Shell Drake “Redbreasted Mergansers”
- Thread starter CaptBobKeeney
- Start date
I'll be curious to hear if you could swallow it. Don't believe I ever ate a fishcrate.
The drakes are a pretty bird. If they tasted good, they'd be extinct.I did something similar with a hooded mergie once.
Once.
They forgot a step in that recipe. FEED TO DOG!
I feed all the white birds to my dog. Turn them into jerky treats. Buffle head are decent
Pete McMiller
Well-known member
I have eaten Hoodies and fed to hunting buddies with positive comments. I have also eaten a big drake Common Merg that was very good. Aged 1st then a soaked 24hrs in salt water, then 24hrs baking soda water then 24hrs pineapple juice. Cooked according to the recipe in the last chapter of Conants book with red currant and bourbon sauce - it was very good and had no off flavors.
Personally, I've had 2 buffies that neither I nor my chessie would eat but that doesn't mean they are all bad.
Personally, I've had 2 buffies that neither I nor my chessie would eat but that doesn't mean they are all bad.
I don't know if it's just me, but I don't have a problem eating most any duck. Usually it's a mix of ages and species when I cut up and brine my duck into finger steaks.
A couple of things I routinely do in the blind, is NOT to put any of my ducks in a pile belly down which is so common in those tail gate pictures. I figured if I'm hoping to get the brine to pull blood out of the breast later, I should avoid letting lividity pool blood in the breast meat when they are fresh dead and warm.
The other routine is brine. I cut up my ducks into finger steak slices in order to assist the brine and the infusion of spices. My brine isn't very scientific, just salt, Lawry's seasoned salt some onion powder. I do that for 24 hours, rinse and repeat for another 24 hours and rinse again, it smells good and I'll fix a meal, usually two birds depending on size and vacuum seal the rest in meal portions. I put whatever kind of marinade strikes me at the time before vacuum sealing with the theory it will infuse the meat.
Once I thaw a meal sized portion and before I open the vacuum bag I'll pound it with a meat mallet, then rinse the meat off and pat it dry with a paper towel. At that point I just powder the pieces with flour and a little seasoning salt, that makes it easier to keep the finger steaks from sticking together. I haven't ever had any species of duck that wasn't good. With ducks like wigeons I only brine one day, wigeons, canvasbacks and specks don't need much help to taste really good on their own. Don't overcook. I've been eating duck for 60 years and my mom about ruined me on it by overcooking everything, it wasn't until I was taught to not overcook that I realized that duck is good when prepared correctly. Nearly 90 percent of the duck we eat is goldeneye and I'm sad that I only have one more meal left before next season.
A couple of things I routinely do in the blind, is NOT to put any of my ducks in a pile belly down which is so common in those tail gate pictures. I figured if I'm hoping to get the brine to pull blood out of the breast later, I should avoid letting lividity pool blood in the breast meat when they are fresh dead and warm.
The other routine is brine. I cut up my ducks into finger steak slices in order to assist the brine and the infusion of spices. My brine isn't very scientific, just salt, Lawry's seasoned salt some onion powder. I do that for 24 hours, rinse and repeat for another 24 hours and rinse again, it smells good and I'll fix a meal, usually two birds depending on size and vacuum seal the rest in meal portions. I put whatever kind of marinade strikes me at the time before vacuum sealing with the theory it will infuse the meat.
Once I thaw a meal sized portion and before I open the vacuum bag I'll pound it with a meat mallet, then rinse the meat off and pat it dry with a paper towel. At that point I just powder the pieces with flour and a little seasoning salt, that makes it easier to keep the finger steaks from sticking together. I haven't ever had any species of duck that wasn't good. With ducks like wigeons I only brine one day, wigeons, canvasbacks and specks don't need much help to taste really good on their own. Don't overcook. I've been eating duck for 60 years and my mom about ruined me on it by overcooking everything, it wasn't until I was taught to not overcook that I realized that duck is good when prepared correctly. Nearly 90 percent of the duck we eat is goldeneye and I'm sad that I only have one more meal left before next season.
Don, I used similar approach on all my birds too, duck fingers are a great snack in the boat!
BTW, sounds like our mom's came from the same cooking school. Loved my mom, but she destroyed many a good roast or porkchop by cooking them grey through and through!
BTW, sounds like our mom's came from the same cooking school. Loved my mom, but she destroyed many a good roast or porkchop by cooking them grey through and through!
My mom's family was dirt poor and food was pretty scarce for her 4 siblings and herself. They only had meat on birthdays so I guess her experience cooking meat was pretty limited. Her dad was a quarter Cherokee, an alcoholic, and gone most of her young life, my grandma was doing about anything she could to put food on the table and the dominant table fare was black eyed peas. I really can't think of any food that she was good at cooking, but it didn't keep her from trying. She was a very talented artist. We ate a lot of weird stuff, pressure cooked carp was formed into hamburger style patties or canned and mashed potatoes supplemented with turnips that were chopped up and mixed in. I married a great cook, but she won't cook or eat any wild game.
my wife grew up on a farm in Vandalia, Illinois. She was big into 4H for cooking and sewing and even raised a Hampshire pig every year to show at the fair. Her mom was the home economics teacher at the high school, so she was exposed to a lot of that kind of stuff as a kid. Now she is the seamstress at the Scheels back up the road out here in Boise/Meridian Idaho. They have about 500 employees at Scheels and no one applied for the seamstress job. She's trying to train a 25 year old to sew, but that is only going marginally well.
They don't have any kind of home economics class or shop class in the high schools out here so unless someone learned it from their mom or grandma they don't know anything. Kind of a sad state of affairs. My wife is also 68 and they think she will be there forever, it doesn't occur to them that she might want to quit driving 100 miles a day to work at some point and they will be stuck.
They don't have any kind of home economics class or shop class in the high schools out here so unless someone learned it from their mom or grandma they don't know anything. Kind of a sad state of affairs. My wife is also 68 and they think she will be there forever, it doesn't occur to them that she might want to quit driving 100 miles a day to work at some point and they will be stuck.
Scott Gilliland
Active member
Well, I have to say something. When I was young we shot a lot of ducks and many were mergansers. We ate what we shot, but mergs were always at the bottom the pile. I did not know much about cooking then and most of our mergansers were eaten in what we called merganser pie. We cooked them up in a thick stew and then added a crust with Bisquick and you had merganser pie. It was eatable, but not our favourite.
In 1992 I moved to Newfoundland. There they eat a lot of eiders and murres. These are both long-lived "seabirds" and usually at the bottom of everyones' list of fowl to eat. But in Newfoundland they are on the top. If you hop on one of the Newfoundland hunting Facebook groups you will see lots off pictures of dead ducks. But they will not be I a pile, they will be most oftenly hung from special hangers that keep their plumage dry and free of contaminates. They do this because most birds are plucked and roasted. I copied a couple of photos off these sites - I hope the owners do not mind.
A bag limit of murres
some nicely plucked ducks
I guess my point is here is a lot of care in handling all birds that are going to end upon the table. If you follow these Facebook groups there are a lot of pictures of mergansers. There's even a guy who specialize on making wooden merg decoys and a lot of pictures of bags of mergansers. I mean a lot of mergansers. Many say that mergansers are their preferred duck ... "better than black ducks".
After living more than 20 years in Newfoundland my favourite meal above all is a roasted murre... well , maybe a Lake Erie Long Point Canvasback might compete. All that time I spend in Newfoundland and I never had merganser. But if any of you get to Newfoundland and get invited for a merganser dinner, don't hesitate. I'm sure it will be much better than our merganser pie.
In 1992 I moved to Newfoundland. There they eat a lot of eiders and murres. These are both long-lived "seabirds" and usually at the bottom of everyones' list of fowl to eat. But in Newfoundland they are on the top. If you hop on one of the Newfoundland hunting Facebook groups you will see lots off pictures of dead ducks. But they will not be I a pile, they will be most oftenly hung from special hangers that keep their plumage dry and free of contaminates. They do this because most birds are plucked and roasted. I copied a couple of photos off these sites - I hope the owners do not mind.
A bag limit of murres
some nicely plucked ducks
I guess my point is here is a lot of care in handling all birds that are going to end upon the table. If you follow these Facebook groups there are a lot of pictures of mergansers. There's even a guy who specialize on making wooden merg decoys and a lot of pictures of bags of mergansers. I mean a lot of mergansers. Many say that mergansers are their preferred duck ... "better than black ducks".
After living more than 20 years in Newfoundland my favourite meal above all is a roasted murre... well , maybe a Lake Erie Long Point Canvasback might compete. All that time I spend in Newfoundland and I never had merganser. But if any of you get to Newfoundland and get invited for a merganser dinner, don't hesitate. I'm sure it will be much better than our merganser pie.