Pheasant

The nice thing about living in Boulder is: 

"If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes." as people have told me. It's true.

After a snow storm, the skies will clear, the sun will come back, the snow will melt and we will get another nice fall day.

At school, I am fortunate enough to have a chef instructor that is also passionate about hunting. He hunts mostly pheasants. Of course, the hunting he does is totally legal, and even necessary to keep a balanced amount of birds in the fields according to our animal chain.

Once you hunt your bird you have to wait at least 7 days for it to age properly in order to eat it and enjoy what you are eating. The stiffening of the animal that happens right after it is killed is called the Rigor Mortis stiffening. 

Here goes a bit about Rigor Mortis

For a brief period immediately after the bird's death its muscles are relaxed and if then cooked will make a very tender meat. However, soon after, its muscles will stiffen in a condition considered "stiffness of death" or "Rigor Mortis" and if cooked in this state will make a very tough meat. 

This stiffness sets in about 1 hour after the animal is killed and will start getting soft again as the protein-digesting enzymes withing the muscle fibers begin to eat away the framework that holds the stiffness of these muscles in place. This is called AGING.

In general, each animal should age a certain amount of time before being eaten so that the meat becomes tender and flavorful. 

There are two main kinds of aging processes:

The Dry Age and the Wet Age. 

The Dry Age is considered the best type of aging. It is usually done to big pieces of meat, such as bison or venison, that are hung whole and unwrapped in a special chilled room, usually 34 F to 38 F and with a 70% to 80% humidity. It can be aged in this state from 1 week to more that 1 month. 

The cool temperature limits the growth of microbes, while the moderate humidity causes the meat to loose moisture gradually and thus become denser and more concentrated. 

It will also acquire a special flavor from the mold and protein bacteria that is created on its outside layer. This layer must eventually be cut off once it is ready to be cooked.

Even though this type of aging is considered the best in terms of meat flavor, it is not what is usually used, since it is a more expensive way of aging due to equipment and loss off meat weight.

The pheasant bellow was Wet Aged, which is the simpler aging process. 

It was put in a plastic container in the cooler for seven days, with its guts removed (so that it would not spoil) before plucking out its feathers. 

Since pheasant is a delicate animal, we chose to Dry Pluck it before cooking instead of Wet Plucking it. 

A dry plucking process is a more time consuming task. The feathers have to be removed one by one, but it protects the delicate skin of the bird, which should remain intact. We wanted to cook it with the skin on to get an extra pheasant flavor.

For a Wet Pluck you would remove all the feathers by rubbing the skin under water.

Below you will see the pheasant waiting to be plucked. 

Here is the pheasant as we were starting to pluck it.

It is important to remember that when you hunt a bird, you should look where it was shot and remove the bullet area right away, so that it does not contaminate the rest of the bird. 

If the weather is warm, you also have to eviscerate it right away so that it does not spoil. 

When cutting it, be sure not to cut the crop, which is the area where the bird feeds. This would spill its larva and grass out.

Cooking Process

Some accelerate aging can take place during slow cooking, so when you have a choice, choose a slow cooking method for your aged meat. This will make it even more tender.

For this bird, we chose to pan sear the whole bird being very careful not to rip its skin, since it is so thin. Once it was browned on all sides we slow roasted it in a 300 F oven. 

The ideas it to serve it medium rare about 140 F in order to maintain its tenderness and best flavor.

As the bird was roasting we deglazed the pan in which it was seared with some red wine and reduced it to get a very strong and flavorful sauce. 

Mean while, we sweated some Mire Poix and added some dried bread crumbs, roasted hazel nuts, dried prunes and some fresh herbs to the vegetables. We finished it off adding some pheasant veloute (the we made it by making a roux and adding some pheasant stock. You can also use fortified chicken stock if you prefer) and finally added the reduced red wine sauce and adjusted flavor.

Once the bird was roasted we served it with this pheasant stuffing and some extra pheasant veloute on top.

Below are some of the ingredients we used to make the stuffing:

Dried bread crumbs seasoned, dried prunes and roasted hazel nuts.

Unfortunately I did not get shot of the pheasant dinner plated. It was so delicious that I only remembered to take a shot when it was all gone.

Walking around my neighborhood I am able to enjoy this gorgeous fall day.