Servings: Makes 12

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 3 hours 15 minutes

Total time: 3 hours 30 minutes

Who doesn’t love pizza? It’s a classic comfort food that’s loved by many. But what do you do when your family is craving pizza, and you live in a small town that doesn’t have pizza delivery? And you don’t want to make dough from scratch? Enter the pizza roll-up! These Venison Pizza Roll-Ups are easy to make, great for snacking, and always a favorite party food. They are the perfect homemade alternative to the gut-wrenching Totino’s frozen pizza rolls. You can use a venison shank (or a roast) from one of the deer that’s sitting in your freezer.

I kept this recipe super simple with just mozzarella cheese sticks, tortillas, and meat. But you can experiment with adding different pizza toppings inside like peppers, onions, mushrooms, or black olives. Serve them up with a cup of marinara sauce for dipping. These are a huge hit when I serve them up to our 8-year-old daughter, and I guarantee you will love them, too

Ingredients:

1 whole deer shank (from one leg)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 cups venison or beef broth

1 yellow onion, peeled and quartered

1 Tablespoon minced garlic

12 small flour tortillas

6 mozzarella cheese sticks

cooking spray

1 cup marinara or pizza sauce

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Season shank with salt and black pepper.

Heat olive oil in a 6-quart Dutch oven on stovetop burner over medium-high heat. Add shank and fry for about 5 minutes until golden brown all over.

Add venison or beef broth, onion, and garlic, and cover with a lid or tightly with foil, then place in the oven at 350 degrees F, undisturbed, for 3 to 4 hours. The meat should be falling off the bone at this point.

Take Dutch oven out, remove lid, and use tongs or forks to shred meat off the shank bone. Discard the bone and any undesirable tendons or fat.

Stack 3 tortillas at a time on a plate and cover with a damp paper towel. Microwave for 20 seconds until pliable. Microwave the second batch when you are ready to roll more.

Slice the mozzarella sticks in half, lengthwise. Place 2 heaping Tablespoons cooked meat on the bottom 1/3 of each tortilla, then a mozzarella stick half on top of that. Then tightly roll it up.

Place the Pizza Roll-Ups on a parchment-lined baking sheet, seam side down. Spray lightly with cooking spray. Bake for 12 minutes at 400 degrees F. Serve immediately with marinara sauce for dipping.

Use any leftover shredded meat to make another quick weeknight meal like tacos or BBQ sandwiches.

You’ll find more recipes to prepare using the meat and fish that you’ve harvested yourself in every issue of MidWest Outdoors, available by subscribing on our website.