Pheasant Sausage

Mr. PB&C and my dad went pheasant hunting a few months ago. Last weekend we used the grinder attachment on our stand mixer (in the same accessory kit as the fruit grinder we used to make applesauce)to make pheasant sausage. The recipe came from a friend of a friend but I also found it online. It's from the Ballyneal Gold and Hunt Club, the recipe was printed up in the Denver Post.

Breasts of 2 pheasant (4 breasts)
1/4 C. chopped Sweet bell Peppers
1/3 C. chopped pecans
1/3 C. chopped dried apricots
1 tbs. chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
2 tbs. chopped shallots
1 tbs. chopped fresh jalapeno
3 strips of raw bacon, chopped
Pinch red pepper flakes
Pinch salt
Pinch white pepper


As we prepped the pheasant we gauged we had about 3 times the recipe, so we tripled it. Look at your birds and see what you got. This is not science, it's feeling and cooking.

Defrost and clean the birds. The key is to keep everything as cold as possible. The colder and closer to freezing throughout this process, the better. We used a cold water bath to defrost them. Additionally, put all parts of your stand mixer meat grinder into the freezer including the bowl that will receive the sausage.

Dice up the pheasant into about 1/4 inch pieces
Cut everything else up into small pieces and place everything in a large cold bowl
Mix up well with your hands
Put it into the freezer for about 20-30 minutes

Now we grind-
We used the larger or the two dies we had in our grinding kit
Remove the bowl with the sausage, the grinder parts and the second bowl from the freezer and grind mixture through the machine
When you're done, grind up some old almost stale bread to force out any small remaining bits of sausage
Remove the grinder parts and soak to clean
We packaged the sausage into one pound packages and froze them for later
Now what to make with it....