I believe that most people who live in my country have an uncle or a relative who hunts. When you live in countries with a very high percentage of forests per habitable land, it is common to use venison and other meats in your diet. Canned or tinned meats are a wonderful way to keep these meats from spoiling. Every once in a while when we visit my husband’s grandmother, his uncle gives us a bag of canned venison, hog sausages, and much more. Sometimes these canned meats come together with a text “okay, I am not entirely sure what is in this one, but it should taste good”. So I get to play the meat lotto. This caramelized onion and venison pasta is a super quick pantry recipe because it doesn’t really call for too many ingredients.

While this was indeed venison, you could very well use any other canned meat in this pasta recipe. While these meats have had their fair share of bad commentary, there are many wonderful ones. You can get duck confit and young deer fillets in cans and I mean why not. It is smart to have a couple of these in your pantry to quickly throw together a nice lunch or dinner. This caramelized onion and venison pasta are really easy and quick to make.

You could make slowly caramelized onions that have fallen apart and are lightly golden, but to quicken things up these were cooked for only 20 minutes. But that is it, the next steps are to throw the pasta and the meat in and cook for just a few more minutes. Add fresh herbs like parsley and some grated cheese on top. Parmigiano or pecorino if looking for something spicier. So, even though, the onions take 20 minutes to cook, the rest is done while the onions are cooking. I chose fusilli for this recipe because I wanted to have nice strong noodles that can be pierced by a fork, but any other noodle would work too.