Pheasant stir-fry inspired by the salty-sweet-sour balance of Thai cuisine.
Pheasant hunting has always fascinated me—likely a result of reading Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World as a young boy—but having spent most of my adult life in northern Australia it had not been something I’d had the opportunity to pursue. At least not until February 2023, when a fortunate series of events saw me in the United States and invited to participate in a unique pheasant hunt in Maryland. The outfitter, who I had met through gun dog circles, had space for an additional shooter at an event designed to replicate a European style driven pheasant shoot, and while this was a far cry from my long held desire to hunt the wild birds of King Island it was quite simply an opportunity too good to pass up.
That is how I found myself atop a hill on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, Beretta in hand and dog by my side one Saturday morning in February. To say the morning was crisp is a gross understatement—around ten o’clock the shooters were liberally dusted in snow. The conditions didn’t bother the dogs, the locals, or the birds and I pretended may hands and feet weren’t biting cold to the bone.
Over the course of the morning the shooters rotated around each ‘peg’, while the outfitter released pheasant in either singles or pairs. At the end of the day the shot birds were divided equally amongst the guns, and the missed birds were left to chance their luck in the woods.
Most of the birds were ‘breasted out’ by the outfitter’s crew while we were still in the field. As a result I left the hunting clubhouse that afternoon with several kilos of skin free breast meat, and not the number of whole birds I had expected. On one hand this greatly reduced the amount of labour required of me, but on the other it impacted my culinary ambitions. So it was with a relative abundance of pheasant breast meat and a serious hankering for quality Asian flavours—which should naturally suit ring-necked pheasant—I hit on the idea of a Thai-style pheasant stir-fry.
Pheasant breast stir-fry
Ingredients
- 4 pheasant breasts skinless
- 1/3 cup cornflour
- 1 brown onion
- 1 red capsicum
- 3 cloves garlic
- 4 shallots (spring onions)
- 1/4 cup cashews optional
- 1/4 cup peanut oil
Marinade
- 1 egg white
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 splash lime juice
Sauce
- 4 tbsp oyster sauce
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp tomato sauce (ketchup)
- 3 tbsp lime juice
- 1 tbsp Mirin
- 1 tbsp Palm sugar (crushed) can substitute with brown sugar
- 1 tbsp ginger paste
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil optional
Instructions
- Assuming you will serve this with rice, it would be best to start by preparing the rice.
- Slice the pheasant breasts into bite size portions, discarding any badly blood-shot pieces.
- Whisk together the marinade ingredients in a large bowl, and add the pheasant meat to the marinade. Strictly speaking we aren’t really marinating the meat, but instead employing a Chinese stir-fry technique called ‘velveting’ to produce meat that is both crisp on the outside and tender inside. Let the meat rest in the marinade while you prepare the vegetables and sauce.
- Slice the onion, capsicum, garlic and shallots.
- Combine all of the sauce ingredients and mix well.
- Over a medium-high heat, heat 2-3cm of oil in the bottom of a wok.
- While the oil heats, add 1/3 cup of corn flour to a plate or bowl and toss the meat through the cornflour until it is evenly coated.
- Once the oil has reached around 175-180C, cook the meat in small batches without overcrowding the wok. If you don’t have a suitable thermometer, you can test the oil by adding a small piece of the meat, if the oil immediately bubbles it is hot enough.
- Once all of the meat is cooked carefully drain most of the hot oil, leaving about 1 tablespoon of oil in the bottom of the wok.
- Add the onion to the hot wok and continually stir for sixty seconds, then add the capsicum garlic and ¾ of the shallots. Continue to stir fry until the vegetables are cooked but still retain some crunch. Add the cashews (if using them).
- Add all of the sauce and heat through. Once the sauce is heated return the meat to the wok, and toss or stir everything together until it is evenly coated. Remove from the heat and serve on a bed of rice. Garnish with the remaining shallots.
