How to Cook Pheasant

by Robert Gooch January 21 2020

Subtly gamey, tender and succulent, pheasant cooked well is a taste to relish. Want to know how? Just follow our practiced communication!

Pot roasted pheasantPheasant is a wonderfully versatile meat that can be used in place of chicken or turkey in a broad range of recipes – and then long as you follow a few unproblematic rules.


Agile life, bacteria meat

An indoor-raised chicken or turkey won't have moved a great deal in its lifetime. Unless you choose slow-reared free-range chicken, the chances are the chicken in your supermarket has lived its life in a shed with thousands of other birds, never venturing far from the feeder trough. A pheasant, on the other paw, will take spent its days in forest and fields, foraging for seeds, grains, berries and insects, and running or flying away from any signs of predators. This is why the meat from a pheasant is leaner and denser than that from an indoor-raised broiler bird – and why intendance needs to exist taken to prevent it drying out during cooking. It'due south as well why older pheasant'due south legs are best slow-cooked or casseroled. Pheasants develop strong leg muscles from running – slow cooking breaks down these muscle fibres for tender, melt-in-the-mouth meat.

Our superlative tips for cooking pheasant

If you're roasting an early season bird or cooking pheasant breast fillets, our top tips are to add plenty of fat and ensure y'all don't melt them for too long. Follow the guidelines below and invest in a digital cooking thermometer to cheque when the meat is cooked to perfection.End of season birds, meanwhile, are best tiresome-cooked, and then our third peak tip is to melt these low and boring.

How to roast a brace of pheasants

The pheasant season begins on 1st October and early flavour pheasants are delicious roasted and served with game chips (thinly sliced deep fried potatoes), staff of life sauce and gravy.

Nosotros recommend taking your bird out of the fridge for an hour earlier cooking. Preheat the oven to 200ºC, gas marker 6 and and then oestrus your selection of fatty in a large ovenproof frying pan over a medium heat. Raymond Blanc recommends 50ml of rapeseed oil with 20g unsalted butter, while Tim Maddams prefers pork, goose or duck fat. When the fat is hot, place the pheasants in the frying pan spine side down to brown for 3–5 minutes earlier turning over to chocolate-brown the breast side for 2–3 minutes. Flavour with salt and pepper earlier transferring to the oven for xv minutes. When the time is upwardly, employ your cooking thermometer to check it'south cooked through. The leg should read fourscore-82ºC and the breast 63ºC – cook them slightly longer if they haven't reached these temperatures. If they take, cover and exit them to residuum for around 30 minutes before serving.


If you desire to skip the browning stage, rub plenty of fat directly onto your bird and extend the roasting time to 25–30 minutes, basting during cooking. You may too like to wrap your bird in streaky salary to keep the chest succulent.

Boned pheasant, ballotines, roulades and three-bird roasts

Along with whole birds, our butchers prepare boned and blimp pheasants for like shooting fish in a barrel cooking and carving. We recommend roasting these in oil or fatty for one hour at 180ºC.

Specific cooking instructions for our iii-bird roasts, ballotines and roulades can exist found on our cooking guidance page.

How to slow melt pheasants

As the season nears its end on 1st Feb, in that location's nothing better than a total-flavoured pheasant tedious cooked in a casserole.

One-pot pheasant dishes are ideal winter warmers that you lot tin leave in a low oven or deadening cooker while you brave the common cold exterior. Effort our pheasant and cerise cabbage recipe from Jean-Francois Mallet, BBC Skilful Nutrient'due south pot-roasted pheasant or Good Housekeeping's slow cooker pheasant casserole. Onions or shallots, vegetables, herbs and cider or wine are key features in all these recipes. Brownish whole or quartered pheasants in a pan with your base of operations ingredients before adding your liquid and herbs and transferring to an oven or ho-hum cooker.

Cooking pheasant chest fillets

For a quick and flavoursome midweek meal, we dear pan-fried pheasant breasts. Serve them with celeriac brew and a gravy made from the juices for a seasonal treat or warm yourself up past marinating pheasant breasts in spices and serving in curries or with salsa verde and a warming saffron mash.

Pheasant breasts but need a few minutes in a pan so keep a close heart on the clock to make sure you don't overcook them. If you oasis't already marinated them or aren't using our marinated pheasant chest fillets, flavour them on both sides while heating some oil and/or butter in a pan over a high heat. Add the fillets and melt for 2–3 minutes on each side or until just cooked through then cover and rest for 5 minutes earlier serving.

To stir-fry pheasant breasts, slice them into strips and melt in a hot wok with oil for around three minutes until cooked. Set aside in a warm covered dish while cooking vegetables and other ingredients before returning the pheasant and stirring through.

Sous vide pheasant

To ensure lean pheasants remain perfectly plump and moist during cooking, many restaurants cook pheasant with the sous vide method. This involves vacuum-sealing pheasant breasts or portions in a bag and cooking them at a precise low temperature in a h2o bathroom. Anova, the makers of a sous vide motorcar, recommend 62°C for 45 minutes. If y'all don't have a automobile, instructions or DIY sous vide water baths can also be institute online!

Pheasant recipes

For more recipe ideas have a look at our pheasant recipe collection or blog archive or caput straight to our pheasant range.