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Jugged Birds
6 QUAIL OR PARTRIDGE 8 SLICES OF BACON 2 CUPS BREAD OR BISCUIT CRUMBS SALT AND PEPPER I EGG SLIGHTLY BEATEN 4 TEASPOONS POULTRY SEASONING I TABLESPOON MINCED ONION 2-4 CLOVES FLOUR Save the hearts, livers and gizzards of birds when cleaning them, slice these giblets fine, and dice 2 slices bacon. Mix giblets, diced bacon, crumbs, seasonings, egg, and 2 teaspoons poultry seasoning. Fill birds with mixture, season and wrap each bird in 1 slice bacon. Lay birds in bean pot or deep crock, breasts down, scattering in onion and cloves. Pour in 1 cup cold water. Put cover on crock, sealing with stiff flour and water paste. Leave in heated pit 2 hours or longer, without opening. When done, take out birds and keep hot near fire, while skimming fat off gravy. Gravy may be thickened or used for dunking as is.
This recipe is best for old birds that are likely to be tough, and does equally well for grouse, prairie chicken, pheasant all upland birds in fact.
A bean-hole recipe: the sealed pot goes into a pit of hot stones and coals and is left alone. The hinge is the seal — once the flour paste is on and the pot is buried, nothing is checked, so everything must be right going in.
- The bean holeTypically a pit of some depth, lined with stones and burned down with hardwood for a few hours until the stones are hot. Rake most of the coals aside, set the pot in, shovel coals and then earth back over it. The recipe gives no temperature, only "heated pit 2 hours or longer"; in a home kitchen the same crock, sealed the same way, will approximate it in a low oven for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
- The flour sealThe flour is for the luting paste: a stiff dough of flour and water pressed in a rope around the lid rim (it may also serve to thicken the gravy, which the recipe allows). It bakes hard and traps the steam, which is what tenderises an old bird. Crack it off with a knife handle.
- Poultry seasoning, dividedFour teaspoons are listed and only two go into the stuffing; the remainder is presumably for the "season" step applied to the birds before the bacon is wrapped on.
- ClovesWhole cloves, two to four for the whole pot, tucked among the birds rather than stuck into them. They are assertive after two hours in a sealed crock; two is plenty for six small birds.
- Bacon countEight slices: two diced into the stuffing, six to wrap one bird each. Bacon can be very salty, so hold back on added salt until you taste the gravy.
- DonenessPit temperature cannot be regulated, so verify rather than trust the clock — the thickest part of the thigh and the stuffing should both read 165F. Stuffing packed inside a bird always lags behind the meat.
- Which birdsThe method is aimed at tough old birds, and quail or partridge are small enough that six fit one crock. Grouse, prairie chicken and pheasant are larger, so fewer will fill the same pot; the cold water should still come to about a cup.
- GibletsTrim the green-tinged part of the liver and the tough silverskin from the gizzard before mincing. Wild birds are often shot-damaged, so discard any giblet that has been pierced.
- Yield and gravyOne bird per person, six servings. The pot liquor will be greasy from the bacon; skim it well, then either thicken with a flour-and-water slurry or leave it thin as a dunking gravy for biscuit.