When your husband loves to hunt and fish, as the primary person cooking the spoils, it’s important to have good recipes for when hubby comes come with the goods. I’ve shared our dove recipe, and that was a fun adventure to try something new with just about the freshest meat you can get.

This past weekend we had our Thanksgiving and Christmas celebration with my husband’s family. While there, the boys did quite a lot of hunting (for deer, quail, crane, and dove), and managed to get quite a few quail- enough, in fact, for us to have those as our “Christmas Eve” meal on Friday night before opening gifts.

I was told that quail tastes very similar to chicken (this was my first time eating it), so the prep method of choice was… you guessed it– fried!

We started with a bowl of quail breasts and legs…

These were deboned, and checked for BBs, then soaked in salt water to help get any lingering blood out.

In a ziplock bag, we had flour, and a little seasoning (salt and pepper). Shelby dunked each piece of quail in the bag…

Then, rolled it in a bowl of milk…

Then dunked it back in the bag, and then placed it on a plate to be fried…

The fryer was on medium heat (about 375-400* if your fryer has a temperature gauge), and we put a few pieces in the basket at a time and submerged them in the fryer.

Leave them in there for about 10 minutes, or until outer coating is dark golden brown. Quail is white meat (like chicken), so you can look for the meat to have turned white from pink if you are checking the meat. You may lose some of the coating off in the oil, which is why they are double coated with the milk.

And that’s it! They are definitely an interesting alternative to chicken, and it is fun to know that your food is about as organic as possible!

(And we won’t talk about the extra thing coming up out of the top there. Shelby and I called it a tail until we were corrected that it is the neck…)

 

We enjoyed our Christmas, and exchanging gifts, but most of all, just being together!

Merry Christmas 2016!