Skinning and Drawing a Pheasant

This isn’t the tidiest of jobs done, but my only excuse is that it was snowing and hailing so my fingers we’re working as well as they should have. So please be warned if you have no interest in the preparation of meat…look away now…

Tools for the job are sharp pointed knife, scerated knife, and strong kitchen scissors, also somewhere and something to hang the bird up and enable you to work all the way around it.

Hang the bird by one of its legs you want to be able to manuover the other one to making working around it easier. Trim off the wings at the elbow, and discard.

Pull out the tail feathers (these can be a bit tough) This photo doesn’t very well illustrate where the vent is, but this is the area that needs to be treated carefully or you could contaminate the meat with faece and dash all your hard work in one easy move. Also if you can keep the innards intact it tends to smell rather better!

Pulling the skin away from the meat, use your scerated knife to cut through the membrane holding the skin on, keep checking where you are and stop about half an inch away from the vent area, get your sharp pointed knife and pierce into the cavity away from the vent, to ensure that when you continue skinning you won’t stab into the innards. I will post a diagram for this part soon.

After having plucked some of the feathers away from the legs, using the sharp pointed knife, cut all the way around the ankle, and cut down the length of the leg, so that you can ‘peel’ away the skin. (try not to cut into the meat as I have- it was cold!)

Do this to both legs, and then just pull the skin away from the meat, the skin that is attached to the belly of the bird will prevent you from pulling it further, so cut a line between the legs, making sure it is well away from the vent, and continue pulling.

You will find that the same thing happens on the back, cut another line between the legs, and this will leave you with a piece surrounding the vent, which will be dealt with when drawing the innards out later. You may need the sharp knife to bring the membrane away from the meat of the neck, and once that is clear you can cut the head off, which will be inside the ‘jumper’ of the skin and feathers, this is an easy parcel to dispose of, mine always ends up in the woodstove.

This is what you are confronted with once you have opened up around the vent, and worked your fingers all the way around the body cavity, the idea is work gently but firmly so that you can pull everything from the crop (near the neck) to the stomach and bowels (the bottom funnily enough) away from the bird in one piece to limit the problem of contamination, if any of the faeces escapes during drawing I personally wouldn’t eat the bird, as I wouldn’t want to suffer the consequences.

This is what you should be left with, you can retain the liver, kidneys and heart and put this with the neck to make the gravy or to flavour stock, if you’re not sure what’s what don’t bother, and do it when you can navigate around a birds anatomy with more confidence at a later date.

Once the cavity has been rinsed through, tuck the legs and wings away neatly and refridgerate until you are ready to cook it, I always have to leave it a day or two, as the smell that emits from the cooking bird, is still a little too reminiscence of the smells coming out of it when I was drawing it and I find I prefer a gap, so I’m not associating the cooked bird with the offel! (wimp)