Our cooking instructions are just a guide. Your cut of meat may vary slightly in shape or thickness, it may be warmer or cooler when it hits the pan or oven and your oven or hob may behave differently to ours. Use our instructions as a guide, but deploy your senses too; look, prod, listen and smell while you cook. After all, cookery should provide us pleasure as well as nourishment.
Preheat your oven to 220C/Gas 7.
Place the venison shoulder in a roasting tray, then rub all over with olive oil, pure sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Place the shoulder into the oven and roast for 20 minutes.
As it’s browning, peel and finely chop two onions and about 5 cloves of garlic. Find a casserole pan that will fit the shoulder quite snugly and place it over a medium heat. To the pan add a good drizzle of oil, or you could use beef dripping. Add in the onions, garlic, a few bay leaves and a few sprigs of rosemary. Leave to sweat for about 10 minutes.
Remove the shoulder from the oven and turn the temperature down to 140°C/275°F/Gas 1.
Add the shoulder to the casserole pan along with a tin of tomatoes and a pouch of pure stock.
Stir everything together, cover and put in the oven to stew for 4 to 5 hours, or until the meat is falling off the bone and the sauce is thick, topping up with water or stock as you go.