Pheasant is Upon Me!

I just got a boatload of frozen pheasants from the wee one's boxing coach. The coach is a hunter and fisherman. He knows I enjoy cooking and he and I have been trading foodstuffs and ingredients recently. The coach has his own old- world Irish recipe but he wanted me to find and choose a different technique than he uses so I can teach him soemthing new.

Wild game is great.

Anyone have a sure-fire GREAT way to prepare and cook pheasant they'd like to share?

My plans are to try a few techniques on halves of a bird, perfect it, then make the other birds for a big pheasant feast.

We liked it smoked and in soup.

Best pheasant prep I've ever had was a Hopleaf a few months back. Not sure if you can run with this or not, but this was the basic menu description: Pheasant thighs stuffed with gorgonzola and golden raisins, then wrapped in bacon and grilled. Served with squash puree, and a frisee salad with pecans, honeycrisp apples, and sage brown butter. Knocked my socks off!

For the last few years I have been breasting out my wild or pen raised birds and cooking the breasts seperately to a nice medium rare. The leg /thighs invariably go into sour cream for a slow braise. The carcass can be used to make stock for reduction to a sauce.-Dick

Kenji - you can filet the pheasant breast meat off the keelbone and ribs and do any preparation you would with chicken, just keep an eye on the meat and don't overcook or you will have a very dry piece of pheasant breast.

I really like pounding the breast halves thin, dredging in egg and flour and pan-frying in the piccata style with butter, lemon and caper with a side of pasta and veggies. I've also done the same meat prep and made a bechamel-based sauce hongroise that is flavored with paprika (in the Joy of Cooking) and served over spaetzle.

Quartered pheasant in a crock pot/heavy stock pot with root veggies and Jiffy dumplings (box recipe) makes for a satisfying winter repast. White wine or a lighter-body beer in the pot supplements the natural juices nicely.

Doing something with the legs has escaped me thus far - haven't been able to make confit of wild pheasant since there is no fat on them!

Davooda