Beef, chicken, and pork. Those meats make up the vast majority of the animals consumed in the United States. Some parts of the country eat more fish than others and occasionally some lamb will hit the plates. And of course there is Thanksgiving turkey. But what about bison? Have you ever eaten bison? Do you know how to cook bison? Well, hopefully after you read this post you will want to buy and cook some bison yourself.
Why bison? I won’t get into everything in this post (more bison content coming soon. I promise) but there are some great benefits to eating bison vs. beef. Bison tends to be leaner than beef, has more protein, and fewer calories. Grass fed bison also has less cholesterol, more iron, and a higher ration of healthy fatty acids like Omega-3. Different cuts will have different nutrition numbers associated with them so I won’t give any hard and fast numbers but generally speaking bison will have about half the saturated fat of a comparable cut of beef.
The bison I tried recently was from The Honest Bison which only sells 100% grass fed, grass finished bison. These animals never see a feed lot and don’t have any unnecessary antibiotics or hormones.
Disclosure: This post is monetized with affiliate links. If you buy something through them I earn a commission which helps support this site and lets me buy more meat so I can write about it.
Before eating this bison from The Honest Bison I had never really eaten much bison. I remember having a bison burger once as a kid but nothing beyond that. Since bison is leaner than beef I knew it had to be cooked slightly different than beef so I fired up the grill, got cooking, and learned how to cook bison.
Because bison has less fat it has to be cooked to a lower temperature than a similar cut of beef. I like most beef in the 125-135 temperature range which is generally considered medium rare. Some cuts like tri tip and flank I like to take a bit higher than that. When cooking this bison I generally shot for 5-10 degrees lower than how I would cook the same cut of beef.
First up was the easy one:
How to Cook Bison Burgers
Bison burgers are probably the easiest cut of bison to cook. If you have cooked beef burgers before you can cook a bison burger. Throw them over some hot coals and cook away. These 1/3rd lb burgers from The Honest Bison had plenty of fat in them as you can see. These were just seasoned with salt as I didn’t want to cover up the flavor of the meat.
I treated these like I would have treated a beef burger but I did lean a bit more towards rare or medium rare than I would have with beef. The internal temperature of these was ~130 and for beef burgers this size I usually go for 140 with only a bit of pink in the middle.
Nothing fancy here. Some American cheese, homemade bacon, and pickles with a bit of mayo are my go-to burger toppings. I did throw a couple sweet pickled jalapenos on a couple bites as well which were delicious. With the first bite I could tell the difference between this meat and beef. The bison meat had a sweeter flavor that was just a bit more mineraly than beef. There was no hint of gaminess or anything off putting like that. Just some great, juicy meat flavor.
Like I said earlier, there are really no tricks to cooking a bison burger. Cook it like you would any beef burger but maybe cook it a couple minutes less.
Cooking Bison Tri Tip
Beef tri tip is one of my favorite cuts to cook so I was really excited to try a bison tri tip. Like I do with most meats I dry brined this bison tri tip overnight by sprinkling it with kosher salt (~1/2 – 1 tsp per pound) and letting it rest in the fridge uncovered overnight. Before cooking I hit it with some Big Poppa Smokers Money Rub which is currently my favorite beef rub. I have used that rub on a lot of beef flank and tri tip and love it. It brings some good flavor without overwhelming the meat.
This rub is a fairly standard beef rub but instead of regular sugar uses evaporated cane juice and has just a hint of celery powder that gives it a great flavor.
99% of the time I cook tri tip I use the reverse sear method. The idea is to cook the meat slowly to start and then blast the heck out of it with heat at the end to give it a great crust. I loaded up about 1/2 a chimney of charcoal in my PK Grill and put the coals on one end. The meat went on the other end. Cooking indirect like this lets the meat cook gently and the result is a great color all the way through the meat. I usually shoot for 225-250 degrees in the grill when I reverse sear. If it jumps to 275 or 300 I don’t sweat it too much. If that does happen I will close some vents to bring the temp down.
Once the meat hits the proper internal temperature I throw on some more lit charcoal and give the meat a good sear. For beef tri tip I have been cooking it to 135-140 degrees lately. I think a rare tri tip (120-125 degrees) has a bad texture. At 135 it is still plenty juicy and isn’t tough at all.
For this bison tri tip I wanted to shoot for that 125 mark since it is leaner than beef. When I hit 118 degrees internal temperature I started searing the meat over the hot coals.
Flip the meat every 20-30 seconds and you will start to see the color of the meat darken. You don’t want black, burnt bits but want a nice dark brown or even mahogany color. Keep flipping until you reach your desired color and internal temperature.
Here are a couple pictures of the sliced bison tri tip:
In those two pictures above you will notice different grain structures. The top piece is cut across the grain and the bottom is with the grain. With cuts like tri tip you will always want to cut across the grain. If you don’t you will be left with a very tough piece of meat. The grain of tri tip changes in about the middle of the piece of meat as well. I will usually cut the tri tip into two pieces across the middle and… well, it is hard to explain. Here is a quick video showing you what I am trying to say:
The flavor and texture of this tri tip were out of this world. I was expecting it to be a bit tougher than beef but it was just as tender as any beef tri tip I have eaten. Even though it is leaner than beef this bison tri tip was plenty moist as well. The flavor is also much more complex than beef. As we were eating it we were all getting different hits of flavor with every bite. Some were super sweet, some had almost a raw oyster like taste (in the best way possible), and some were almost floral.
If you do buy a bison tri tip reverse sear it, cook it a few degrees less than you would beef, and be sure to slice against the grain.
How to Cook Bison Steaks
Now it is time for the cuts of bison I was most looking forward to: bison ribeye and bison flank. I am a huge ribeye fan (like most meat lovers are) and my kids love flank steak. When I was thinking of How to Cook Bison these steaks were the ones I was the most excited to cook.
The first thing I noticed in these grass fed bison ribeyes from The Honest Bison was the marbling. As you can see in the pictures above there are quite a few flecks of fat in the meat. I have had supposed prime beef ribeyes with less marbling than these. My expectations were for a much leaner steak than this and I was very pleased with how these looked.
I dry brined all these steaks and then hit the flank steak with that Big Poppa Smokers Money rub like I used on the tri tip. The ribeyes just got salt and a bit of black pepper.
These ribeyes were about 9 ozs each and the flank was 1 lb. Cuts of bison are generally about 30% smaller than a comparable cut of beef. Since these were somewhat thin I didn’t want to reverse sear them but wanted to use the Just Keep Flipping method that has recently been pushed by Jess Pryles.
Basically what you do is put your meat over hot coals and flip it every 20-30 seconds until it is done. With thinner steaks you want a hotter fire and with thicker steaks you can use a bit less charcoal. Since these were somewhat thin I used a chimney full of lump charcoal.
All in all these steaks took about 10 minutes of flipping to get to the desired doneness. I was shooting for 120-125 degrees on both of these and nailed it.
The Flank:
The Bison Ribeye:
And the full plate with some potato wedges and 2 pieces of broccoli (I guess I have to be a good example to the kids):
Honestly these were some of the best pieces of meat I have had in a while. Like with the tri tip we were all getting hit with flavors from everywhere on these steaks. Most beef (especially the beef you get at the grocery store) is mostly just a single note of flavor. It is a great flavor but there isn’t a lot of complexity. This grass fed bison had whole chords of flavor coming through. My 8 year old said “you need to always cook these ribeyes instead of beef”.
If you like watching 13 minute videos of a guy cooking a steak here is a video I shot of the cooking process. There are a few bits of info about bison as well:
The Just Keep Flipping method of cooking got these done perfectly and gave them all a great crust. When you cook your bison steaks just be sure to use a hot fire and cook them a few degrees less than you would cook beef. Rare or medium rare bison is a much different texture than rare or medium rare beef.
Also since bison has more iron if you get up past 140 degrees or so there are some chemical changes that happen. These changes can lead to some pretty weird flavors. So when you are cooking your bison keep it in the rare to medium rare range and you will be rewarded.
Bison isn’t a meat that can be found at most grocery stores. Grass fed bison is even harder to find. But don’t fret, you can orders some delicious grass fed bison from The Honest Bison. They sell all the cuts I mentioned above but also have bison tenderloins, bison filets, bison NY strips, bison chuck roast, and pretty much any other cut you can think of. Orders over $250 ship for free and orders from $150-250 ship for $27 which is pretty reasonable. If you are doing keto, paleo, or Whole30 bison meat is a great option. If you aren’t doing any of those diets you should order it because it is delicious!
Order your grass fed bison from The Honest Bison today. And if you have any questions on how to cook bison let me know and I would be happy to help.
And one last thing…
Can you Smoke Bison?
You all know about smoked brisket and even smoked beef ribs but can you smoke bison? Does the leanness of bison make it too dry when smoked to 195-200 degrees?
Well, my favorite beef cut to smoke is beef plate ribs. Short ribs are just plate ribs that have been cut up so I decided to throw some bison short ribs on the smoker.
I cooked these on my Slow N Sear Kettle grill at around 250 degrees. These were just seasoned with salt and pepper like I would do beef ribs and I used a bit of oak wood for some smoke.
I was surprised how long these took to cook. I was expecting a 3-4 hour cook since they were fairly small pieces of meat but it ended up taking about 7 hours before they were tender. When cooking beef like short ribs or brisket I usually shoot for 195-205 degrees. But more than temperature I want tender. When I put a probe in them I want it to go in like it was going through a soft stick of butter.
Since it took so long I was worried they would just be dried out and inedible. But they were definitely moist and tender when I pulled them off:
You can see some of that great rendered fat interspersed with those meat fibers.
And here is another shot of a piece of these short ribs showing the moisture.
Overall they weren’t as succulent as beef ribs are but they were still delicious. With most of the bison steaks I thought they were at least on par if not better than their beef counterparts. With these smoked bison ribs I didn’t think they were quite a good as beef. Don’t get me wrong, they were definitely good and edible but for this application I think I like beef a bit better. I do want to give a bison brisket a try sometime though.
So yes, you can smoke bison and it does still come out moist and delicious.
