Admittedly I’ve been very lazy after preparing the two Pheasants I was given in December. In fact we did go out in the garden, set up a tripod and camera and made videos of what was happening. Unfortunately though I have no experience whatsoever with video editing and so I’ve been putting off doing anything with those videos.

In the meanwhile we were given two more pheasants so this morning I set about cleaning them up for storage in the fridge. I took some photos along the way, but since it was just me on the kitchen floor with my camera phone, I had to stop taking photos once my hands got a bit too sticky. Hopefully you’ll still get the idea though!

Requirements:

• Large enough work area – preferably one where it’s ok if you get feathers everywhere
• Poultry shears are extremely useful
• Sharp paring knife

It was very cold outside so I decided to stay indoors and use a cardboard box on my kitchen floor. Some feathers did find their way to other areas in the kitchen but it wasn’t too bad.

1. Start by removing all extremities which you’re not going to eat or which have very little meat – Head, wings, feet, tail
2. Start peeling the skin off from the neck – I’ve found it easiest to start at the back and then doing the wing stumps and legs one by one. Try keeping the skin in relatively large pieces so feathers don’t fly everywhere.
3. Once the back and legs are clean, do the breast and front part of the neck. This is where the bird has a sack type of thing full of grains it has recently eaten. If you’re careful you can make it come off intact with the skin.
4. Get any feathers and skin off that you’ve missed, perhaps around the tail area or legs. There will also be feathers sticking to the flesh of the pheasant, get as many of them off as you can.
5. Gutting: Since after skinning I intend to use the pheasant in bits rather than as a whole bird, the easiest method I’ve found for gutting is to separate the neck and spine carefully from the ribs. This will expose the lungs.
6. Carefully separate them from the ribcage all around, and open up the bird by separating the spine and legs from the breast. Take care not to perforate any organs while doing this and keep separating any connections between the innards and the ribcage / spine.
7. If you were able to get the breast separate, you’ll have just the legs and spine with the guts still attached. Carefully cut around the anus and you should be left with all the guts intact and separate from all the meat.
8. Depending on where the bird was shot from, ideally it shouldn’t smell bad and the intestines should not have ruptured. If however they have, use common sense to discard any contaminated meat. I would say that if there is any torn flesh that looks like it has been in contact with intestinal fluids for a while this should be discarded.
9. Wash the meat thoroughly, pluck any down feathers out of shot holes and check for bad smells in case you did find that it had been shot in the guts. My colleague (who is an experienced hunter) tells me that washing with vinegar water helps get rid of smells.
10. Anything that still smells quite bad is best discarded because even after cooking, it will taste quite bad as well.
11. Check for shot pellets and discard. You do NOT want to accidentally bite into one after cooking!