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Whats everyones favorite squirrel recipe?

I basically followed this recipe below (with some minor changes of my own) and it made a delicious pot of stew. I used Conecuh smoked sausage and opted to omit the greens (just didn't have any around I wanted to use). A friend of mine said it was the best stew he had ever eaten.

honest-food.net

Squirrel Stew with Paprika - How to Make Squirrel Stew | Hank Shaw

A recipe for a squirrel stew with smoked sausage, paprika, greens and tomatoes. Chicken, turkey or rabbit also work.
honest-food.net honest-food.net

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Roll squirrel pieces in flour seasoned with salt and pepper and fry in a little oil in a cast iron skillet until brown. They will still be tough at this point. Then remove them to a plate and in that same pan add some onion and flour and stir until the onion is soft and the flour browned up. Then add some stock to that and make a gravy that is thin and put in the squirrels in it to simmer until the meat is tender and the gravy thickened up. We serve it over baked sweet potato's, rice and hot biscuits with apple butter..... Very, Very good.
 
Nutterbuster said:
Depends on the squirrel.

Small squirrel, with pinkish meat, skins easily, and has not-well-developed primary and secondary sexual characteristics? That's a frying squirrel.

Big, grizzly-looking thing that has nuts the size of of a golf ball or big ole tiddies, grayish tint to the meat, and feels like you have to wrestle with the hide to rip it off? That's a pot squirrel.

Fryers can 100% be put straight in a little flour, spice, and oil and eaten as-is. Or cook'em with your favorite hot-wings recipe. Pot squirrels usually go in the instant pot for a half hour or so with a little home made chicken broth until they can be picked. Then they can be made into stew, dumplings, tacos, BBQ sandwiches, whatever. Just substitute in the place of whatever you'd use pulled chicken for. Squirrel salad sammich, anybody?
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Thank you for this post. It solved a mystery for me. I tried one last year that fell off the bone and was amazing. Since then every try has come out tough. I was scratching my head. Now I know.
 
tyson12590 said:
Thank you for this post. It solved a mystery for me. I tried one last year that fell off the bone and was amazing. Since then every try has come out tough. I was scratching my head. Now I know.
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@swampsnyper will back me up. We cooked squirrels last weekend and some got done much quicker than others.

It's easier to find frying squirrels early in the season. The woods are full of yearling nutters then. Kinda like fawns in bow season. But, very few hunters will kill an innocent-looking spotted fawn. It's much harder to identify a young squirrel before you put hands on it, and most people have no qualms about eating them. They're easier to hunt because they're pig-foot ignorant, so a lot of them fall prey to human or other predators by late season.

I generally fry them in groups. If I have a limit of 8, I'll separate the fryers that can go straight in the grease. The others I'll pop in an instant pot or simmer for a bit to loosen them up. Then they all go in the grease together. You have to be really careful though that you don't over-cook them. Usually the pre-fry boil evens out the difference. But sometimes you end up with one that sticks in your teeth something terrible unless you really slow cook it.

It's a much more predictable affair to just pop them all in an instant pot and pick them. More work for me, but it produces a much more novice-friendly dish.

Although, about the best dang bbq sammich I ever made was the result of taking 2 or 3 squacks, putting them in aluminum foil with some leftover bacon, onion, belpepper, and dry rub, and smoking them until tender. Picked them, added a little pickled onion and vinegar sauce, and munched away. 5 bites of heaven!
 
Nutterbuster said:
@swampsnyper will back me up. We cooked squirrels last weekend and some got done much quicker than others.

It's easier to find frying squirrels early in the season. The woods are full of yearling nutters then. Kinda like fawns in bow season. But, very few hunters will kill an innocent-looking spotted fawn. It's much harder to identify a young squirrel before you put hands on it, and most people have no qualms about eating them. They're easier to hunt because they're pig-foot ignorant, so a lot of them fall prey to human or other predators by late season.

I generally fry them in groups. If I have a limit of 8, I'll separate the fryers that can go straight in the grease. The others I'll pop in an instant pot or simmer for a bit to loosen them up. Then they all go in the grease together. You have to be really careful though that you don't over-cook them. Usually the pre-fry boil evens out the difference. But sometimes you end up with one that sticks in your teeth something terrible unless you really slow cook it.

It's a much more predictable affair to just pop them all in an instant pot and pick them. More work for me, but it produces a much more novice-friendly dish.

Although, about the best dang bbq sammich I ever made was the result of taking 2 or 3 squacks, putting them in aluminum foil with some leftover bacon, onion, belpepper, and dry rub, and smoking them until tender. Picked them, added a little pickled onion and vinegar sauce, and munched away. 5 bites of heaven!
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Not a frier!



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