Apple Bourbon Brined Smoked Quail stuffed with Brown Rice and Red Quinoa
I don't know about you, but Thanksgiving brings back memories of choking down dry turkey and needing something wet to wash it down with. Since I'll probably be having 2 to 3 Thanksgiving meals this week, I've decided to downsize this feast, we'll still be having wild bird, stuffing and cranberry sauce ... . just on a much smaller scale. I'll include a little recipe for something to wash it all down, but you shouldn't need it, as these birds will be super moist.
The rice stuffing is optional, so if you want to use it for your birds you'll need to make it while your Quail brine. Youll also need some butchers twine to secure the rice inside the birds.Turkey, chicken, duck and other game birds have a tendency of drying out when overcooked. Brining, or soaking the meat in saltwater, helps infuse the meat with moisture that will protect the bird from being overcooked, while also mildly favoring the meat. This insures you end up with a moist, juicy and tender bird. Couple that with the slow cooking process of smoking and you end with meat that nearly falls off the bone.
Our brining process doesn't have to be exact, but I think the generally rule of thumb is ½ cup of Kosher Salt for every ½ gallon of brine that you make. Since we won't need much brine to cover these birds, we'll only make ½ gallon of brine.
About the Author : Jeff Davis
Visit authors website | View more articlesYou may think cooking and recipes don’t have much to do with a website dedicated to hunting dogs ... but really, why do we hunt? Sure, we enjoy watching our dogs work in the field and being outdoors, but ultimately, hunting is about survival and feeding our families. We might as well try to do it well. I'm not a chef and definitely no food authority ... but I do like to eat and enjoy cooking. After searching for people willing to share their recipes on Gundog Central, without much success, I decided to try to do a few on my own, with my wife Tami's help. The recipes I share here are things I like to eat and have made here at home. I've tried to include step-by-step instructions with each meal describing exactly how I did it, but my method may not be best, if you decide to try a recipe posted here, please use whatever technique you think works best, I'm simply sharing how I did it. You'll see a lot of recipes where I've tried to make things from starch, when I could have just used store bought ingredients, simply because I wanted to learn how something was done. My goal is to continually update these recipes as I learn new things and techniques. These are my attempts at creating good, home cooked food, that I would like to eat! If I'm sharing it here, my family and I enjoyed it and I believe you will too.
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