Poultry doesn’t have to be boring. Smoked pheasant is a unique, flavorful and easy dish to smoke and will blow your guests away. Pair it with wine, a few delicious sides and some bread and you have a meal everyone will enjoy.
🍽️ Why This Works
Unique. This isn’t a common dish, so your guests are likely to have never tried it before. They will be intrigued and excited about coming for dinner.
Simple. As long as pheasant is readily available where you live, smoking it is as easy as smoking a chicken, and a really nice change of pace if you are tired of that bland white meat.
Flavorful. The brining process tempers the gaminess of the meat while also complementing the distinct and delicious flavor of pheasant.
🍗 Ingredients
📝 Ingredient Notes
Pheasant – You can purchase farm-raised pheasant in some grocery stores and can also use wild-caught pheasant. If you can’t find it in the stores, check your farmer’s market.
Bay Leaves – These leaves are used for seasoning and flavor in the brine, but are not meant to be eaten.
Salt – Brining poultry meat with salt greatly improves the flavor. Your bird will need roughly 24 hours in the brine to reach a state of equilibrium where the salt is evenly distributed in the meat and water. Brines use more salt than you might expect because so much is lost in the water. Read how brining works here.
Brown Sugar – A little sweetness is great for brining as well. Brown sugar is the perfect balance for this meat’s flavor. I do prefer to use dark brown sugar for the intensity, but whatever you have on the shelf will work fine.
Seasoning – Use your favorite dry rub! We used McCormick’s Grill Mates Garlic Crushed Herbs with Salt and Pepper.
Beer – Whatever you have in the fridge will work. If you don’t have any beer and don’t want to run to the store you can use soda. Read about how the beer can process works in our Delicious Beer Can Chicken Recipe.
⏲️ Equipment and Tools
Beer Can Chicken Holder. This handy device can be used for chicken, pheasant, or other game birds like a Cornish Hen.
Smoker. We use the Big Green Egg or a Traeger. You need a smoker that will allow you to use direct heat, so some electric models will not work.
🔥 Instructions
Step One: Mix the brine. Place all of the ingredients in a plastic zipper bag and mix it all up really well.
Step Two: Place the brining bag in a large bowl for support and in case of leakage.
Step Three: Place the pheasant in the bag and seal it up. Refrigerate overnight.
Step Four: Pour your beer of choice into the beer can holder.
Step Five: Cover the pheasant with the dry rub or seasoning of your choice. We used McCormick’s Grill Mates Garlic Crushed Herbs with Salt and Pepper. Any seasoning will work though and you can go a lot of different directions with this and have great results. Lower the pheasant cavity down over the beer holder.
Step Six: Smoke your pheasant over direct heat at 275-300ºF for a light smoke with wood chips. We used pecan wood. The pheasant needs an internal temperature of 165ºF before you remove it from the smoker.
❗ Recipe Tips and Tricks
You can pour out 3-4 ounces of beer into the beer can holder, or you can just use a can of beer or can of soda. Your choice.
Placing a bowl under your brining bag will help prevent messes in your refrigerator as it catches leaks and spills. No matter how secure I think the bag is without a bowl, it often makes a mess.
We used pecan wood. Apple, cherry, or any mild wood chips will work well.
Rest your meat. All smoked or grilled meat should be rested for at least ten to fifteen minutes after it is cooked so that you don’t lose too much juice and moisture when you slice the meat.
🧑🍳 Storage and Reheating
You can keep pheasant just like you keep any other poultry meat. Place it in an airtight container and keep it refrigerated for a couple of days. Freeze it if you won’t use it quickly. Frozen, cooked pheasant will keep for at least a few months.
Reheat the pheasant differently depending on how it will be used as a leftover. It can be microwaved, heated in a skillet, or heated with the other ingredients you will eat it with.
Pheasant is a lean meat and can dry out quickly. Keep a close eye on it when reheating leftovers. A fast, direct heat method is best as it will get the meat back up to 165ºF quickly without turning the meat to rubber like a microwave can.
Meal Prep
Cooked pheasant can be chopped up and used in any way you would use chicken. It can be made into a soup, a sandwich, a wrap, added to salad or tacos. Pheasant can be added to quesadillas or enchiladas, or used for a quick stir fry.
Remove all leftover pheasant from the bone, dice it up into bight size pieces, and seal it in zipped plastic bags meant for the freezer or use a vacuum sealer. You can separate it into portion sizes or one pound increments, or however it would best be used. Freeze these bags for up to three months, maybe longer depending on the quality of your freezer.
Additions and Substitutions
If you don’t want to use beer or don’t have beer in the house and don’t want to run to the store you can also use soda. Dr. Pepper or root beer are common choices.
Any dry rub you love for smoking is going to work well with this meat.
Use this same smoked pheasant recipe to cook chicken, cornish hens, or a small turkey with similar results. Cooking times may need adjusted.
Serving Suggestions
You might be wondering what to serve with smoked pheasant. If you want a really simple meal, serve it with a fresh salad and crusty bread or hot biscuits. Add side dishes like Grilled Mexican Street Corn Elote {10 Minutes}, Smoked Baked Potatoes or Grilled Peach & Arugula Salad if you want a more elaborate meal.
❓ Recipe FAQ
1.5-3 hours. It can vary depending on the size of the bird and the temperature of your smoker. It makes a difference that this recipe is for direct heat, which speeds up the cooking time. Your goal is to cook the meat until it reaches an internal temperature of 165ºF. Check it at the 1.5 hour mark and every thirty minutes thereafter or set your wifi-enabled internal temperature probe to the desired temperature and check the app.
Any side dishes that work well with smoked chicken will also work well with smoked pheasant. Fruit salads, green salads, pasta salads, potatoes, corn, roasted veggies. It all works.
275-300ºF over direct heat per our recipe instructions.
Yes. Place it in airtight containers and freeze it for up to three months. The easiest way to do this for reheating later is to pull all the meat off the bone and chop it up before freezing it.
A good red wine will be the perfect pairing with this dish because the flavor of pheasant is more intense and slightly gamey over chicken.
A lot of people will tell you that pheasant tastes just like chicken, but that isn’t exactly true. It does taste a lot like chicken, but with a more intense, slightly gamey and distinct flavor. A farm-raised pheasant will be more mild in taste than a wild-caught bird. In addition, the meat is lean and more like dark meat than white meat. It is easy to overcook pheasant.
While you can certainly bake pheasant, it won’t have that smokey flavor we all crave without a few hours in the smoker over wood chips. You can use smoked paprika, liquid smoke, or smoked salt to help imitate a smoke flavor if your smoker is out of commission. It’s not the same.
Related Recipes
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Smoked Pheasant
Equipment
- Smoker
- Container for brining
- Smoking Wood we used Pecan
Ingredients
Brine
- 4 cups Water
- ⅓ cup Brown Sugar
- ⅓ cup Kosher Salt
- 1 Bay Leaf
Smoked Pheasant
- 1 Pheasant ours was 3lbs
- 3 tbsp Dry Rub we used McCormick's Grill Mates Garlic Crushed Herbs with Salt and Pepper
Instructions
Brine
- Combine the ingredients into a zipped bag and stir well.
- Add the pheasant and close the bag. Put in the refrigerator overnight.
Smoked Pheasant
- Heat smoker up to 275-300 degrees over DIRECT HEAT. Add wood chunks.
- Pour about 3-4 ounces of beer into the beer can chicken container (or use a can of beer or soda) and add the seasoning to the pheasant.
- Place the pheasant on the beer can chicken holder and place on the grate.
- Smoke until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees. It should take around 90 minutes, but every grill is different, so shoot for the internal temperature, and not the time.
Notes
Nutrition
Jason’s been firing up the grill for over 30 years after graduating from the US Coast Guard Academy. His love of finely-grilled steak and chicken led him to buy his first Weber grill to put on his apartment patio in 1992. Each military move led to a new grill (a mixture of gas and charcoal) until he fell in love with the Big Green Egg in 2008. Since then, he has added another 4 grills to the collection. Yes, he has a problem. Jason loves smoking in the ceramic BGE with exotic woods including olive wood from Egypt and hard to find varieties such as sassafras and orange wood. Jason takes the term “foodie” to a whole new level, jumping at the chance to take food tours and cooking classes during foreign travels. These have provided inspiration to incorporate new ideas into recipes when he gets back home. He has been featured in Fox News, Parade, Yahoo News, Kansas City Living and more. After retiring from the military and moving to southwest Florida, he has focused grilling and smoking locally sourced meats and fish (read: he likes to catch his own fish!)
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