How To Cook Pheasant

Lots of ways of cooking it, Nicko. Depends a lot on whether they've been plucked or skinned, just breast filets, etc. And keep in mind that game preserve birds are not quite as lean as wild birds. Nor do they taste exactly the same. I wouldn't use the word gamey, though, cuz I don't think even an old, wild cockbird tastes gamey. A stronger taste than chicken, to be sure. But strong in the sense than turkey is stronger.

 

The trick, as you know, is to not over cook them---which is easy to do. If cooking with dry heat it's always a good idea to add fat, in the form of bacon or salt pork, for that reason.

 

If you plan on another hunt let me know, and I'll give you some great recipes.

I was reading that the turkey is a kind of pheasant. I don't consider the source particularly authoritative however.

 

Beware of Buckshot pellets.. I have floured and deep fried,  finished in oven with a currant sauce.they don't dry out this way. A wild Hen Turkey may well be classified as form of pheasant

A wild Hen Turkey may well be classified as form of pheasant

 

I wonder how these things get started? This is the second time, recently, when totally unrelated critters have been reported as being the same. And this one takes it a step further, implying that, by some genetic ledgerdomain, a hen and a tom would be different species.

 

If we go back to Orders, then, yes, turkey and pheasant are “the same bird.” They both belong to the Order Galliformes---which means chicken-like birds. But that’s quite a few steps back on the taxonomic ladder. Where it counts, on a meaningful level, is genus and species. And on that level, they’re not even close cousins.

 

Turkey, both wild and domestic, are Meleagris gallopa var. Each of the five wild turkey of North America, and their domestic offspring, has a variety name as well, with some pretty fair jawcrackers in those names

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Ring-neck pheasant, are Phasianus colchicus, with their name reflecting the fact they belong to the group of long-tailed birds.

 

The real key to determining sameness in animals (plants too, for that matter) is found at the species level. That's the point were the major difference is the ability to breed. Those in the same species can breed. Those in different species cannot. 

 

If they can't breed, then they are, obviously, not the same animal. So if the species are different (as they obviously are with turkey and pheasant) there is no way they can be the same bird.

Well at least two of us thought the stew tasted gamey

 

Just showing, once again, that "gamey" is a percieved taste rather than an objectively identifyable one.

 

F'rinstance, I've never eaten venison that I would call gamey. To me, gamey is personified by older lamb and, for sure, mutton. Yet, more people than not would probably call venison gamey.

 

Just out of curiousity, Nicko, do you think of turkey as being gamey?

My favorite way to cook nearly all game birds (including pheasant, chukar, dove, quail, etc) is to fill the back cavity with oysters, cheese, jalepenos, or some combination thereof, wrap the whole thing in bacon, and grill until the bacon crisps up. The added fat helps prevent drying out, and the filling adds a little flavor.

 

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my father and I killed 10 ducks (almost 2 limits) on Catahoula Lake. Mainly blackjacks and gadwalls, with a couple of woodducks, mallards, a redhead, and a canvasback thrown in for good measure. I breasted them out, seared them in my french oven (actually a bouillabaisse pot) then braised them for about an hour with beef stock, lobster stock, red wine, celery, parsnips, and carrots. I made a reduction using the braising liquid, some mushrooms, shallots, and finished with port and butter. Absolutely fantastic. The same might work for the pheasants, but since you have essentially pen raised birds, white wine and chicken stock might be the best route if you wanted to braise.

Well I never knew that pheasant and turkey were related, that is a real surprise as they are totally different.

 

Nicko I have been cooking lots of pheasant over the last six weeks and I love it. I had heard that it can be dry and tough so I started roasting it on the bone (25 mins), it took too long for service but it was a fantastic flavour and moist too. I was not going to risk cooking and reheating so, I now break the birds down and debone the thigh meat, the drumstick goes in with the carcass to make a stock as those splintery bones are not worth messing with. The thighs are gently sealed in a pan with no fat and then braised with a mirepoix in the stock for an hour and then reserved for service, and the breasts are cooked to order, gently sealed and then 8-10 mins in the oven, they vary a lot in size.

 

The sauce is made from the stock and juniper berries and it is served with diced roots, brussels sprout, celeriac mash and of course the thigh meat.

 

Final tip, do not add red wine to the thigh meat whilst it is braising, I made this error and the wine turned the meat black. Tasted great but looked terrible lol.

Well I never knew that pheasant and turkey were related,......

 

You still don't know that, Bazza, because they're not. Or at least not closely. They bear the same relationship to each other as do domestic chickens and jungle fowl.

 

I wonder if part of the problem isn't that we are so far removed from our food in its natural state that we don't recognize it. Anybody who's ever actually seen a pheasant and a turkey walking around can see that there's no relationship; just as they can see the similarities between turkey and a pea fowl. 

 

This is, of course, predicated on being familiar with the actual birds, as opposed to just seeing their naked carcasses when the supplier brings them around.

Edited by KYHeirloomer - 11/29/10 at 6:01pm

Here at the farm in years past I have processed many a wild pheasant. We have a electric feather plucking machine that connects to a dry-vac. It works great, but you must be gentle otherwise the machine can tear the meat right off the bones.

 

Since there is so little fat on them I usually wrap the whole bird in bacon and slather softened butter on them. I get a roasting pan very hot in a preheated oven, then place the birds in the pan. Every 15 minutes I give the bird a 1/4 turn. It takes 45 minutes ++ to cook them.

The breasts are tricky as they can overcook easily, but basting them adds moisture and keeps them from doing so while the dark meat cooks.

Well they are all Poultry so maybe cousins in genetics?   I have had the displeasure of eating a wild duck once. and I wont partake again. It was killed and consumed two days later. It tasted like old  fish. I found out it was shot  ""down by the pond"" I felt they should have left it swimming.

Your pictures are great Nicko.  I still don't have the guts to cook a lonely pheasant that has been sitting in my freezer for almost a year.  Maybe this thread will help push me a bit.  So you served pheasant to a bunch of greeks?  And they ate it?  Impressive.

ChefRoss: Using your same basic approach, try forcing softened butter under the skin of the breasts. Then continue as you outlined, with the bacon and basting. I've never understood why it makes a difference, but it does. Much less danger of the breasts drying out.

 

Well they are all Poultry so maybe cousins in genetics?

 

You know, Ed, if we use Adam & Eve as the benchmark then we're all brothers and sisters.

 

Sounds silly, right? But taxonomically it's the same thing. If you go back far enough on the taxonomic ladder than every living creature is directly related to every other one. You could say, for instance, that turkey and deer are both part of the Animal Kingdom, and, therefore, that turkey and venison are the same. Or, to put a point on it, robins and chickens are both birds. Does that mean you're ready to bread and fry a mess of robins?

 

The way it works is basically simple. You start by looking at all the similarities. That lets you assign a living thing to it's Kingdom. To move down a step, you isolate those things one group of animals or plants have in common with each other, but which they don't share with others. You keep doing that until, eventually, you reach the variety (subspecies, cultivar, etc.)---which simply means you have a plant or animal with characteristics it shares with no others. For instance, a ring-neck and a Lady Amhurst are both pheasants, both the same species, which can interbreed. But their plumage is so radically different you could mistake them for different birds.

 

Now reverse that, to specifically talk about turkey and pheasant. Obviously, they are not the same variety. So we go up one step, to species. Turns out they are not the same species. Which, basically, stops any comparison right there, because if they can't interbreed they are not, by definition, closely related. But for the sake of discussion, let's go up another step, which would be the genus. Lo and behold, they're not even in the same genus. Next step up is family, and they aren't in that, either.

 

It's not until we get to the step called Order that they at all come together. Both turkey and pheasant belong to the rather large order Galliformes (chicken-like birds).

 

Now, to show how broadly individual types can fit in those higher categories, pheasant belong to the Family Phasianidae, which includes 16 genera, 49 species, and 122 identifyable subspecies---none of which are turkey.

 

So, yeah, you could say that turkey and pheasant are genetically cousins. But rather distant cousins, from opposite sides of the track. In practical terms, they're not even swimming in the same gene pool.

 

I have had the displeasure of eating a wild duck once......

 

I know this is a common happenstance. But it's something I've never understood.

 

Were you ever served a bad steak? Maybe overcooked? Or seasoned badly? Did you conclude, from that, that steak is an over-rated foodstuff, and never eat another?

 

One try at anything is, IMO, a meaningless test. That "duck" may have been the wrong species for your palette. Or the field care might have been slopppy. Or a dozen other possibilities why it tasted bad to you. To write-off an entire class of food based on one bad experience just makes no sense to me at all. Especially when it's a class of food epicures have cherished for centuries.

It probably tasted like fish because it lived on a pond. Flight ducks are a completely different ball of wax. When cleaning our ducks the other day, I opened a few of the stomachs to see what they had been eating. All grains and grass. As a result, the ducks were very mild and tasty. No fish taste at all.

It’s not, Nicko. It’s supposed to help you not confuse pheasants and turkeys, something several of our members seem intent on doing.

 

But, just to bring it home a bit:

 

Pheasant Normandie

 

 2 pheasants, split

Salt & pepper to taste

Butter

Paprika

4 cups beef or dark chicken stock

1 tsp tomato paste

2 apples, skin on, cored and cut into 1-inch cubes

½ cup dry white wine

2 oz Calvados

3 green onions, chopped

Cornstarch slurry (optional)

 

Sprinkle the birds with salt and pepper, then dust with paprika. Brown the birds in butter. Drain any excess butter and add the rest of the ingredients. Cook, covered, over medium heat, about 45 minutes.

 

If desired, thicken the sauce with cornstarch slurry.

 

Grilled Pheasant with White Wine Sauce

 

1 pheasant

2 cups chicken stock

1 small onion

1 bay leaf

Parsley

Fresh thyme

¼ lb unsalted butter

½ cup chardonnay or other dry white wine

1 shallot, minced

Salt & pepper

 

Split pheasant. Bone out the breast and thigh meat.

 

Simmer the bones in stock to which you’ve added the onion, bay leaf, parsley and thyme, until reduced by 2/3. Strain stock and reduce again to about ¼ cup. Remove from heat. Beat in butter, one lump at a time, until sauce is smooth.

 

Simmer shallot in wine over high heat until almost all the wine evaporates. Beat in the butter sauce. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Keep warm in a water bath.

Sprinkle pheasant with salt & pepper. Grill over hot coals, six to eight minutes per side, being careful not to overcook. Serve with the sauce.

 

Pheasant Croquettes with Paprika-Mushroom Sauce

 

2-3 cups coarsely ground pheasant meat

½ small onion, minced

3 garlic cloves, minced

½ stalk celery, minced

1 tsp rosemary, crushed

1 tbls fresh minced ginger

1 egg

Salt & pepper to taste

Breadcrumbs

Chili sauce

Butter

Six strips bacon

 

Saute garlic, onion, celery and ginger in butter until almost soft. Stir-in salt, pepper, rosemary and chili sauce. Let cool. Incorporate about ¼ cup breadcrumbs so mixture forms a coarse meal. Combine the veggie mix with the pheasant meat. Form the mixture into patties, about one-inch thick. Coat well with breadcrumbs. Chill.

 

Fry bacon until browned. Remove from pan and drain on paper towels. Saute croquettes in hot bacon grease until browned, about five minutes per side.

 

Spoon sauce over each croquette. Garnish with bacon.

 

Paprika Mushroom Sauce

 

2 tbls onion, finely diced

2 tbls butter

2 tbls flour

1 cup milk, heated

1 tbls paprika

Salt to taste

Pinch cayenne

½ lb mushrooms, quartered

2 tbls butter

1 cup sour cream

 

In a skillet sauté the onion in butter until tender. Add the flour and cook the roux another minute or so to remove the raw flour taste. Gradually stir in the milk, and cook, stirring, until it thickens. Stir in the paprika, salt, and cayenne, and simmer five minutes.

 

In another skillet sauté the mushrooms in butter until they give up their liquid and the liquid evaporates. Add the mushrooms to the sauce, remove the pan from the heat, and stir in the sour cream.

It probably tasted like fish because it lived on a pond.

 

That's certainly one possibility, Tyler. But it could also be that it wasn't really a duck. Down in Florida I've often heard coots and gallinules referred to as ducks. Mergansers and grebes are common down there as well, and it could have been one of them.

KY, good point I didn't think about. If someone brought in a coot (or poule d'eau as it's often called in Louisiana) and claimed it was a duck, I could understand not wanting to eat duck again. However, I have had poule d'eau that was actually quite tasty.

This was not in Florida, it was Michigan, and I thought down deep or at least what most religions state, we are all brothers and sister.

Talking about hunting pheasant, has brought back a rush of childhood memories. I grew up on a dairy/ranch, in central calif, 5 miles from town. Pheasant season was an open invitation to all our family and friends to show up and hunt, opening day starting at 6am Uncles and other family would start arriving. As a small boy there is a deep impression of my Uncles gearing up, almost all vets wearing their WWII or Korean War Utility Field Jackets, opening 50s and early 60s cavernous car trunks, inside would be their wet gear, more well oiled shotguns, and maybe a handgun or rifle, and boxes of 12 gauge of shells, etc. The smell of everyone smoking was strong, some smoked pipes, cigars, most cigarettes. Some brought their field dogs, each usually boasting that their dog was the better pointer or retriever. I would gawk as each stuffed their pockets with shells and loaded their guns, they seemed to have a familiar well practiced routine, as I grew older I began to understand these vets developed their gear up ritual during their war experience. My parents when I was younger wouldn't let me or my sisters go out on the hunt, instead we had to stay in the yard and play, listening to pop pop of shotguns blasting away at our farm's pheasant population. About 7 or 8 years old I started cleaning birds for 25cents a bird, by the end of the afternoon, we would have cleaned 20 or more birds. Also around this age our parents finally let us go out with our Uncles, fetching downed birds like retrievers usually got us a candy bar. Eventually about 11 or 12 I was allowed to hunt, and I can't tell you how proud I was downing my first pheasant in front of my two Uncles.

Over the years sometimes we had a brunch for everyone, however for many years my mom worked as a cocktail waitresss, often she would be too tired to feed a bunch of hungry hunters. Her brothers were good to bring gifts (mostly wine or something for the up coming thanksgiving holiday) as a hunting thank you, and occasionally others did too, but it wasn't regular. I think my mom felt why put out the money for food and beverage if they weren't going to at least show a little gratitude. We usually invited one or more Uncles for Sunday dinner, and it would be wild pheasant with stuffing. My memories of eating my mom's pheasant are not clear I can't rem. if it was good or not. Also this special meal usually on the Sunday day after opening day for pheasant season, the Uncles would bring other wild game, quail, venison, duck, geese. Whatever they had hunted recently. There would always be a big discussion on how to best prepare whatever wild game we had that year, but most trusted my mom, she was a great cook.

The impression on me from pheasant season would run deep, rarely would any speak of their wars, except for occasional references, later I began to recognize some very familiar places, Burma, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Inchon, places I learned my Uncles had been. 4 uncles on my dad side, 3 on my moms, all but one came back with all their limbs, all were in either combat roles, or close combat support, my dad lost one brother, most of my Uncles had purple hearts but they were whole, we counted our family as lucky. Though I was a product of the 60s living 90 miles from the "City" San Francisco and enjoyed flower power on weekend trips to the city, even owning a VW bug with the proper trim, I still joined the Navy (my draft number was up) and proudly served in Vietnam, 69-70. They are all gone now and missed, only my mom is left. They were business owners, house painters, dairymen, gas station owner, Sears repairman, it has been called the Greatest Generation, I know in my eyes they were all great.

Sorry for the long off thread rant, but these memories stirred when I read about pheasant hunting.

I often roast pheasant.  They can dry out quickly, so I always wrap the breasts in either streaky bacon or pancetta before roasting. I serve with game chips, other veggies and a cumberland sauce.

Hey, Nicko,

 

If you really want to stretch your pheasant prep mettle, try one of the ornate dishes dating to the middle ages. First, carefully skin the bird, preserving all the feathers in place. Then roast the pheasant, after first filling it with other succulent goodies, like oysters, or pate' or several pigeons, or---well, you get the idea. When the pheasant comes out of the oven, stretch the skin back over it, and present it on a platter surrounded by roast chestnuts, roasted apples, etc.

 

That sound a little rough as a cooking project? Here's one, from The Horizen Cookbook & Illustrated History of Eating and Drinking Through The Ages (that really is the title, not the first chapter):

 

Bavarian Roast Pheasant and Sauerkraut

 

2 pheasants

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 large onion, halved

1/2 cup butter

2 apples, peeled, cored, and diced

2 large onions, finely choped

3 pounds sauerkraut, rinsed and drained

Bouquet garni (12 juniper berries, 1/2 bay leaf, 6 peppercorns tied in cheesecloth)

1 bottle dry white wine or champagne

1 cup beef broth

 

Season pheasants with salt and pepper, inwert one-half onion in each bird, and truss. Melt one quarter cup butter in a large enameled kettle and slowly stew the apple and chopped onion until soft but not brown---about ten minutes. Add the well-rinsed and drained sauerkraut, the bouquet garni, salt, freshly ground pepper, the wine, and enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, turn heat down, and simmer slowly, partially covered, stirring occasionaly, for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until liquid has evaporated. When sauerkraut has cooked for 1 1/2 hours, spread the trussed pheasants with remaining one quarter cup butter. Place in a buttered roasting pan, season with salt and freshly ground pepper, and roast in a preheated 400F oven for 30 minutes. Lower the heat to 375F and roast for 1 hour, basting 2 or 3 times. Remove pheasant from oven and let set for 10 minutes. Discard bouquet garni from sauerkraut. Put sauerkraut in a serving casserole. Cut pheasant into serving portions and bury inthe sauerkraut. Deglaze roasting pan with beef broth and pour over sauerkraut. Put in a preheated 350F oven for 15 minutes and serve. Serves 6 to 8.