pheasant

[livarot]

erm... so i was told it was farmed. i still got shot pellets. plus, the bird is either really hairy/feathery, or it got hit with lots of shot, most of which passed through, because even the meat had feather bits. i was half grossed out. i was also worried because it smelled (raw) like a tamer version of grouse. but fortunately, cooked, it was ok

Comments

[sahn]

That's some pretty adventurous cooking. I've never tried cooking a bird that's not chicken... or cooking anything that had been shot

[livarot]

yeah, but i think if you have too much flour (and not enough liquid), then you still get a bit of the floury flavor, even if you do it roux style. because i made the roux, but i didn't add enough liquid afterwards. and i think if your liquid isn't strongly enough flavored, the flour flavor still comes through. the flour was pretty cooked. but i added milk as the liquid. today, i added bacon water & pheasant/duck broth. so it had a stronger flavor

[livarot]

three cups chicken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanbeiji

[sahn]

I didn't realize you had made the flour into a roux. I thought you just did a simple substitution (e.g. mix flour with water and add it to the sauce).

Somehow with poultry I feel less adventurous. Maybe it's because Alton Brown hasn't done any Good Eats episodes with game birds.

I've never tried making pork belly either. What is that? Uncut and uncured bacon?

[livarot]

hmmm... i guess i never thought of making gravy any other way (than roux or corn starch

[sahn]

I've roasted chicken. I've been meaning to try brining chicken, but I've never gotten around to it. I should try to see how it turns out. I'm still not sure if I'm ready to try other game birds. The pork belly sounds delicious... I should try it some time.

[livarot]

i remember you doing the rotisserie, which is more effort than i can muster. i think sometimes my inherent laziness wins out. i was motivated to do a rotisserie once, then i read the instructions about needing to weight the bird correctly, and i gave up lol. but if it wasn't too bad for you, you could brine & rotisserie another chicken. or other bird. guinea fowl is really good--it's almost like a better chicken flavor, if you're worried about funky tasting birds

[sahn]

My toaster oven has a built-in rotisserie spit so it really wasn't that much work. I didn't go through the trouble of trussing up the wings and legs which was a mistake. And it turned out pretty good. I'll probably use the rotisserie again when I get around to doing the brining experiment.

[livarot]

it's not hard tying down the random bits of the bird. actually, when i buy the guinea fowl, it's already trussed up. they cheat & use elastic (which withstands high heat--your average rubber band might melt). i have cotton thread that i purchased for the purpose (you don't want to get something that's not food grade & end up eating something bad). haha, i think i bought it at williams & sonoma. you don't need to go to the most expensive cook store in the world to buy your string