Recipe: Game Bird Pie

Camera — Guns, ammo, and dead stuff. Yes, please.

PREP TIME: 1 HR. | COOK TIME: 3 HRS. | FEEDS: 2-4

“Those are good eating,” I said.

He looked at me like I’d suggested eating his dog’s ears or something equally disturbing. But across several continents, squab, pigeons, sky rats, whatever-you-want-to-call-them, are eaten with a considerable number of recipes.

In Morocco, they make Pastilla or Bastilla. In England, they make squab pies. Both have slow-cooked birds layered between pastry crusts of varying thickness. Some use broth and eggs to solidify the insides or gelatin. Others require raisins, saffron, and nuts.

I even grabbed some ideas from different meat pies I’ve experienced over the years. You could apply the cooking style to all sorts of upland birds, ducks, squirrels, or groundhogs. Need to clear out your freezer of some odds and ends before hunting season really gets going? This is the one.

MEAL PREPARATION

Start by covering the meat with a sprinkle of salt, and then olive oil to confit it. Over the span of a couple hours, the oil slowly cooks down the meat. You can add whole heads of garlic with bottoms chopped off for easy removal later. Or use whole branches of thyme and a bay leaf for added flavor.

If you don’t get all the meat under oil, it’ll be hard and weird rather than fall-off-the-bone tender. So, set a timer to turn the meat every hour. If after a couple hours the meat needs more time, give it more. Once done, you can shred out the meat, mix in your now-tender garlic cloves, and layer it on top of a row of pastry, and sliced potatoes. Pour over the gravy, add the top layer, and put it all back into the oven to bake. I like making extra sauce to add after the fact.

I like to age birds in the fridge a few days before plucking and gutting. Sometimes, what’s in the crop, seeds, etc., will start to ferment lightly, adding an olive-like tonality to the meat. Once again, I trot out my favorite sauce method, using dried mushrooms to create a broth that carries a ton of rich flavor. Foraging is great in season, or you can find dried shiitake mushrooms online. If you don’t eat mushrooms, skip them and use some bone stock or store-bought broth. Tangy mustard with fresh rosemary compliments the potatoes and complexity in the birds quite well.

Scaling this recipe properly takes a little estimation, but I cooked a pie for three using three doves and two pigeons. You could do the same volume with a couple of pheasants, four quail, eight or so doves, three pigeons, etc. You’ll end up with around 1 cup of pulled meat. You might even confit birds in a Dutch oven in advance, and then shred meat for later use.

INGREDIENTS

Game birds (1 cup pulled meat)
2-4 cups olive oil (enough to cover birds)
1 whole garlic head (bottom cut off)
1 cup chopped almonds
4 large potatoes (sliced thin)
3 cups stock
2 tbsp. flour
1 cup dried mushrooms
1 cup boiling water
3 tbsp. kosher salt
½ tbsp. mustard
3 tbsp. butter
Fresh thyme
Fresh rosemary
Puff pastry (thaw before unrolling)
9×11 pan

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat oven to 300 degrees.
Pluck your birds.
Rinse, dry, and put into a pan deep enough to hold them and for the meat to be covered in oil.
Salt the birds and let them hang out with salt on them while you prep everything else.
Cut off the bottom of the garlic. Add it to the pan with whole sprigs of thyme and birds, covering in oil.
Add to oven and drop temperature to 225 degrees to confit for 2-3 hours. Rotate birds every 30-60 minutes to keep meat evenly cooking on all sides.
Once finished, the meat should fall off the bone. Pull meat and skin off, separating from the bones. Keep bones for stock and chop up the meat.
Turn up your oven to 400 degrees.
Leave frozen puff pastry on counter to thaw while birds cook. It should be easy to unroll when thawed. If it’s holding tight, wait or you’ll crack the pastry.
Boil a cup of water. Pour it over dried mushrooms to rehydrate for 30 minutes. Remove mushrooms and save the liquid for making sauce.
Slice four potatoes in half (the long way) so they’ll lay nice on the cutting board. Slice them thinly (1/16th of an inch or less). Rinse them and add to a saucepan.
Add a ½ tablespoon of salt and cover with water. Boil for 2 minutes to par cook them. Drain them.
While they’re dripping out water in your colander, heat up a cast iron skillet with some olive oil in the bottom. You want a nice, thin layer, and for your pan to be almost smoking hot, so the potatoes don’t stick.
Add the potatoes, flipping once browned. Remove once ¼ (or more) have some browning on them and they’re all completely cooked.
Sauté mushrooms in butter and salt with ½ tablespoon of kosher salt at medium-high heat. Since they’re wet, they’ll have to release moisture before browning. Don’t pull them out until they’re crisping on the edges.
Add 2 tablespoons of flour to butter in pan. Add another tablespoon if needed to get all the flour coated in fat. Then, sauté.
Slowly add stock and mushroom liquid to the pan while whisking on a medium heat. Add mustard and 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary. If all you have is dried herbs, grind them finely (if possible) to get a better integration into the sauce. (You don’t want floating dried pine needles in your sauce.)
Add around ½-1 tablespoon of salt to taste.
Rub butter or oil into your small cake/casserole pan. Cut a sheet of puff pastry to fit the pan (one for the top and one for the bottom). Lay the first sheet in the pan.
Then, layer in your potatoes and mushrooms.
Layer in ⅓ of your sauce.
Add the bird meat.
Add ⅓ of your sauce.
Then, add your final layer of pastry on top. Save the last bit of sauce for plating the food.
Score the pastry with a sharp knife. Decorate the top of your pie if you like. Some people (like my wife) go as far as creating leaves and stars. I’m more of a simple person, often carving X or triangle shapes to allow steam to go up through the pastry.
Add pie to oven and cook until the top of the pastry is a golden brown. This should take 10-20 minutes.
At this point, some people add an egg or milk wash to get sheen or an even more golden finish.
Remove the pie from the oven to slightly cool.
Warm up your leftover sauce. Gather your plates. Then, cut the pie into portions.
I add even more sauce to the pie (just under the top) and drizzle sauce on the pastry and the edges of the pie slices for visual appeal.

Overall, this recipe is ideal with a small salad, sweet corn, or some roasted vegetables. This is an adaptable and scalable recipe you can leverage to create some great meals and memories.