fish packs below.

I made a baked pistachio crusted halibut with butter herbs and lemon. It was spectacular. Looking forward to a Sockeye Salmon dish soon!

Yes, it is expensive but in June I will catch some myself and bring many pounds home. Gotta get my Omega 3’s! Below my dishes, pistachio crusted halibut and sockeye salmon w/herbs and lemon. So fresh and delicious.

More soon…

Alaskan Fresh Fish? Ordered Halibut and Salmon to Experiment and Chef

Posted on February 10, 2026 by Ed Hale

Temporarily trading my rifle and bow for a fishing rod? Just temporary!

Fishing is actually hunting with a hook. In some river angling circles they call it hunting because they stalk the fish.

This winter, I am getting into my kitchen, chefing of wild Alaskan halibut and salmon I hope to catch in June? You bet!

A nice wild addition to my moose, bear, venison and boar dinners.

I ordered direct from Alaska to further my recipe development. I found an Alaskan provider and direct shipper. Yes, it is expensive but here goes.

I ordered from Alaska’s Tanner Seafood

I intend to to test out some recipes before I go on my Alaska trip.

Why?

With some fishing expertise on my part, I hope to bring home plenty for my freezer, and feed my friends and family.

The foundation ingredients for these fish include my mouth watering favorites; lemon, butter, herbs and garlic among many other savory ingredients.

Interestingly, I will be working on mouth puckering Aioli and Pesto recipes to compliment and enhance these Alaskan Ocean gems.

I love chefing salmon sushi in my home for years with Atlantic salmon. It will be interesting to taste compare my Norway farmed Atlantic salmon sushi and sashimi below against wild Alaskan sockeye salmon sushi. In this photo I also served Atlantic yellowfin tuna sashimi, soo good!

The Alaskan fish will be drop shipped to my door in the next week or two.

Good Eats! Talk soon…

Try Cooking Fish Like Salmon and Halibut Recipes Before My Alaska Trip

Posted on January 16, 2026 by Ed Hale

I go on the web and research recipes. One recipe I ran into utilizes a Buerre Blanc Sauce. It is a butter sauce with a dry white wine or white vermouth. Works with salmon and halibut. Julia C. would approve.

Thick pan seared halibut can dry out, but using this recipe can leave your fish moist and succulent. I will try this out.

Good Eats!

Home Made Baked Beans Pressure Cooked with Bear or Venison – A Meal for Cold Weather Hunting!

Posted on December 9, 2025 by Ed Hale

Cold Outside? Home made steaming hot Baked Beans (Navy Beans) warm me up! I use a modern pressure cooker like Instant Pot. But add some wild game too.

There is a long tradition in the Hale family to make baked beans especially in winter.

But I cut out the laborious baking for several hours.

I just-recently began pressure cooking them. The secret of great bean making is soaking beans for many hours or overnight. Right?

I speed up the soak process by pressure cooking them for one minute and letting them rest for an hour.

Put a pound or so of dry beans in cooker, add water to cover by 2 inches with a tbsp kosher salt and 1 tsp baking soda (reduces gas) then use high pressure for 1 minute then shut off for 1 hour.

Then, rinse beans and put back in cooker.

In a separate 2 qt bowl, add 3 cups water, 1/3 cup molasses, 1/2c brown sugar,1tbsp Worcestershire, 1 1/4 tsp dry mustard, 1/2 tsp kosher salt, 1/4 tsp ground black pepper, One onion rough diced, 2 tsp dices garlic, 3 slices of rough chopped raw bacon.

Here, you can add very small cuts/cubes of some wild game say 1/4 lb for more protein. I like bear meat a bit more.

Then add all the ingredients to the beans into the cooker.

Pressure cook for 50 minutes.

It is done! Now release the steam pressure, open and enjoy! Done in 2 hours! Wow!!!

The sweet of molasses and sugar coupled with flavor of beans and bacon, game meat, Worcestershire, mustard and garlic simply blows my mind.

OMG- Makes 4 pints. Freeze in pint ball jars. To thaw place in cool water for one or 2 hours. Heat and eat. Great hot beans for breakfast with eggs and bacon, home fries and a hot cup of coffee. You have enough energy and protein to hunt in cold weather for many hours.

Warm Belly?

Go Hunting!

Making Hickory Smoked Russian Boar Rib Hors d’Oeuvres

Posted on November 21, 2025 by Ed Hale

From my November Tioga PA. hunt on November 12, I harvested a 300 lb Russian Boar and today November 21, 2025. I unfroze some ribs and hickory smoked them on my Traeger.

I began by pressure cooking the ribs for 10 minutes in 4 cups herb and garlic infused water and a teaspoon of kosher salt and some vegetable/herb infused beef bouillon. I did not want rib bones to fall out.

Then, I basted Sweet Baby Rays Kickin’ Bourbon Sauce on them and hickory smoked the ribs for an hour and a half at 260ºF on my Traeger smoker.

I cut the ribs into bone-in Hors d’Oeuvres and added more Sauce.

Here is how they came out.

Soo Tender! An easy recipe.. Enjoy these ribs with your favorite beer. As the Colonel would say “Finger Lickin’ Good!!

Enjoy!

Making Maine Black Bear – Bear Balm

Posted on September 16, 2024 by Ed Hale

Bear oil/grease below is the base of this easy-to-make bear balm recipe.

The many uses of bear fat is legendary in early America.

It is used for cooking, frying, pastry, lubricating, candle making, skin and hair care, waterproofing boots, shoes, and softening/protecting leather are but a few.

It is an easy to make recipe which looks alot like mayonaise.

Ingredients:

1 cup black bear rendered oil/grease.

1/4 cup Jojoba Oil

1/4 cup cosmetic stearic acid beads heated to liquid.

Heat bear oil and organic stearic acid separately in a water bath below. The stearic acid beads liquify at 180F.

Combine hot bear oil and stearic acid liquid quickly in a glass mixing bowl while hot and mix. Then add the Jojoba oil and Essences and mix again by hand.

I used 50 drops of Bayberry Oil, 12 drops of Lavender Oil, and 12 drops of Sandalwood Oil to my basic recipe.

Scent essence oils are essential for calming aromatherapy too.

Chill the balm in the fridge till stiff, then the whip the balm with a power mixer.

It looks like fluffy mayonnaise!

Place in small jars, label, and use small amount on hands and arms, rubbing it in.

The Bayberry oil etc. comes through as a very pleasing aroma. My next batch will be eucalyptus and peppermint scented. Enjoy!!!

Smooth Skin and Good Smells

Good Bear Hunting!!

Newfoundland Bay-cation – Puffin Love

Posted on July 21, 2024 by Ed Hale

The Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica) is a beautiful bird. Camera in hand, I photographed them among the craggy rocks and islands.

Here in Newfoundland, along the Bonavista peninsula, the town of Elliston is home to thousands of Puffins who come to land, mate and raise their young. Like many of you, I am not a Puffin expert but I just love Puffins.

Their satirical eyes and orange beaks are captivatingly reminiscent of parrots and the long beaked Toucan.

Spending most of their lives in the open ocean, Puffin dive, often down to 50 feet or more using their wings like penguins and feed on small fish like sand eels and similar size fish. We human visitors flock to see them each year in spring and summer. They are hunted in parts of the world for food but not here in Newfoundland. Off shore along Elliston below, they like nearby islands where there are few predators to bother them.

Elliston, by-the-way, is also home of the worlds most numerous root cellars, where historically, locals store their hard earned seasonal vegetable and food larder. Below, immaculately built stone faced root cellar, the door fit snug to keep vermin out.

I hope to cod fish here soon but regulations restrict cod fishing to weekends and Monday’s to five fish per person. My wife and sister-in-law inherited land and a home on the shores of Newfoundland where we visit with cousins, and perform upkeep on the property. Being on the shore, we get out and cod fish when we can.

Local seiner’s got some capelin (a small very edible fish) and I was gifted some to grill. Years back we were grilling them near midnight, my first capelin ever and initiation was to bite the head off my grilled fish.

Smoked Caplin Tonight

I gutted cleaned and brined them for an hour in a sea salt bath. Then smoked them on my dome charcoal smoker for an hour, I made enough for two more meals to smoke with fishing friends and more beer. It’s a tough job but… someone has to do it. Might as well be me.

I did so with a grin and washed it down with cold locally brewed beer made of 20,000 yr old iceberg water. It was fabulous!

Enjoy!

Bear Meat – Eliminate Trichinella?

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Ed Hale

I have been using Sous Vide water baths for cooking game meat to a specific internal temperature. Below is the Sous Vide tool to heat water and food to exact temperatures.

For example; my venison can be SV’d to 125F then sear on a grill for perfect rare venison. But now cooking bear meat to medium rare? How is that possible?

Bear meat, like pork has the possibility of containing Trichinella, thus for years, federal guidelines for cooking are at much higher internal temperatures usually 160ºF and higher.

I read an article in Bear Hunting Magazine where the author now eats his black bear meat at 140ºF after using a Sous Vide (time and temperature technique in a water bath) perfected by Federal Government Food Safety Guidelines below to kill parasites like wild game born trichinella. See Table A1 for time and temperature in the website below to kill Trich..

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7033995/

The bear recipe article from Bear Hunting Magazine below.

http://www.bear-hunting.com/recipes?ID=8F8AB0C2-9C1E-49E2-AC48-B79ACA718A2C

I have not tried the Sous Vide method for Bear meat.

When in doubt cook to at least 160ºF internal temp. like in a stew. I pressure cook my bear for stew.

Note; Steve Rinella of Meateater fame made a serious field cooking mistake in 2011 with Alaskan black bear meat. He cooked it over an outdoor fire but was not sure of its internal temperature. He and his hunt party ate it and came down with Trichinosis infection and all had to take antibiotics. It was no fun!

I don’t know what Steve was thinking but he already knew of the parasite issue?

He continues his bear hunts and eating bear but perhaps learned a very important cooking survival lesson.

If you have no way to accurately measure internal grilled bear meat temperature in the field, don’t eat it.

Many Indigenous people of North America boiled or stewed bear meat. A few tribes roasted it on a spit but boiling long enough to stew and tenderize will kill both bacteria and parasites. See website below.

http://traditionalanimalfoods.org/mammals/bears/

Good Lesson!

Moose Meat- Processed In My Kitchen – Continued

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Ed Hale

My wife and I continue our effort in turning our frozen boneless moose parts into vacuum sealed burger, stew meat, steaks and a few roasts.

We began by finding parts to be ground into burger, and found lots of it as you see in our transformed freezer below.

Moose meat has no fat thus we mixed approximately 20 to 25% pork butt in with the burger. Pork butt has pork meat and pork fat to allow burger patties to bind and stick together. Pork is also a key ingredient in making meat balls and pasta sauces.

After around 18 hours of processing we have nearly completed the burger packaging of maybe 130 pounds and 60 pounds of steak and stew meat.

Last night we had moose stroganoff and it was a hit. Meat flavor was excellent with no hint of gamey taste. I prefer steak thin slice 1/4 inch x 2 inches or thinner against the grain for stroganoff as I have made in the past to my families delight.

Most all on-line beef stroganoff recipe’s will work just fine with moose steak, just thin slice it against the grain while raw and partially frozen before you saute it. Just don’t overcook the meat.

Today we cut backstrap butterfly steak, many sirloin steaks,and stew meat.

Note: Some steaks will be made into tips and stews as winter gets here. More to do but it is safe and frozen. We will rearrange the freezers so we have a better inventory. Already we have given some meat to friends and family. Nice!

Good Eats!

Grey Squirrel Stew- Sooo Good!

Posted on October 6, 2021 by Ed Hale

I must admit that I hunt big game more often than I squirrel hunt. But when I do, i recall my youth and get out my sharp shooter skills with .22 rimfire, it feels good. Years back when my kids were learning to hunt, squirrel was on the menu all the time. A chest shot is fine to take them down but a head shot is better. Accordingly, the head shot is what we strive for, but it doesn’t always happen. Missing a shot at a squirrel is easy to do.

I am fortunate to have recently bagged three grey squirrels and was going to make a stew for my grandkids. But, alas we were having difficulty with family schedules as they live an hour away and are homeschooling.

Skinning a squirrel is a straight forward proposition but the skin takes work to pull away from the meat. Once complete everything else is easy. I use a small knife and sharp small game shears.

I decided to cook all three for my wife and I , besides I thought it was best for my son to take one of his children hunting for their own full experience from field to frying pan.

I separated the legs from the body and halved the body for browning all parts together.

I dusted them with flour and browned the meat in a large skillet with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Then, on to pressure cook the meat for 14 minutes with 2 cups beef broth or bullion infused water with some salt and pepper, garlic powder, thyme and a bay leaf. It was perfect time, 14 minutes, as the meat was very tender. Some folks debone the meat after cooking. I like it on the bone.

I chopped stew veggies like carrot, celery, onion and potato and pressure cooked those for 7 minutes. Mixing the cooked meat and veggies allowed the flour to help thicken the stew. Below is a small tasty meal.

OMG it tastes like leg or thigh chicken meat and no hint of wild to it. One squirrel makes a meal but I would cook more for leftovers.

Happy Hunting and Cooking.

February 2026

Category Archives: Cooking