I am sure there will be plenty of suggestions for recipes.

My suggestion would be to first find out what kind of shots were used in shooting the bird. Examine carefully to make sure there are no buck-shots inside that can mess up your teeth.

dcarch

I agree, check for stray shot, then just roast it like you would a chicken, I like the flavor of pheasant without any heavy sauces, etc. Or you could do a beer can pheasant, if you like.

I have this recipe, which I haven't tried, but I keep threatening to try it with chicken, more easily available than pheasant.

Drunken Pheasant

1 pheasant, quartered
4-6 tbsp. butter
1/2 cup Scotch whiskey
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 tbsp. flour
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and Pepper
1/2 to 1 cup hot water
1 sm. onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup mushrooms
White or wild rice (or a mixture)

Pat pheasant dry, season with salt and pepper and roll in flour. Slowly brown in butter, uncovered for 25-30 minutes. Pour Scotch over meat; cover and cook 5 minutes.

Add chicken broth and 1/2 cup water. Simmer until meat is tender. Remove meat; cover and keep warm.

Simmer pan drippings, 1 tbsp. butter, thinly sliced onion, and mushrooms until tender. Heat the cream until just under boiling in a separate pan. Turn heat up under drippings and rapidly mix in 1 tbsp. flour. Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup additional hot water if needed. Stir in hot cream. Serve pheasant on hot cooked rice and pour gravy over meat.

Annie

Won't you need to hang it for a while before eating it? I do remember braces of birds hanging for at least a week in a cold room.
My mother made wonderful pheasants - roasted, then served (always in Britain) with game chips (potato chips for you),bread sauce and a red wine gravy.

Thanks for the recipe, Annie. That looks good.

Yep, we already checked it for stray shot and found three. It is not whole, it's cut into quarters so no beer can pheasant this time!

Our neighbor gave us a recipe for Pheasant in parmesan cream. Looks to die for but loaded with butter and cream!

I'll let you know what we end up doing. Tim's turn to cook tonight!

Linda

Islay, we always ate them fresh, usually my Dad or brother would call Jet (our Gordon Setter), head for the fields, shoot a couple and bring them home. I'd scald, pluck and clean them and Grandma would cook them for supper. Was it pheasant season? Um....I don't really remember, but most likely not. Dinner was usually whatever someone could shoot.

Older/tougher birds got cooked in gravy or made into pot pie or dumplings, young ones got stuffed and roasted or fried. We even did them on the grill with BBQ sauce a couple of times.

Annie

First had pheasant back in late 60's. Was spending weekend at home of college roommate. On Saturday morning, her Dad was heading out hunting with his Britnay spaniel... he looked a little Elmer Fudd-ish!?! He belonged to some kind of "hunt club"... whatever that meant. We were there when he got back, announcing that he shot 2. He walked into house with a plastic bag with what looked like 2 chickens... all cleaned and ready to cook... suspecting there were "people" at his club that did that. Roommate's mom just seasoned and roasted them for dinner. Frankly, couldn't taste any really difference from chicken?!?

Annie - your recipe looks fantastic. I have one using cream also - but yours looks better so I won't bother digging mine out.

I will save yours for future use!

I've roasted pheasant before, but the recipe I used called for the bird to be trussed up with pork fat (or bacon) covering the entire outer surface - or at least the upper exposed surface. Pheasant is very lean and will be dry unless you add fat to it. Annie's recipe that browns it in butter first might have that effect, but do not expect it to be like cooking a chicken or game hen. I have not cooked wild pheasant, and so the whiskey and mushrooms might be very helpful to the flavor. It's pretty standard to serve it with wild rice, which should be easy for you, since you are in Minnesota.

Lars

Great! Another semi-exotic food that tastes like chicken! I'm sorry but I find that this amuses me this morning. Grins.

Posted by barnmom --- âÂÂGreat! Another semi-exotic food that tastes like chicken! I'm sorry but I find that this amuses me this morning. Grins.âÂÂ

Funny! :-)

Therefore, if you make a stew with crocodile steak, frogâÂÂs legs, pheasant, and rabbit, it would be about the same as making a chicken stew.

dcarch

eileen, I don't think it really tastes like chicken, I just cook it like chicken, LOL. I think it actually tastes more like a cornish game hen or something similar.

Lars is right, though, they are lean and if roasting a pheasant a couple of slices of bacon laid over the bird is very beneficial, both for the fat content and for the flavor.

I've also been smiling, remembering that Jet would retrieve those downed birds and as a reward, Grandma would cook the livers, the hearts and the gizzards for him.

Annie

I also think pheasant tastes nothing like chicken.
My neighbor with the hunting husband would cook pheasant pieces in a roasting pan with orange juice poured around and slices or onion on top.
There may have been more to it but it was wonderful!

I agree with you Linda. The pheasants I've eaten taste far differnet than chicken. Like Cornish game hens it has it's own unique taste. I wonder if wild Minnesota pheasants taste different than pheasants from other states?

In my area, often chickens don't even taste like chickens. LOL

Serious, to me I think pheasants taste like quails or squabs.

dcarch

Dcarch, you forgot rattlesnake. Also tastes like chicken! Smiles.

Posted by barnmom "Dcarch, you forgot rattlesnake. Also tastes like chicken! Smiles. "

LOL! Forgot about that.

When I was in Paris, I noticed that stores sold lots of pheasants, wild boar, and other wild games.

dcarch

We usually brown our pheasant and put in a crockpot with cream of mushroom soup and also a package of some type of rice (maybe a rice a roni wild rice type of variety). The legs have a lot of tendons so actually a lot of people just fillet the breasts. We also boil the whole pheasant and debone it and make pheasant enchiladas.

Aside to Annie...
I can't believe you had a Gordon Setter named Jet. Our yellow lab is named Jett (DS was a bit airplane obsessed, but the only thing she gets for us is mice, possums and lizards) and I used to have a Gordon Setter (not the most common of breeds, but his name was Webster... I lost him in a custody battle)...

I enjoy eating pheasant, but never cooked it. By the way, what is "pheasant under glass" anyway?

spacific, he was "jet black", so we called him Jet. Actually, I found him one day, hiding in our barn. We put ads in the paper, called animal control, etc., but no one ever came to get him. He got hit by the snowplow one year, and lost a back leg, but it never slowed him down when he was hunting. He was a great dog...

Annie

Gordons are great dogs. I'd love to have another. I always check the rescue list on petfinder just in case.

A

I see I'm late.

Key to making pheasant is the skin. Pull off the skin and you have just some dark bird meat. Keep the skin and you will taste pheasant! My favorite bird meat. Mild and sweet with more flavor then store bought chicken. I recommend a simple dusting of flour with a bit of S&P and fry it in very hot oil. Why waste a rare treat with sauces and such that might cover the taste... save those for the bland store bought chicken. I'd go for fried potatoes and some green peas as sides.

Pheasant was my first game kill... I was about 11 and blasted it with a Winchester model 12. Only winged the darn thing and chased it for two hours before catching it and wringing its neck. It was winter time on my Grandfathers farm just north of the Rifle river.

I doubt there will be any buckshot but perhaps there will be some birdshot. Buckshot is for deer sized animals.. hence the term "buck"-shot and well... as you might guess "bird"-shot is for birds. If I recall 0 buckshot is .30 caliber, 00 is .33, and 000 is .36 caliber. Birdshot on the other hand is tiny... about the size of a pinhead with about 300 in a typical 12 ga. shotgun shell.

I know... just what you wanted was a lesson on shotgun ammunition. ANYWAYs... always bite careful with eating game taken with a shotgun as birdshot can hide in the flesh. Quitely spit any shot into a napkin... just work it to your lips and push it out with your tounge. Was a time that was just standard table manors even in fine restaurants that served game. Sometimes a bird will take a direct hit and have dozens of pellets... more often just a few. Talented chefs will gently probe shot holes with the tip of a knife blade finding the shot by feel and removing most before cooking.

Gator tastes like fish... how anyone could think that it tastes like chicken is beyond me. It certainly looks like chicken but put a blindfold on and you will swear it is fish... not bad fish either. Drink a couple beers first and gator is delicious.

: )
lyra

Annie1992, you must live in the most wonderful, natural place! It sounds glorious.

Do you eat bread sauce? Thinking about it, I don't recall any of you talking about it. It's a classic english sauce to have with roast birds.

In a liquidiser, place some milk, a quartered onion and 2 or 3 bread slices and whizz up. Cook very gently for about 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour adding lots of pepper, some salt, a large knob of butter and adding milk to stop it getting too dry. Should fall off the spoon easily but not be too runny or sloppy.
This, we eat with chicken, turkey and all game birds.

islay, I'll have to try that sauce in place of white sauce, which can get a weird texture if it's allowed to cool, I'll bet the bread wouldn't do that.

I do live in a wonderful, glorious, mostly unpopulated place, but the reason we ate like that is because we were absolutely completely dirt poor destitute and if no one could hunt, there was no dinner sometimes. It was illegal, of course, but the alternative was for Dad to allow his children to go without, and so he hunted.

Michael, you notice I just said "stray shot", I didn't differentiate, LOL. I think the use of buckshot by a person who is a really good shot might render the pheasant nearly inedible. (grin)

Annie