Family brings flavor to AWF cook-offs

Kin Merchant began competing in the Alabama Wildlife Federation’s annual Wild Game Cook-offs the same year he enrolled as a culinary student at the University in North Alabama. It may have been his first competition in what would become a new family tradition, but Merchant was no stranger to preparing wild game.

Growing up in a rural area on Lake Martin, near Opelika, he said his dinner was often filled with less conventional meats like venison, wild turkey or even squirrel.

“Probably too often,” he said with a laugh, though Merchant admits he enjoyed eating wild game.

“When I was growing up, people would be like, ‘Taste this. You can’t tell it’s deer.’ I was always like, ‘Nah, it tastes like deer to me,’” Merchant recalled. “I started cooking and trying to make it more palatable. That was a challenge, but I would try to make it taste more like steak or something you could find at a restaurant.”

Even before experimenting with the resources and ingredients available to him, Merchant said he found a love for cooking early in life thanks to the influence of his great grandmother, Mary Lou Harris, who he endearingly refers to as Big Mama.

“I was about three years old, and she had me in the kitchen with her,” he said warmly.

When asked about his secrets to preparing food from the field for the table, Merchant said it can be a bit of a time-consuming process known as aging.

“You know, everyone has their own methods, but personally, I filter mine and soak it a long while,” he said. “I try to do what I can to get rid of that gamey flavor, and the longer you work with it, the more tender and less gamey it becomes. My brother has his own methods, but I prefer mine. It’s never failed me.”

Recalling his first AFW Wild Game Cookoff, when he submitted his version of Brunswick stew featuring deer and wild turkey, he said he was approached by a misty-eyed woman during the crowd tastings.

“Shecameuptomewith tears rolling down her face, and she said, ‘This is just like I remember from when I was little,’” Merchant said.

He added the competitions are often opportunities to reminisce with friends and strangers alike who also grew up eating wild game.

Those moments are almost as sweet as the rewards. Merchant won in his division in that first competition and has brought home numerous awards from subsequent years of competing.

He’s even gotten his wife and son involved, who’ve also brought home their fair share of awards.

Kindall Merchant, who is now a business student at UNA, first competed in the Youth Division of a regional cook-off in 2014. The dish he submitted featured wild hog and was a creative spin on a classic Southern side dish.

“He called them Granny’s glorified baked beans, and that’s what they were,” his mother, Michelle Merchant said. “He really jazzed them up, and he won that division.”

In years since his first cook-off, Kindall said he’s worked to perfect what has become a signature dish featuring venison pepperoni and cheese in an Asian fusion recipe he calls pizza wantons.

Blending unconventional meat with creative pairings like these is a craft Kindall said he picked up from his dad.

“He likes to make ramen at home, which I don’t really understand,” Kindall said with a laugh. “He has this amazing skill, and he can cook anything he wants, but he decides to make ramen. I saw him experimenting in the kitchen one day, adding eggs, meats, cheeses and other things to the bowl. I started to roll off of that, you know, putting my own seasonings and things like that in what I make.”

For the past four years, Kin has traded in his apron for a judge’s seat at regional AWF cook-offs. While he’s busy tasting plates from area cooks, his wife and son continue the tradition of competing.

“She’s cooking with me this year,” Michelle chimed in, gesturing over to a close family friend, Camilah Abernathy, who has since joined the Merchants’ team.

“I completely stay out of it now,” Kin added. “She knows from watching me and Kindall. She knows what I liked to do, but they also do their own thing now.”

While the judges taste the entries in a blind taste test, Kin said he always gets the details about his wife’s and son’s entries before he sits down to the table to ensure a fair competition.

“When I see their food come back, I’ll pass on tasting and judging theirs,” he explained.

Kin said it wasn’t a difficult decision to give up his position as cook.

“I wanted to take a look behind the scenes,” he said. “It’s just as exciting. The best part is that you get to taste some amazing things and see some of the most amazing creations. The worst part is you taste some heck-of-acreations.”

Scrunching up his nose at remembering one of his least favorite tastings, Kin tried to describe the flavor and texture of beaver meat.

“It was a hot mess,” he said emphatically. “I couldn’t grasp the texture. I just did not like it. The racoon wasn’t bad. I’ve had some weird things.”

Perhaps stranger than beaver, racoon, and even coyote was the time Kin ate zebra for the first time.

“It tastes like beef,” he said. “We tasted it for the first time at a cook-off in Decatur, but you order it, and it gets shipped in from somewhere.”

As cooks, the Merchants said they stick to meats that are found much closer to home. When asked about some of their favorite recipes, they each laughed a little sheepishly.

Though Kin is a professional chef, and currently serves as the executive chef at UNA, he admits that those times he’s creating something new in the kitchen, he’s often riding on intuition, measuring with his heart.

Some of his best recipes are made on the fly, his wife agreed.

One such example was in 2016, when Kin and his team advanced to the state level of the competition for the very first time. That was thanks to a dish that won Best Overall — a recipe that Kin had thrown together last minute “just for fun.”

“That competition was held in Athens, as a matter of fact. I threw together a deer and bacon burger on a cheddar bay-style biscuit with a pimento cheese topping and fried onions,” he said. “When they announced that we’d won our division, I wasn’t expecting it, and that was really cool. Then we got back to our booth, and they were announcing other categories. They got to Best Overall and called our name again. I just froze.”

The Merchants have competed in events around north Alabama, including AWF cook-offs held in Muscle Shoals, Athens and Decatur, nearly every year since that first competition Kin entered in 2013.

While they may not win every event, Kin said he always walks away from the competition feeling awarded.

“Even if it’s just experience, I feel we always win something,” he said. “If you’ve learned something, you’ve won something.”

That outlook has also served as a motivator to keep the Merchants involved in the competition. Kin said it’s as much about raising awareness for the AWF’s conservation efforts as it is about competing.

“It’s about protecting our wildlife,” he said. “We can’t kill everything off. We need nature, and events like these help raise awareness for how we preserve that. It’s about preservation for me.”

While that mission may seem counterintuitive to holding a cook-off featuring dishes prepared with the meat from animals that were hunted in the field, Kin explains that the competition teaches best responsible practices to hunters and cooks.

“We live off the world and everything it offers us,” he added. “I feel the cook-offs raise awareness about being resourceful versus like hunting for sport. It is a sport, but at the same time, we’ve got to preserve our environment and the living things around us so we can continue to enjoy that sport. It’s the whole circle-of-life argument.”