You guys were so great about my vest question, I thought I'd ask about cooking quail. Shot my first few yesterday morning at a preserve. Have experience with just about all other upland but have never cooked quail. Any suggestions?

Different quail taste different - I suppose it depends upon what they eat.

A few recommendations: A Hunter's Cookbook by Cuthbert and Eastham has great recipes and is very well illustrated. It covers most game including birds. They have some nice quail recipes including quail and saurkraut.

Then, look at the archives of The Field and the Shooting Times magazine. Over the years they have had great recipes by Mark Hinge.

I do not have the patience to pluck these birds so I only take the breasts, same as with grouse. This year I want to try a grouse pie with grouse liver on toast but that would mean making grouse stock and that would mean plucking grouse and that would mean hanging them....

I think the grouse pie recipe is an old one from The Field If I find it I'll post the reference.

I cook them two ways:

1. Wrapped in bacon and thown on the grill.

2. Covered with a good dry rub and grilled. Those who have attended the Southern SxS in Sanford the last two years can attest to the dry rubbed and grilled meathod. I cooked 80 quail at the L.C. Smith Collectors' Association Hospitality Tent in 2011 and another 60 quail and about 25 pheasant this year. I had a hard time cooking them fast enough to keep everyone happy.

Wrapped in bacon always works, on just about everything. If you want to be a bit more elegant, try this:

Pluck and clean the birds, leaving the skin intact. Wash and pat dry. Rub the insides and outsides of the birds generously with olive oil and honey. Stuff the cavities with chopped apples and onions, then tie the legs together to keep your stuffing from falling out of the cavity. If you lightly brown the apples and onions before stuffing, that's even better. Brown the birds on a grill, or slide them into the oven at 325-350 in a roasting pan. The sugars in the honey carmelize nicely and the olive oil keeps them from drying out. You can even wrap these in bacon or just lay a half slice of bacon over each bird if you oven roast them.

aunt ruby used tu roll em in flouer and slow fry erm in crisco, covered, til de was most tender...salt and pepper was all the seasonin she ever used...as i recall.

With a small paring knife, filet the breasts from the bone. Remove thigh and leg intact from backbone by disjointing thigh and cutting meat away from backbone. No need to debone thigh or drumstick. All this is done easily if birds are skinned. In a hot skillet, saute meat in olive oil a few minutes per side. Salt and pepper when done. Don't over cook. The meat will taste like quail rather than bacon. This is quail at its simplest. If desired, chop a little garlic and saute in pan with quail.

GLS, if I may: after removing the meat from pan deglaze with some port and add
some cream. Serve on a slice of bread fried in butter till golden on both sides with
the port sauce on top.

JC

I've been eating bobwhite quail all my life. The wild ones have a different taste from the pen-raised birds. My favorite has always been skinned seasoned with salt and pepper then rolled in flour and pan fried like chicken...Geo

+1 best fried in fresh bacon grease, with biscuits and milk gravy.

There are some recipes here .

JC

You folks are all invited to my place to cook.

Their food does make a dif. In the wild they eat bugs, mostly.

If you are skinning the birds & not plucking, a fool proof way to keep them moist & tender and still tasting like quail is to cut a fairly thick slice, 3/8"~1/2" of a sweet onion, like a Texas 1015, or Noonday or one of the GA variety. You can also use a regular white [stronger] or yellow [neutral, but mellow] onion, if you can't source a sweet variety. Place it on top of the bird breast up and put the whole in a 'Texas wrap' [aluminum foil] and then put it on the grill at a temp just north of 275 F, but not to exceed 350 for 45 minutes. Birds will be melt in your mouth tender and you can season them w/salt & pepper to taste once on the plate. The onion may be set aside or eaten [my preference], it will be cooked through and impart zero taste to the quail. This is a 'quick & dirty' method that is bullet proof.

Jan Carlos's methods & suggestions does the quarry much more justice, but it requires some finesse in the kitchen getting there.

Don't scoff at this until you have done it. Makes for some great tasting quail that taste exactly like ... quail.

This lady can cook.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmdvtGs5opc

I got this method from Martha Stewart who used it to cook turkeys (are you reading this jOe?). I use it on pheasants but it'll work for quail or any bird that might cook too dry. I wrap the bird in butter-soaked cheese cloth and bake it breast down so the breast stays in the juices and butter that runs to the pan bottom. I vary the spices, the above just helps to keep it moist.
Steve

This is my favorite too. Tastes great with any upland game bird really. I like to fry with large chunks of onion and mushrooms left whole or cut in half. De-glazing afterwards with port and cream sounds fantastic also!

Our wild quail recipe: I filet the meat off the breast. My wife rolls them in egg batter and deep fries them to somewhere between around medium rare. The usual cream gravy, mashed potatoes, and glazed carrots. Back when it was easier to stay trim she also made and served the world's best pecan pie for dessert.



Best,

Mike

All of this sounds great.

Another angle - if you're concerned about the bird drying out, pluck them then make some compound butter (butter, softened but not melted, with chopped/crushed herbs mixed into it) and slip a knob under the skin, then work it around evenly, particularly under the breast skin. I usually use fines herbes - parsley, chives, chervil and tarragon - in just about anything poultry or egg related. You can also use thyme or, as Phyllis did upthread, use herbes de Provence, similar to fines herbes but with the addition of rosemary and lavender.

Serving on fried bread or toast is a classic method, not just for quail but also woodcock and other small gamebirds. Soaks up the juice so it doesn't get lost.

Also, if you have some dried mushrooms, you can grind them in a mortar and pestle to a flour and add a touch to the cream sauce where they will help thicken and flavor it. Just a dab - the drying intensifies the mushroom flavor.

Split several anaheim peppers and clean them out. Stuff with quail breast pieces and vidalia or bermuda onion chunks. Wrap with bacon.



Grill on all sides until bacon is crispy. Yum!

Fried.....lightly breaded.....mashed potatoes.......quail gravy (pan drippings, a bit of flour, pepper and milk)......doesn't get any better

I can't argue with any of the recipes offered by the forum. Think I'll thaw out some birds for tomorrow night...Geo

Like this:

I'm with you George on frying them. Being from South Georgia, for many years I didn't know that there was any other way to cook them. Over the years my wife (a yankee from Rochester New York no less} has adapted my Mother's frying method. She salts and peppers them and adds a seasoning salt before battering in floor. We always make cotton picking gravy (brown gravy made from the drippings with flour and onions seasoned} and rice to go with the birds. The birds are wonderful, but the rice and gravy make the meal

Floured and fried, seasoned with salt and pepper. Never had any better any other way. Done right they don't dry out. No comparison in the taste of pen-raised and wild birds. Wild are much better.

Of cose' it is heresy not to have grits, plain grits seasoned with salt and pepper and butter melted over them, and homemade biscuits, with fried quail!

SRH

Stan how 'bout a nice slice of pone soaked in blackstrap or sorghum for dessert?

Druther have buttered biscuits and syrup.

When I get to heaven if St. Peter meets me at the Golden gates and tells me I can have anything I want for supper I'll say, "Fried quail and grits!".

SRH

Fishfowler how do you keep them from tasting like pig lard with those bacon wraps?

A guy at work cooked some at a 4th of July party. He stuffed them with rosemary and garlic, wrapped them in bacon, and smoked them. He said it was the best quail he's ever had.

Many years ago, I came across an old recipe called "Caille en Cendres", French for quail in ashes. As I recall, one first gutted and beheaded the quail, shoving a big marble of butter into the cavity, plus a grape, then sewed or pinned it shut. One then packed clean, wet, natural clay (not modeling clay!) around the still feathered bird, and buried the package in ashes, with a decent layer of coals atop of the ash. When done (30-40 min.?), one cracks open the clay and the feathers, supposedly, go with it. I kept meaning to try this in the fireplace sometime, but never did. In S. China, where I am often, something similar is done with chicken, though without the grape or feathers. Called "beggars chicken", it comes out invariably rich and juicy.

Rapscallion,

We used to cook fish caught on several day canoe trips on the Brazos between Possum Kingdom & Lake Whitney before they built Lake Procter that same way, packed in mud and cooked in the ashes of a campfire. They always tasted great. I was told the origin of that method here was from native Americans, but don't pretend to know if that is correct or not. The moisture in the clay or mud keeps the contents moist and the skin [or feathers??] sticks to the now fired 'mold' when it is broken open. BTW, 'stinky' muck and mud works just as well as the seemingly cleaner types of clay, neither imparting any 'taste' whatsoever. You simply have to do it to prove that to yourself. Leave the scales on the fish; we gutted them, but left the heads on & just packed the mud over the seam.

Perhaps not so dif from a 'Texas wrap' using a fresh onion slice for the moisture, when one thinks about it.

The cookbooks I have say that, if one feels the bacon is too strongly flavored for a wrap as suggested, one should blanch it for a short time in hot water and any excess saltiness or smoky pork flavor will be reduced.

I like bacon and bacon flavor, so I don't bother.

There's a lot of options on trying to keep them moist. Wrapping in ham, or panchetta, brush with olive oil or butter, etc..

Mike...that's just the way it used to be at our house. Brings back fond memories. MaMaw fried the quail and made the fixings, my daughter the "Peecan" pie. A big glass of sweet tea to wash it down....

Or cooking wild quail to somewhere between rare and medium-rare.

We cook all pen raised birds to well done but have started cooking all wild birds to somewhere between rare and medium rare, including ducks and pheasant. Cutting the breast meat off the bone makes it easier to hit the desired degree of (un)done-ness.

Ken you are right on the target. But my wife recently started frying the breaded wild quail breast filets rare to medium rare and they are wonderful. No pictures though.


Best,

Mike

I think I'm going to need to cook dove breasts for a group of about 8 guys and four kids. Won't be able to use a BBQ at the motel, but will have electricity and a microwave in the room. Plan is a simple menu of burritos with lots of toppings, and canned refried beans in the microwave. I'm thinking about using something like a George Foreman Grill (or equivalent) to give the marinated/seasoned breasts a quick sear after preheating them in the microwave to speed things up for a hungry bunch. Don't have a GFG, have never used one, so looking for opinions as to whether this should work out OK. Thought about a small butane or white gas stove but don't want to use indoors or have open flames with the kids around in tight quarters. Small propane catalytic stove could be another option. Need to work fast in tight quarters with minimal hazards. Opinions or suggestions?