My brother-in-law goes hunting every year for pheasants at the Chain O'Lakes State Park. This year, I had 5 pheasants that he asked me to cook up for dinner. Now I've only ever cooked one wild game animal before, venison, but for some reason, pheasant seemed way scarier! Or maybe it was because I was fearful that I'd ruin something that someone actually took the time to hunt and kill for dinner.
After much research on-line, I read that most people either soak the birds overnight in milk or brine. This is mainly to reduce the gamey flavor or to pull out the excess blood. Gross, I know. I opted for the milk method which I really think worked well.
Anyway, I ended up making an apple stuffing and stuffed each pheasant breast with it, wrapped it in bacon, and added chopped onion. Because I figured even if the birds ended up sucking, at least they will taste better with bacon right? Everything tastes better with bacon! The sauce was made of prunes, apple vinegar, and heavy whipping cream. We even found 2 shots during our meal. Watch out teeth! They're too difficult to find when you're deboning the bird as they're only about 2 mm wide.
On the side, we had a lovely butternut squash, leek, and corn wild rice. And for dessert was a blackberry pear honey goat cheese tart.
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