Quails and a Squirrel

Well, I'm not a big fan of wild game but my husband is an avid hunter.  A couple of weekends ago he went up to his hunting club and got some quail and a squirrel.  Now, the quail I'm OK with, they do taste pretty good, the squirrel kind of creeped me out.  Especially looking in the refrigerator and seeing this skinned naked looking thing.  I'm an adventurous eater but it has to be prepared for me.  If I had gone out to a restaurant and there was squirrel on the menu I probably would have ordered it just because it was different.  Having to look at it and prepare it myself is a different story.

 My go to blog is Hank Shaw's.  He is the ultimate in hunting, fishing, foraging, gardening. If I need a recipe for fish, duck, quail, rabbit whatever he has it plus some killer sauces to go with them. 

For the quail I just pan roasted them.  I rubbed them with olive oil and salt and pepper. 

naked quail in a roasting pan

roasted quail

 Now when my husband cleaned and picked the quail he took off all the skin, so they did not brown up as they should have.  I probably should have quickly seared them before roasting. I roasted them in a 450 degree oven for about 10 minutes.

roasted quail with wild berry sauce.

 The sauce I chose for the quail is the Wild berry sauce. It is on Hank's blog site.  Let me just say that the sauce is awesome!  I had picked wild black berries last summer and had a few left in the freezer so that's what I went with.  I think I would have been happy to just eat the sauce and forget about the quail but it went very well with the quail.  It would go equally well with duck or even chicken or lamb.  It is a great sauce and easy to make.

So, here is the other thing besides the quail I found in the fridge.  The squirrel.   Yup, kind of scary and what the heck do I do with it.  So back to Hank who said to treat squirrel as you would a rabbit.  Ok, now we are in more familiar territory.  I used to buy cut up rabbit all the time at the grocery store when they used to sell things like that there.  Really, it tastes like chicken.  After reading about rabbit/squirrel in Hank's blog I opted to fry it like chicken which is one of his suggestions.

skinned and dressed squirrel

I cut up the squirrel, just cut it into pieces like you would a chicken.  I marinated the squirrel in buttermilk and hot sauce.  You can use any kind of hot sauce that you like, I used Tabasco.  I probably used a couple tablespoons of the Tabasco sauce to one cup of buttermilk.  I marinated the squirrel for a couple of hours.  I then dredged it in a seasoned flour cornstarch mixture and fried until golden and done.  You can use your own favorite fried chicken recipe.
Guess what!  It tastes like chicken!!  I was a little squeamish about trying it even after all the preparation of it but after one taste I was sold.  It was tender and juicy and delicious.  Yes, I would fix it again.

fried squirrel