Top 10 Pheasant recipes: Pheasant Guidwife

By Prue Coats for The Field

Friday, 06 January 2012

The top 10 pheasant recipes. Country chef Prue Coats selects her top pheasant recipes for The Field.

Pheasant Guidwife

Serves 4

■ Salt and ground black pepper
■ 2 pheasants (old is best)
■ Sunflower or other oil for frying
■ 3 large onions, peeled and sliced into rings
■ 6-8 tbsp peach or mango chutney or other fruit chutney
■ 11⁄2-2 large glasses red wine
■ 1-2 tsp cornflour if needed

This recipe came from a cousin who had links with South Africa and brought back bottles of Mrs Ball's Original Peach Chutney in her luggage when she travelled there; mango also works well. It's perfect for the "old stager" with spurs a mile long, and it freezes brilliantly.

Preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F/Gas Mark 3. Salt and pepper the pheasants and then in a large, flameproof, cast-iron casserole (a Le Creuset one with a lid is perfect), brown the birds all over in the oil and set aside.

Then fry the onion rings gently in the same pot until slightly coloured and soft, stirring to make sure they don't burn. Sit the browned pheasants, breast up, on top of the onions and spread a thick layer of chutney over them. Pour over the red wine, then pop on the lid and cook for 1½-2 hours. It will work perfectly in a clay pot if you have one. If you want a slightly less runny sauce, you can thicken it with a teaspoon or so of cornflour.

Serve it with rice or mash to soak up the juices, and plenty of vegetables.

Pheasant recipes: The top 10

Pheasant Guidwife

Parmesan pheasant breasts with crispy ham

Pheasant Normandy

Pheasant and vegetable stir-fry with a black bean sauce

Pot roast pheasant with Fennel

The best pheasant stock and soup ever

Perfect roast pheasant with white wine and charlotte potatoes

Pheasant "Prueski"

Gennaro's pheasant

Devilled pheasant