'Possum
Cut out kernels under front legs and in the small of the back, wash the 'possum with cold water, dry it, salt and pepper it, stuff it and sew it up. Here are some good southern ideas of stuffings:
Cornbread crumbs, minced onion, celery, sage, and raw eggs to hold all together.
Chinquapins, chestnuts or ground nuts, applesauce and bread crumbs.
Boiled rice, minced bacon, and chopped onion.
Or just don't stuff Mr. O. Possum, but stick his outside full of sassafras twigs, the tender green tips, according to instructions under Cooking The Kill.
The In any case, surround him with peeled sweet potatoes, and roast him in front of the fire or in the oven. chief purpose of the potatoes is to sop up all the 'possum fat possible. In camp, the 'possum pan is tilted into a pile of hot embers facing a reflector fire, that is, a fire built against a rock or bank, or against a couple of backlogs. Allow plenty of time, and do frequent basting with fat that collects in pan.
If you can't manage this tedious process, boil the 'possum until done, and boil the potatoes. Take both from water, arrange in pan, and brown before fire or in oven, basting with fat skimmed from water in which 'possum boiled. Make gravy out of pot liquid to eat with both meat and potatoes.
A camp recipe that assumes a fire, a reflector and a whole afternoon. Most of it translates directly to an oven; the parts that need attention are the initial dressing, the fat, and the doneness.
- The "kernels" come out firstThese are the scent glands under the forelegs and along the small of the back. If they are nicked or left in, the fat picks up a musky taste that no stuffing will cover. Cut them away cleanly with the surrounding fat before washing.
- Fat is the whole problemAn opossum carries a great deal of soft fat, which is why the sweet potatoes are packed around it as a sponge. Pour or spoon off the drippings once or twice during roasting and reserve them for basting rather than letting the carcass sit in a bath of grease.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives no oven setting. For the oven version something around 325F suits: higher heat scorches the outside long before the shoulders and haunches are through, and the recipe's own instruction to allow plenty of time points to a long, moderate roast.
- Time and donenessReckon on 2 to 3 hours for a dressed animal of 5 to 8 lb, longer for an older one. Wild game of this kind should reach 165F at the thickest part of the thigh; opossum is a scavenger and undercooked meat is not worth the risk.
- Sweet potatoes go in latePeeled sweet potatoes will collapse if they sit through the full roast. Add them for the last 45 minutes to an hour, turning them in the fat, or par-boil them as the alternative method does.
- The stuffing bindingsCornbread crumbs with raw egg cook safely inside a bird-style cavity only if the stuffing itself reaches 165F. Check it with a thermometer, or bake the dressing separately in a dish and moisten it with the pan fat.
- Chinquapins and ground nutsChinquapin is the small native chestnut relative, now hard to find; ordinary roasted chestnuts substitute directly. "Ground nuts" in a Southern camp book may mean peanuts or the tubers of Apios americana e..
- Sassafras twigsThe green tips are used here as an aromatic, stuck into the skin like larding pins, not eaten. Sassafras root bark contains safrole and was withdrawn from commercial food use in the 1960s; the incidental use of a few leafy tips in roasting is a different matter from brewing a tea of the root.
- YieldA dressed opossum of 6 lb or so, with its potatoes and gravy, feeds four to six. The meat is rich and dark, and portions run smaller than the weight suggests.
- LegalityOpossum is a regulated game or furbearing species in many states, with seasons and licence requirements, while others treat it as unprotected. Check current wildlife regulations before hunting one.
Opossum belonged to the same Southern cooking tradition as raccoon and squirrel: an animal taken close to home, often treed at night with dogs, and roasted whole with sweet potatoes because the potatoes soaked up fat that would otherwise be wasted. The pairing was firmly enough fixed in popular imagination that "possum and taters" became shorthand for country Southern eating, and it stayed on the campaign trail and in the newspapers into the twentieth century \ William Howard Taft was served the dish in Atlanta in 1909. Outdoor cookery books of the early and middle 1900s carried entries like this one because their readers still expected to eat what they shot, and because a fatty carcass and a bed of embers demanded a technique \ the tilted pan, the reflector fire, the long patient basting \ that no kitchen manual would bother to explain. The jokey "Mr. O. Possum" is of its period, as is the assumption that the reader knows how to build a backlog fire.