Our Favorite Grouse Recipes

Our Favorite Grouse Recipes

After writing Seven Tips to Improve Your Grouse Hunt last week it’s time to share some of our favorite grouse recipes. Grouse, also known as partridge, cooks up quickly. The birds are small so one grouse feeds one or two people.

Grouse looks very much like chicken but is a little darker in color. It often tastes like the bird’s diet. We cooked two last year that tasted a lot like pine. It wasn’t very good when the meat finished cooking so I seasoned it heavily, added water and used it in fajitas. I’ve cooked two dozen grouse a year for 20 plus years, and that was the first time I found the flavor to be unpleasant. We don’t waste meat so we made it work.

If you missed any pellets in the meat while cleaning the bird you should be able to see and remove them easily before you start cooking.

Seasoned Grouse Meat

grouse recipes, partridge recipes

Sliced grouse breast

Lightly oil the fry pan and place the grouse so that a full side of each slice touches the pan. Sprinkle with taco or fajita seasoning. Turn heat onto medium high and cook until the meat starts to brown. Stir to turn the pieces and flatten them on the pan again. Cook two or three minutes more.

Variations:

  • add additional seasoning and water to create a sauce
  • add sliced onions and/or bell pepper at the beginning of cooking

You can use the seasoned meat in fajitas, grouse salad (like chicken salad) or on top of a leafy salad.

Grouse recipes

Seasoned grouse meat

Roast Grouse

One grouse per person, whole
1 tsp fresh thyme per grouse
2 slices bacon per grouse
salt and pepper to taste

Sprinkle thyme, salt and pepper inside of a whole, washed grouse. Place on a baking sheet with breast side up. Cut bacon slices in half and place on top of the grouse. Bake at 350* for 20 minutes. The birds are small and wild birds cook quickly. This is excellent served with mashed potatoes and wild fall mushrooms or winter squash.

Grouse Caccitore

3 or 4 grouse breasts, halved
1 quart stewed tomatoes
1 tsp fresh or 2 tsp dried oregano
1 small onion, chopped
1 small bell pepper, any color, sliced
1 large garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup water

Place all ingredients in a slow cooker. Turn to low heat and allow to cook eight hours. Serve with wild rice and a vegetable.

Grouse is a nice addition to a pot of baked beans. Place the deboned breast meat on top of the beans during the last hour of cooking.

Camp Fried Grouse

A lot like fried chicken, but better! This is a popular grouse recipe during bird camp. Bag limits determine how many grouse you can possess at one time so we usually eat what we shoot so we can keep hunting, and take home the birds we bag in the last two days.

3 grouse breasts (again, one bird equals one breast)
2 eggs, scrambled
2 cups seasoned bread crumbs
Bacon fat

Warm the bacon fat in a cast iron pan. Dip breasts in eggs first then bread crumbs. Allow to sit in crumbs for two or three minutes. Shake off the excess crumbs and pan fry in bacon fat.