Quail, Mushroom and Wild Rice Soup
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I was never much of a soup person growing up, you couldn't pay me to eat it, it didn't matter what kind of soup it was. Fast forward 40 years and my how things have changed. I discovered Potato Soup several years ago, specifically, Zuppa Toscana soup from the Olive Garden. It's absolutely my favorite soup hands down! If you look through the recipes on this site, you'll see that I have two different version of that soup where I tried to recreate it at home with Pheasant. Give me a bowl of Potato soup and some bread, then just let me go to town!! Discovering Zuppa Toscana led me to trying different types of soup, like Loaded Potato Soup, Tomato Soup & Tortilla Soup, which my wife is in the kitchen making right now as I write this... now I love them all. Well, most of them any ways, there are still some soups that I wouldn't dare try, like Vegetable soup or Minestrone, I'm just not ready to try an all-vegetable based soup. When I told my wife I wanted to try to do a Mushroom and Rice soup, she turned her nose up at me and said she didn't think she'd like soup with rice in it. I guess we can all be kind of particular about our soups. Needless to say, I made the soup any way and she actually liked it!
I think a classic pairing for Mushroom and Rice is Quail. When I was thinking about how I wanted to do my Mushroom and Rice soup recipe, I automatically thought of adding Quail. You'll see a few recipes on the site where I've paired all these ingredients together, in something like a stuffed meat pie or Quail Casserole. In fact, any time I think about making Quail, Mushrooms and Rice are two of the first things I think of, along with fruit and BACON!!! Bacon is a must, right! So that's the first thing I started this recipe with. I fried up a little crispy bacon to use as a garnish on top of my soup, while using the bacon grease to cook the vegetables. You don't want to overcook these Quail breast, because they'll become tough and chewy, so I waited to add them to my soup until the very end.
One of the best things about the Zuppa Toscana soup, is the broth. When I was trying to decide how I wanted to do this recipe, I knew I wanted to attempt to make the broth kind of the same way, by adding a little heavy cream at the end. The soup ended up tasting awesome, but I almost regret adding the heavy cream, if only for the way it changed the color of the soup. Before it was this beautiful, rich dark brown looking broth and adding the cream, just sort of melodied it out. Not that you eat with your eyes, right!!
Ingredients
Quail, Mushroom & Wild Rice Soup
Poultry seasoning
Instructions
Quail, Mushroom and Wild Rice Soup
Step #1 Wash and remove stems from mushrooms. Divided the mushrooms in half. Use half the mushrooms to make mushroom stock, by filling a container with 4 cups of cool water then add mushrooms and allow to sit for a few hours.
Step #2 After a few hours, remove Mushrooms from stock. Wash and rinse your wild rice, then add to the stock. Allow to soak for at least 30 minutes.
Step #3 Dice Onion, Garlic, Celery and Carrots.
Step #4 Gather all ingredients together so that theyre ready to use.
Step #5 Slice Bacon into small pieces
Step #6 Add Dutch Oven to stove top with heat set to Medium High. Add 1 tablespoon of Butter and allow to melt.
Step #7 Add Bacon to large Dutch oven and cook until crispy
Step #8 Remove to plate.
Step #9 Add Onions to bacon grease.
Step #10 Add carrots and celery
Step #11 Add salt and pepper and poultry seasoning
Step #12 Cook 4 to 5 minutes
Step #13 Add half the mushrooms
Step #14 The mushrooms will have a lot of water that needs to cook off.
Step #15 Cook until soft, about ten minutes
Step #16 Add garlic and cook for 2 more mintues
Step #17 Pour in wild rice and four cups of mushroom stock that we made.
Step #18 Pour in four cups of chicken stock
Step #19 Add bay leaf
Step #20 Using butchers twine, tie the thyme springs together. This will make them easier to remove later.
Step #21 Add thyme to dutch oven.
Step #22 Sprinkle in 1-2 more tablespoons of poultry seasoning. Add plenty of salt and pepper. Taste and add more seasoning if needed
Step #23 Cover and allow to reach a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook for 40 minutes
Step #24 While your soup is cooking, cut each quail breast in half.
Step #25 With ten minutes to go, fish out bay leaf and thyme springs.
Step #26 Add Quail Breast to Dutch oven and allow to cook the final ten minutes.
Step #27 Turn off heat add 1 cup of chopped kale
Step #28 Pour in 1/2 cup heavy cream
Step #29 Taste and add in additional seasoning if needed.
Step #30 Add 2 tablespoons of bacon grease or butter to another skillet. Add other half of mushrooms and sauté until crispy.
Step #31 When mushrooms are crispy, turn off heat and sprinkle with salt.
Step #32 Garnish with crispy bacon and crispy mushrooms and flat left parsley.
Recipe Card
Quail, Mushroom and Wild Rice Soup
Ingredients
Quail, Mushroom & Wild Rice Soup
Poultry seasoning
Instructions
Quail, Mushroom and Wild Rice Soup
About the Author
Jeff Davis
Visit authors websiteYou 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.
