I had the best chicken of my life this week. The worst part… It was not chicken…
Let me explain.
Last week my pup and I had a successful bird hunt, and we brought home our first pheasant rooster for dinner!
I did a bunch of research on how to have a great tasting bird, which you can learn about in this video.
Thanks to some help from Hank Shaw of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook I wound up with the best tasting roasted “chicken dinner” I have ever had!
Hanks advice included
- Hanging/aging the pheasant for a few days at around 50 degree temperature
- Brining the pheasant in a saltwater brine for 8 hours before cooking
- After the brine, leaving the pheasant in the refrigerator overnight to get the skin dried out and crispy
It was a lot of work… but the meal was AMAZING!
It got me thinking about this idea….
You could compare, as we did in last week’s video about grinding burger meat, your stockpile of venison
with buying free range beef at the super market…
Or your delicious roasted pheasant dinner with a roaster chicken from COSTCO….
You could look at it dollar for dollar and see which one wins the breakdown..
But it becomes a tricky comparison. Because the thing about wild game is that it is food that money can’t buy… because you can’t buy it..
You can’t buy wild game. ANYWHERE. (ok, at least not here in the states. It is illegal to sell wild game.)
You can buy venison or pheasant or boar from a farm, but Wild Game does not come from some corn fed animal raised on a farm in New Zealand somewhere, later sold at whole foods.
Wild game comes strait from the forest, to your truck bed, to your kids dinner plate.
There is no processing facility in between the deer walking through the forest your kid’s full stomachs.
No shipping the steaks across the country in the back of a tractor trailer. No time spent on the shelf.
Wild game is only something that can be acquired through hard work, long hours, and determination.
VIDEO ON GOALS
I set a goat at the begining of this hunting season. There were plenty of deerless mornings and missed pheasants that made me want to give up for the season. But if I wanted to put wild food on my table this year, I needed to push. Having a goal set at the begining of the season kept me going.
And eventually I was able to do it.
4 deer, including this Black Friday Special ;)… And a few pheasants now fill my freezer, and will soon wind up on the family’s dinner plates. I’m excited, because my kids seem to have a taste for wild game, and gobble wild meat up quicker than its domestic counterparts…
This winter we’re going to eat good.
Back at the beginning of this post I said the “Worst part” of the best chicken dinner was the fact that it was not chicken.
That is the “Worst” because it means I can not go out and buy another pheasant for dinner tomorrow, as much as I would like too.
I guess that means me and my pup will need to head back into the field for one last hunt this season.
Woe is me…;)
Happy Farm Friday – Aust
Your HOMESTEADY Homework for the weekend…
Make a goal for Your homestead this year, or your hunting season, fishing adventures, whatever… But don’t just think about it… Write it down and put that goal by your closet like I did! Then share in the comments on the blog or channel what your goal is for 2018!
The Question of the Week – What Does Pheasant Taste Like?
Submitted by lineflyer1 on YouTube: “I always wondered what a pheasant tasted like. Did it taste like chicken or gamey chicken?”
Want to find out my answer? Watch the Livestream at our YouTube Channel! Today at 6:30 PM!
Our QOW is brought to you by our super chaters!
Coming Next Week
We share some great tips for anyone who is looking to finish a basement quickly and cheaply! In just 1 week, spending less than $500, we turned our CREEPY BASEMENT into an incredible play space for our 4 kiddos this winter! Forward this email to a friend who could might enjoy next weeks email and tell them to SUBSCRIBE to our weekly email HERE
Leave a Reply