Stuffed Pheasant Breast Recipes

Steps:

• To prepare the stuffing: Melt the butter in a saute pan over low heat. Add the onion and celery and cook for 20 minutes, or until the onion is cooked through but not brown. Set aside. Put the crackers in a large bowl, add the egg, the cooked onion and celery, the sage, roasted corn, chicken stock, salt, and pepper and mix well. To stuff and roast the pheasant: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Season the pheasant cavity with some of the salt and pepper, then put the stuffing inside. Truss with skewers or tie with butcher's twine. Season the bird with the remaining salt and pepper. Lay the bacon over the breast. Place the pheasant on a metal roasting rack set inside a roasting pan and place on the middle rack of the oven. Roast for 25 minutes, basting the legs once or twice with the pan juices. After 25 minutes raise the temperature to 450 degrees and finish the bird for 10 minutes more, or until golden brown with an internal temperature of about 140 degrees near the thigh. To prepare the sauce: While the pheasant is roasting, puree the corn kernels in a food processor. You should have about 2 cups of pure. Place in a small saucepan with the habanero. Bring the juice to 200 degrees. Do not boil or the sauce will break. Add the lime juice and salt. To serve: Let the bird rest for 5 minutes before carving. Take the bacon off the breast and carve the bird, dividing the breast and thighs. Serve with the corn sauce and sauteed leeks.

Steps:

• Season breast with salt and pepper.
• Sear well in a pan with butter and let cool.
• Mix Brie, shallots, garlic, tomato, onion, mushrooms and sage.
• Season to taste.
• Stuff ¼ of cheese mixture under the skin of each cooled breast.
• Wrap each with a slice of bacon.
• Wrap with puff pastry.
• Brush top with beaten egg.
• Bake at 425 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
• Roast the pepper over a flame until it turns black. Remove skin, seeds and stem, and dice the pepper into 1/4-inch squares.
• Mix the goat cheese, pine nuts and herbs in a bowl.
• Cut off the breasts from the pheasant, carefully removing skin and fat. Discard carcass. Cut a small pocket into the side of the breast from end to end. Stuff the pocket of each breast with stuffing mixture. Pull some breast meat over the pocket. Wrap each breast with four slices of bacon.
• Place the pheasant breasts on a rack in a roasting tray, and roast in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, turning them over once.
• Remove the breasts from the oven. Remove and discard the bacon and let the pheasant breasts stand for 5 minutes.
• Slice each breast into four medallions, using an angled cut. Place 4 medallions on each plate, and serve with a salad.

Steps:

• Drain oysters, reserving liquid; coarsely chop oysters. In a large bowl, combine the oysters and liquid, stuffing mixes, 3/4 cup broth, onion, celery and egg substitute. Loosely stuff into pheasants. Skewer or fasten openings. Tie drumsticks together. Place breast side up on a rack in a roasting pan. , Combine Worcestershire sauce and remaining broth; spoon over pheasants. Sprinkle with poultry seasoning. Place three bacon strips over each pheasant. , Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours or until a thermometer reads 180° for poultry and 165° for stuffing. Cover and let stand for 10 minutes before removing stuffing and slicing.

Steps:

• Cut each pheasant in half across the middle, lengthways so that you have 4 thin slithers of breast. Cut the apricots in the same way. Lay out 3 overlapping slices of prosciutto or bacon and place a sprig of thyme on top. Pop a piece of breast on top of this and lay 3 pieces of apricot on top of the breast. Season with salt and pepper, then wrap the prosciutto tightly around the pheasant to form a parcel. Repeat with the remaining pheasant, prosciutto and apricot to make 4 parcels. You can make these the day before and chill overnight.
• Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Heat a heavy-bottomed frying pan over a high flame and add the butter and 1 tbsp oil. When the fats are sizzling, add the pheasant parcels and cook for 3-4 mins on each side until the prosciutto is crisp and golden. The heat from the pan will seal the prosciutto tightly around the pheasant breast.
• Pop the breasts onto a baking tray and roast in the oven for 5-7 mins to finish cooking. Meanwhile, add the zest and juice from the 2 oranges, cinnamon, honey and soy to the pan juices and simmer to reduce until syrupy. Toss the watercress with the remaining oil and a squeeze of orange juice. Serve the pheasant parcels with the orange sauce, watercress and rice.

Steps:

• First, make the stuffing. Fry the onion in the butter for 5-10 mins until softened, then leave to cool completely. Thoroughly mix the remaining ingredients in a large bowl, including the cooled onions.
• If the wings are attached, cut at the first joint (on most butchered birds they will have been removed). Find the wishbone between the neck and the breast, then use a sharp knife to scrape away the flesh around it. Gently pull it out, trying to keep it as one, cut it away and discard.
• Place the pheasant, breast side down, on the board. Using a sharp boning knife, see tip, left, cut through the skin to the backbone along the length of the bird.
• Working down the length of the pheasant, slowly run your knife down against the ribcage, keeping close to the bone and scraping the flesh away from both. Twist out the thigh joints when you get to them.
• Very carefully cut away the main carcass. This is where the skin is at its thinnest, so cut carefully as you don't want to nip or pierce the skin.
• Open the bird out like a book and lay it, skin-side down, on the board.
• Season the bird's flesh with salt and pepper then arrange half of the stuffing down the middle of each of the birds in a sausage shape.
• Re-form the bird by lifting the sides up and around the stuffing. After you've done one, repeat with the other pheasant.
• Wrap each pheasant tightly and neatly with bacon so that the bacon goes all the way round the bird and joins on the underside.
• Using butcher's string, tie the pheasant at regular intervals around the width. Then tie it once around the length to hold the stuffing in.
• Finally, tie the legs together. The pheasant can be prepared to this stage and chilled up to a day ahead.
• Heat oven to 200C/ 180C/gas 6. Transfer the pheasant to a roasting tin. Roast for 45-50 mins, basting regularly with the juices from the tin. Finally, cover with foil and rest for about 15 mins. Serve in thick slices with the juices from the pan.

Steps:

• Separate legs and thighs from each bird. Remove and reserve skin, then cut meat away from the bones, being careful to remove small bones and gristle. Set aside.
• Skin, then bone the breasts. The procedure is exactly the same as for a chicken: With the bird lying on its back, use a sharp knife to make a deep incision just beside the breast bone. Then pull the meat - called the supreme - away from the carcass. Repeat the procedure for the other breast, and for remaining pheasant. On the inner side of each breast there will be a small fillet. Remove the stringy nerve from each of them. Using a broad knife blade, pound the small fillets slightly to flatten and set aside.
• Cut deep pockets into each of the supremes for stuffing, taking care not to pierce all the way through. Set aside.
• Use skin, carcass, heart, gizzard and wings to prepare a stock, as one would prepare chicken stock.
• Rinse caul fat under cold water for several minutes, then drain well.
• Prepare the stuffing. Put dark meat from legs and thighs through a meat grinder, or grind in a food processor. Add egg whites, season with salt, pepper and paprika, and pass through a fine mesh sieve, using a stiff plastic scraper, or, if available, use the fine mesh sieve attachment of an electric mixer. Combine meat and egg mixture with the creme fraiche in a mixing bowl and whip with an electric beater for several minutes, or until the mixture is very elastic.
• Saute pheasant livers in butter for about two minutes.
• Open each supreme, carefully add stuffing and in the center of each place half of a sauteed liver. Close supremes so that no stuffing seeps out, and cover the opening with the flattened fillets from Step 2. Wrap each stuffed supreme in a single layer of caul fat. This can be done several hours ahead, then refrigerated. Remove pheasant from the refrigerator about 30 minutes before cooking.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Salt and pepper each supreme, then brown on both sides in butter. Place su-premes in a shallow, buttered pan, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. While pheasant is cooking, prepare sauce and figs.
• To serve, cut each packet on the bias into five or six thin slices, arrange on warm plates and serve with shallot and wildmushroom sauce. The caul fat should have cooked away, and so need not be removed for serving.