Fried Pheasant Recipe - Pickle Brined Fried Pheasant | Hank Shaw (2024)

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Yes, you fry pheasants! Here’s a recipe for pickle-brined, fried pheasant you’ll love. Works great with skin-on or skinless birds, as well as grouse or partridge.

So I’ll give you the caveat first: If you really want to enjoy fried pheasant as if it were chicken, you will want to use only young birds. There are three “tells” that you have a young bird:

• They’re a lot smaller than older roosters, sometimes by as much as a pound.
• Young roosters don’t have much in the way of spurs.
• Their plumage isn’t fully in yet, and their tails aren’t very long, giving them a hen-like appearance.

OK, that’s four tells, but you get my point. Incidentally, most pen-raised birds will be young.

We shot a few really young roosters on Opening Weekend in North Dakota (the story of that hunt is here), and I knew I wanted to treat them differently. Fried pheasant was the ticket.

Much like my recipes for buttermilk fried quail and fried rabbit, this is a celebration of rarity: it isn’t often you come home with a wild game animal so tender you can just fry it.

I used kitchen shears to cut the breasts in half bone-in, and separated the thighs from the drumsticks. Alas, even on a young pheasant, the tendons in the drumsticks are a killer; save those for the crockpot.

The wings will work on a young pheasant, but I prefer to make a dish just of wings, like my pheasant Buffalo wings, so I kept them all together for later… likely the Super Bowl.

Now I hear you: What if I only have older pheasants? All is not lost: Make fried pheasant only with the bone-in breasts. It’ll still be good.

Prepping the Pheasant

I really prefer skin-on pieces because that skin adds fat and flavor to an otherwise lean meat, and the skin is something else for the breading to stick to. But skinless works, too.

(If you’re flummoxed on how to pluck a pheasant, I have a tutorial here.)

Don’t use shot-up pieces. A shot hole here and there is fine, but if the meat is pretty beat up, use it in soups or stew or for pheasant stock.

You really want to brine your meat when you make fried pheasant because it can tend toward dryness — and, well, every fried chicken place in America brines its birds. The pickle brine is my go-to.

Wha? Yep, the liquid in a pickle jar. Save it after you’ve eaten the pickles. And I am talking about a vinegar pickle, not a lacto-fermented pickle; that brine has a very different effect I’ll get into in another post.

This acidic brine is a perfect marinade for pheasant. You get the salt penetrating to the center of the meat, and the flavors in the vinegar all over the outside. I prefer to use a sweet and spicy pickle brine in this recipe.

How long to brine your pheasant pieces? Overnight, or at least 4 hours. Don’t go longer than about 12 hours or things will get a little salty and acidic.

Fried Pheasant Seasonings

So many people forget to season everything when they make fried chicken, or in our case fried pheasant. The act of frying dulls the impact of most spices so you really want to lay them on.

You already have brined the pheasant. My advice is to add lots of seasoning to the buttermilk you douse the pieces in, then a little seasoning to the flour.

If you want to add cayenne or paprika, it should go into the buttermilk; plain yogurt thinned with milk works, too. The reason is because if there’s too much in the flour itself, it will burn in the hot oil and get bitter.

The flour should get some salt, black pepper, and dried herbs like parsley, savory, basil, thyme, etc.

You’ll want to tinker with things as you make batches of fried pheasant over the season.

Frying the Pheasant

You’ll want a heavy pan, like cast iron, and about 2 inches’ worth of oil. Peanut oil is my choice, but anything with a high smoke point is fine. Heat it to just 325F. You want to cook the pheasant without darkening the batter too much, so this is the key temperature.

Always let the oil get back to this temperature in between batches.

I find that the thighs take about 6 minutes per side, and the breasts 5 to 6 minutes per side. Thighs have more connective tissue, but breasts are thicker. Don’t crowd the pan when you fry. The pieces should not touch each other.

When a batch is done, move it to a cooling rack set over a baking sheet. Set that in a 200F oven. This gives the fried pheasant air, and will keep it crispy.

If by some freak of chance you have leftovers, they are amazeballz cold for lunch the next day.

If you liked this recipe, please leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating and a comment below; I’d love to hear how everything went. If you’re on Instagram, share a picture and tag me athuntgathercook.