Finally! A Recipe For Tender Crockpot Pheasant

When I traded bunny chasing with beagles for bird chasing with flushing spaniels 25 years ago, I was certain that grouse would forever be my number one target, with woodcock filling in the occasional gap. After all, we were never surprised to flush a partridge or two by accident when hunting snowshoe hares on my father-in-law’s and others’ private land near Malone, NY.

This accounts for my unrealistically hopeful expectation that I’d be finding just as many grouse forevermore on public land south of Buffalo.

After driving 80 white-knuckled miles to and then from slim partridge pickin’s in Lake Effect Blizzard country for several years, I determined to find a safer and more productive place where I’d be able to run my dog on birds in January and February. This explains how and why I wound up joining a pheasant release club.

It also explains why, shortly thereafter, I began looking for a way to cook up pheasants that didn’t plate up as dry as a tick on a Bravecto-ed dog. My wife and I tried all sorts of preparations. We soaked breasts in buttermilk. We found a butcher who would accept boneless breasts and mix with secret herbs and spices — read “schmaltz,” or chicken fat — to make Pheasant Sausage. I tried grinding pheasants on my own, with half a pound of bacon being my secret sauce. Most recently I diced the breasts, sautéed them with a generous half stick of butter, then buried them in a cheesy quesadilla. All these attempts were palatable but not exceptional.

After seeing a video on cleaning desert quail recently,

http://uplandjournal.ipbhost.com/topic/62010-quail-cleaning-video/?tab=comments#comment-1096913

I decided to try the same technique on a pheasant, with appropriate tweaks for the birds’ different sizes. In particular, I thought that cooking the pheasant whole, bones and all, might add some flavor. So I began dreaming up a brand-new low-and-slow crockpot recipe for pheasants. It so happened that while I was thinking this over, Matt A. — my wife’s niece’s husband from North Dakota — showed up for our family’s Thanksgiving holiday celebration. We fell to talking about cooking up pheasants, and Matt offered his family’s favored technique. It was darn close to what I had envisioned, and so with just a minor adjustment or two — my vision contained no Cream of Something soup — I gave my new recipe a try.

And it was terrific! I bet it’ll work great with a rabbit or a mallard as well. Your comments and suggestions are welcome and solicited. Without further prologue, here’s my Tender Crockpot Pheasant recipe.

Ingredients

1 onion, coarsely chopped

2 stalks celery, into 1/4” dice

3 carrots, peeled and sliced on a bias into 1/8” coins

2 medium potatoes, unpeeled, and cut into 1/2” dice

2 large garlic cloves, smashed

1 oz. dried porcini mushrooms, rehydrated and diced

1 pkg. onion soup mix

2 healthy dashes soy sauce (don’t doubt me)
a sprig or two of thyme
2 Bay leaves
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
2 whole cloves
1 squirt @ anchovy- and tomato-paste

light splashes of a dry light white wine, as in Sauvignon Blanc

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3 strips of bacon, cut in half

1 rooster pheasant, skinned and eviscerated (a quite naked bird ;-)

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1+ tbsp. cornstarch and cold water slurry

Technique

1. Skin and eviscerate the pheasant so it looks like a naked Perdue roaster;

2. Cut and put into the crockpot the first 9 ingredients;

3. Put the rooster on top of your vegetable pile. Drape the 6 half-strips over the pheasant’s breast and legs;

4. Cover the crockpot and set on low for 8 hours;

5. At 7 hours (or 15 minutes less to allow for cooling time), remove the pheasant and pull the best meat off the breast and legs. Reintroduce the “pulled pheasant” into the crockpot. Reserve the bacon and less pleasing looking hunks of meat for the doggie who got you the pheasant;

6. With about 30 minutes to go, mix a hearty soupspoon of corn starch and a bit of cold water in a mixing bowl. When smooth, introduce back into the crockpot and give a good stir; and

7. Eat and be happy. A sprinkling of either Sriracha or, going the other way, some Pecorino Romano, may make you smile. Maybe have some hot biscuits with butter and the rest of the Sauv Blanc, too. God wants you to be happy.