Pheasant Mushroom Soup

Pheasant Mushroom Soup. It’s creamy, hearty, and filling. I love a bowl of it on a cold evening, but even more so on an evening after a long day of pheasant hunting! Or deer hunting. Or elk hunting. Or even just afternoon of hunting around Netflix for new show to binge on a cold Saturday. Anyway, the point is, this is an amazing soup!

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Pheasant Mushroom Soup

Pheasant hunting in Utah has been, ummm, I will say interesting for the last few years. Years ago, the state carried a healthy population of pheasants. My dad told me he remembered as a young boy standing in a line of hunters and dogs, anxiously waiting for the pheasant season to officially open. The clock hit 8:00 am and the entire line moved across the field, attempting to kick up roosters, and fill their bag limit of two birds.

Since then, the bird population has struggled. Multiple factors play into this decline, including habitat destruction, predation on birds, tough winters, and more. In southeastern Utah, where I live, the population has almost completely disappeared. There may be a few lone birds out in the once popular hunting areas, but I wouldn’t even go searching for them in fear that if I did find a rooster, I was taking the very last one.

The state department of wildlife has addressed the decline and implemented a release program for pen-raised roosters. During the pheasant season, they release about 10,000 birds over 54 different hunting areas throughout the state. The program has made it possible to hunt pheasant again around the entire state of Utah, which has been great!

Anyway, politics aside! Let’s make Pheasant Mushroom Soup

The Mushroom Stock

You could easily add vegetable or chicken stock to this recipe if you wanted. You could even probably find a mushroom stock at most grocery stores but making your own is really quick and easy. The few steps it takes to make a quick homemade mushroom stock really adds to the depth of flavor for your soup, so if you have the ingredients, I recommend this step.

In a small saucepan, add all the stems from your mushrooms. Cover with water, about four cups. 

Also add in a few, like two, roughly chopped up carrots, a little celery, some onion, and a bay leaf.  Season with a little salt and let reduce over medium low heat for at least thirty minutes.

Strain out all the solid and reserve the liquid for your pheasant mushroom soup.

The Pheasant Mushroom Soup

To help ensure that the pheasant is tender and easily shreds, I poach it first. In a large pot, I add enough water to cover the pheasant, which is still just on the bone at this point and poach it for one hour.

For poaching, add enough water to cover all the pheasant and bring the water to a boil. Once the water is boiling, place a lid on the pot, reduce the pot to a simmer over low heat and let the poaching begin.

I just use water for poaching because the mushroom soup is going to add all the flavor to the pheasant. You could use vegetable or chicken stock to poach in, but it is almost a waste of stock. This was a hard tactic for me to follow at first, in my bones I felt like I needed to flavor the pheasant while poaching. But I resisted! And saved my stock for another day.

Once the pheasant is finished poaching, you can shred it into bite size pieces and set aside for adding to the mushroom soup.

In a dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot, melt two tablespoons of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Once the butter is melted, add the minced shallot and diced leeks, and cook for two or three minutes. Add your diced carrots, and add all the sliced mushrooms at this point, being sure to stir and coat the mushrooms in the oil and let cook down for ten minutes.

The mushrooms should be browned and softened by this point.

Sprinkle a little flour over the cooked mushrooms. This will be how we thicken the soup. A quarter of a cup should be good enough. Next, deglaze the pan with a half cup of marsala wine. I really liked the marsala wine in this recipe because it has kind of a sweet, musky flavor that dances wonderfully with the mushroom flavor. Let it simmer to cut some of the alcohol out and the develop the flavor of the mushrooms, maybe three to five minutes.

Now, add in your homemade mushroom broth! If you don’t have time to make your own mushroom stock, you can add vegetable or chicken stock at this point. Some homemade pheasant stock would also be fantastic!

Okay, now stir in your pheasant meat and let this pot gently boil for twenty minutes. No need to have a little jetted hot tub going on, just a gentle rolling boil will do.

Alright, we are almost done! I know you’re getting hungry! Add the can of coconut cream and a tablespoon of minced rosemary. Season to taste with a little salt and pepper. Let it warm on medium low heat for a little bit, just to give the mushroom flavor a little more time to infiltrate your pheasant and tango with the coconut cream.

Serve up piping hot bowls with some crusty bread and you will be one happy eater! Enjoy!

Happy Hunting!

Coconut Pheasant Soup

”All really wild scenery is attractive. The true hunter, the true lover of wilderness, loves all parts of the wilderness, just as the true lover of nature loves all seasons. There is no season of the year when the country is not more attractive than the city; and there is no portion of the wilderness, where game is found, in which it is not a keen pleasure to hunt.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Cooking is a continuous learning process, and working with wild game is no exception.  For me, I tend to focus on building harmonious flavor profiles, and concentrating on that one area takes up more time than I have in a day.  However, there are hundreds of aspects in the cooking process that can all be developed, modified, re-evaluated, and maybe even re-invented.  I try to break myself of solely focusing on flavor medleys and try to improve and learn in different areas.  This recipe, coconut pheasant soup, allowed me to not only work on creating a great flavor profile, but also forced me to look at how textures work together, which is equally important in a dish's presentation.

I find pheasant meat to have a unique texture.  Many people compare pheasant to chicken.  I don't think the comparison is accurate when describing pheasant.  Pheasant, like chicken, is a mild flavored meat.  Some meats have very strong and distinct flavors, and working with them can be challenging because they fight with other flavors.  Pheasant is not like that and can be incorporated into a large number of dishes acting as a base for building flavor.

Where I think pheasant differs from chicken is the texture of the meat.  Pheasant is a bit more tough than chicken, which I am sure comes from the differences in how pheasant and chickens live and also how they eat.  Pheasant meat is a bit darker and much leaner than chicken also.  This difference can best be captured by simply pan frying a chicken breast and pheasant breast and comparing the two.  The chicken breast will be moist and light, because of the extra fat in the meat.  The pheasant will be tougher and much drier.  Because pheasant meat can dry out so quickly when cooked, it is commonly marinated, cooked low and slow, or even wrapped in a fat source, such as bacon, to create moisture and tenderness.

I find myself making a lot of meatball recipes because I think the slight toughness that develops when quickly cooking pheasant works well in meatball form.  However, after making a few meatball recipes, I decided that I wanted to try something else with the breast meat.  I am a big fan of Thai food, and especially a hot cup of tom kha gai.  A coconut based soup, tom kha gai is a spicy soup found in Thai and Lao cuisines.  Traditionally, it is prepared using galangal, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, thai chili peppers, mushrooms, and fish sauce.  While chicken is the main protein source for the soup, many restaurants also offer shrimp or tofu options.  Besides having a deliciously sweet and spicy broth, one of my favorite attributes of tom kha gai is how it uses textures to enhance the soup.  The mushrooms are soft and tender, while the chicken, since it is boiled, has a meatier, tougher texture.  A little crunch can also be added with a sprinkling of green onions.  The broth is very thin and silky.

The last time I had tom kha gai, I made a mental note to try and create a version at home using pheasant, since pheasant has that meatier texture that I love in the soup.  So, here the recipe is! And I found it to be a great use of my pheasant.

To a large stock pot, add a tablespoon of cooking oil and heat over medium heat.   I used coconut oil for my cooking oil, but you could use vegetable, canola, olive, or whatever oil you prefer.  Add in the minced garlic, lemon grass, and grated ginger root.  Heat for two minutes, being careful not to burn the garlic.  If the garlic starts to brown, turn the heat down.  There are three different options for the lemon grass with this soup.  I used two tablespoons of lemon grass paste, which is found by the fresh herbs in a tube.  You could also use a stalk of fresh lemon grass.  The stalk can either be added whole to the soup and removed at the end, or you could mince it up and leave it in the soup.  The paste or minced stalk both add a bit of crunch to the soup, which some people may not like.  If you do not want the bits of crunchy lemon grass, I would suggest just adding the stalk.  I like the crunch, so I went with the paste.  It is really a personal preference on textures, so go with whatever method you find most appealing.

To the garlic and ginger, add one tablespoons of red curry paste.  Stir and coat everything with the paste.  Once incorporated, add a cup of the pheasant stock and dissolve any leftover chunks of the paste.  You also want to break up any thing sticking to the bottom of the pot, as this will add even more flavor to the soup base.  For the stock of this soup, I used homemade pheasant stock.  The recipe for it can be found here: Homemade Pheasant Stock.  You could also use chicken or vegetable stock.

Once the red curry is fully dissolved, add the rest of the pheasant stock, three tablespoons of fish sauce, and a tablespoon of honey.  If you don't have honey on hand, any sweetener of your choice will do, such as brown or white sugar.  Stir everything and bring to a light boil.  Once the soup base reaches a slow, rolling boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and allow to cook for twenty minutes.  This will reduce the soup base down and concentrate the flavors of the lemon grass, ginger, and red curry.  The lemon grass, which is a culinary herb commonly found in Asian style cuisines, adds a subtle citrus flavor to the soup while the ginger gives a spicy, fresh crisp flavor, and the red curry adds a hint of heat.

After the twenty minutes, bring the heat back to medium and add the three cans of coconut milk.  The milk will create the smooth and silky texture found in the soup, and you can adjust how creamy you want the soup to be based on which coconut milk combination you use.  I used two cans of full fat coconut milk and one can of lite.  You could do three full fat, all three lite, or a combination of the two.  The more full fat cans you use, the thicker and creamy the soup base will be.  Bring the soup base back up to a gentle, rolling boil and add the pheasant meat chunks.  In order for the meat to cook correctly, make sure they are cut into bite size pieces all roughly the same size.  Allow to cook for five minutes.

Add the sliced mushrooms to the pot and allow the cook an additional five minutes.  With the mushrooms, I used white button mushrooms, but you can substitute in other types.  A lot of recipes use shitakes, which add a nutty element to the soup.  Baby portabellas or crimini would also be great in this soup, as both have an earthy flavor and a slightly meaty texture.

Turn the heat off from the pot and add the final ingredients to the soup: the fresh squeezed lime and orange juices, and the torn Thai basil.  I sometimes struggle with finding Thai basil at my grocery store.  They don't always carry it.  I tried to substitute in Italian basil, and I didn't like the way it worked with the curry flavor.  Thai basil has more of a spicy bite to it, while Italian basil can almost be described as sweet.  They are two very different flavors.  If you can't find Thai basil at your store, I would actually suggest substituting cilantro or green onions instead of Italian basil.

Well, that is it for this coconut pheasant soup recipe!  This soup is easy to put together and has a unique flavor profile of spicy and sweet with a hint of citrus, but it also has great textures and is beautiful to look at!  Enjoy!

Happy Hunting!