Game Recipes - Tips For Cooking Pheasant

Pheasant is a great choice if you want to cook something extra special; hunters across the country bring home pheasant for supper during the hunting season in the fall. You can adapt most chicken recipes to pheasant, although cooking a young pheasant is different to cooking an older one. Young pheasants have gray legs, a long pointy feature in the wing and a flexible breastbone. Young males have rounded spurs too.

You can roast, broil, or braise a pheasant or you might want to make a soup. If you are using an old bird, making soup is a good way to disguise its toughness and bring out its wonderful flavor. Saute a clove of garlic and some onions, celery and carrots until tender, then add the chopped meat and brown it.

Add eight cups of chicken stock and a pound of sliced mushrooms, as well as a sprig of thyme and a cup of corn kernels. Let the soup simmer for twelve minutes, then remove the pheasant pieces and take the meat off the bones. Chop the meat and return it to the pot. Warm the soup through and serve it with crusty bread.

How to Roast or Broil a Young Bird

A young one can be roasted for twenty five minutes per pound in a 350 degrees F oven. You might like to stuff it with a sausage or chestnut dressing. This would be similar to stuffed, roasted chicken but with a gamey flavor.

If you want to broil the bird, split it down the back and rub unsalted butter and minced garlic over it, then put the oven rack four inches under the broiler. Cook the bird, basting it often with oil, wine or melted fat, until it is tender and cooked through.

How to Braise or Roast an Older One

Older male birds have long, sharp spurs. If your bird is not a younger one, you will need to bard it to add moisture. What does it mean to bard a bird? Well, you need to make little cuts in the thigh and breast and put small pieces of bacon in there.

The bacon must be at right angles to the breastbone. Melt quarter of a cup of lard in a pot and brown the bird, and then transfer it to a casserole with a sliced onion, twelve sliced mushroom caps and half a cup of Madeira or Marsala wine. Cover the casserole dish and bake the pheasant for thirty minutes or until it is done.

If you would prefer to roast the bird, bard it with bacon, and then insert onion or apple slices into the cavity. Roast the stuffed meat for twenty minutes at 400 degrees F. Take the meat off the bones and cook it for a couple of hours in a homemade stock.

You can make this with two quarts of chicken stock or water, three fresh tomatoes, a quart of dry red wine, a couple of bay leaves, a cup of chopped parsley, two large onions and two cloves of garlic.

Simmer the mixture until the stock has reduced by half, then add some chopped mushrooms, as well as three quarters of a cup each of cream sauce and dry red wine. Simmer the dish for twenty five minutes, then transfer the meat to a plate and ladle the sauce over the top.

There are lots of unusual meats like pheasant which you might want to consider if you are planning holiday recipes. With a recipe search you can find the ideal recipes to delight your family, even if you have never cooked that type of meat before.

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