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Home » Wild Game » Pheasant, Grouse, Quail » Sharptail Grouse, Prairie Style

Sharptail Grouse, Prairie Style

By Hank Shaw on April 13, 2011, Updated October 28, 2020 - 9 Comments

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5 from 2 votes
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shartail grouse with farro recipe on the plate
Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Sharptail grouse is distinctive, unique — and strong-tasting. It is not to everyone’s taste. Unlike most upland game birds, sharpies have dark meat like ducks or doves, and that meat is decidedly gamey. Almost funky. You have to either embrace it or run screaming.

Those who prefer skinless chicken breasts will run screaming. But those of us who like our meat to taste like something can linger over the beguiling taste of this bird, which is native to our Great Plains, for long moments, wondering where this bird has been all our lives. The flavor is acquired, but addicting.

A sharp-tailed grouse in the field.

Holly and I shot our first sharpies this past season in North Dakota, which is one of the best places to hunt them in North America. We’ve eaten all but a final brace of our grouse, and I wanted this last sharpie meal to be something special.

I also wanted to see if I could overcome something weird that happens to sharptail grouse meat: It goes from a pretty pink to gray in a heartbeat. Unlike any other meat I’ve ever worked with, the color change is nearly instantaneous. The breast meat can still be juicy and tender once it turns gray, but the color becomes less than appetizing. The answer to this problem is to cook it sous vide.

Sous vide, a water oven, lets you cook at a precise temperature, and, because you use your vacuum sealer to seal the food in, you can also get some dramatic effects with flavor on the meat. The pressure of sealing makes it like a power marinade.

The Plains Indians call the sharptail grouse the “fire bird” because it relies on huge prairie fires to keep its habitat in good shape. So I decided to call my dish “Prairie Fire Grouse,” and make smoke a big component. But since this is kind of a cheffy dish, I was not going to just toss the grouse into the smoker. Smoked salt, however, gives me close to the same effect, especially when it is sealed in with the meat as it cooks.

Whenever I try to figure out what to serve with wild food, I think about something the great British chef Marco Pierre White once said: “Nature is the artist. The chef is just the technician.” What goes together in life will go together on the plate. That idea provides the road map to the final dish.

For starters, these sharpies had been eating rose hips. So I decided to make a rose hip gastrique by melting rose hip jelly with salt and vinegar and glaze the grouse with this.

I knew grain would have to be in here somewhere, as North Dakota is one of those “amber waves of grain” states we all sang about in grade school. So I made a stock from the rest of the grouse (I was only using the breasts in the recipe) and cook farro in it; farro is an ancient form of wheat. As it happens, NoDak is also one of the nation’s largest producers of sunflowers — so in would go sunflower seeds, and sunflower oil.

Wild onions, which grow everywhere, would make an appearance, too, and I’d use malt vinegar — also from grain — to brighten up the flavors. Garnish? Onion flowers and some pretty purple vetch flowers growing in my yard; vetch is a relative of the bean or pea and it grows wild all over the country.

The dish looks simple, but there is a whole lot going on there.

sharptail grouse with farro recipe, closeup
Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Can you make this dish at home? You can get close, with some substitutions, which I will outline below. Is it worth it? Oh, yes.

This recipe tastes as good as it looks. The grouse is meltingly tender, a little smoky and sweet-and-sour from the rose hip glaze, yet still a bit funky (because it is sharptail grouse, after all). The farro is surprisingly light, and the wheat-malt vinegar-sunflower seed-green onion mixture really, really works. The magenta vetch flowers add some beauty.

Everything on the plate is a flavor of our Great Plains. And I bet you thought it was just Flyover Country, didn’t you?

shartail grouse with farro recipe
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5 from 2 votes

Sharptail grouse, prairie flavors

To make this dish exactly as I did, you will need a vacuum-sealer and a sous vide machine -- two items that are totally worth it to own if you are a wild game cook, but which are not cheap. Don't give up if you don't have these, though, as I give you alternate directions below. Now, the substitutions: If you don't have sharptail grouse, use skinless duck breast, squab or pigeon breast, or dove breasts. If you can't get smoked salt, skip it. You can use apricot jelly in place of rose hip jelly Use cider vinegar in place of malt vinegar Use wheat berries, rye berries, barley or brown rice in place of the farro Skip the flowers if you can't find any, but remember that bean and pea flowers are just as good.
Prep Time30 mins
Cook Time45 mins
Total Time1 hr 15 mins
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: American
Servings: 4 people
Calories: 669kcal
Author: Hank Shaw

Ingredients

GROUSE

  • 2 sharptail grouse or prairie chickens
  • 1 tablespoon smoked salt
  • 2 tablespoons sunflower oil or other neutral oil

ROSE HIP GASTRIQUE

  • 1/4 cup rose hip jelly, or apricot jelly
  • 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

FARRO

  • 1 1/2 cups farro or wheat berries
  • 1 quart stock or broth (any kind)
  • 1 teaspoon smoked salt
  • 1 teaspoon regular salt
  • 2 tablespoons sunflower oil or other neutral oil
  • 4 green onions, white parts and green parts separated
  • 3/4 cup shelled, roasted sunflower seeds
  • 1 tablespoon malt vinegar
  • Onion or vetch flowers to garnish (optional)

Instructions

  • Coat the grouse with the sunflower oil and sprinkle with the smoked salt. Seal in a vacuum bag and cook sous vide at 138 degrees for 30-50 minutes. If you are not cooking the grouse sous vide, wait to cook it until after the farro is done.
  • To make the gastrique, melt the jelly in a small pot over medium heat, then whisk in the vinegar and salt to combine. Turn off the heat and set aside.
  • Bring the stock to a boil, add both salts then the farro. Simmer this gently until the grains are tender, about 30-40 minutes. Drain the farro and discard any remaining stock, or use it in another recipe.
  • Heat the sunflower oil over medium-high heat in a large saute pan and saute the white parts of the green onions for 1 minute, stirring often. Add the cooked farro and the sunflower seeds and toss to combine. Add salt to taste. Turn off the heat and cook your grouse if you are not cooking it sous vide.
  • To finish the grouse, take it out of the vacuum bag and let it rest a couple minutes, then slice it thin. Do the same if you've sauteed the breast. Bring the rose hip gastrique to a boil, turn off the heat and pour it over the grouse slices. Toss well and serve.
  • To finish the farro, turn the heat on to warm it through, then toss in the green parts of the onions and the malt vinegar and serve at once.

Nutrition

Calories: 669kcal | Carbohydrates: 83g | Protein: 24g | Fat: 28g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Cholesterol: 36mg | Sodium: 3587mg | Potassium: 673mg | Fiber: 14g | Sugar: 14g | Vitamin A: 657IU | Vitamin C: 5mg | Calcium: 54mg | Iron: 3mg
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Filed Under: Pheasant, Grouse, Quail, Recipe

Avatar for Hank Shaw

Hank Shaw

Hey there. Welcome to Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, the internet's largest source of recipes and know-how for wild foods. I am a chef, author, and yes, hunter, angler, gardener, forager and cook. Follow me on Instagram and on Facebook.

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Comments

  1. Avatar for Mike LumMike Lum says

    November 19, 2015 at 9:54 am

    Hey Hank. This is a bit behind, just saw this recipe. I was curious about the lack of pre or post sous vide sear on the grouse breasts. seems like a little Maillard wouldn’t hurt. Your thoughts? Thanks,

    ML

    Reply
    • Avatar for Hank ShawHank Shaw says

      November 19, 2015 at 10:01 am

      Mike: Sure, if you’d like. Do it post sous-vide. I just liked the poached meat texture in this case, but searing is never a bad idea.

      Reply
  2. Avatar for OwlOakOwlOak says

    April 20, 2013 at 12:59 pm

    Greetings Hank,

    Living as I do in Western Mass. the hunting and fishing is not surpassed by many states. However, there are species that do elude us. Based upon what we have here I can agree with you that the Ruffled Grouse, partridge, is one of the finest eating.

    I hunt and fish the Berkshires, as well as Southern Vermont, so there is a plethora wild game to enjoy.

    Now, the purpose of this post is to tell you that I seriously enjoy your recipes, but more so, the “stuff” behind them. By that I mean the understanding of the blending of spices and cooking techniques that gives that ‘je ne sais quoi’ to the ordinary. Thank you! 🙂

    Huggs & B*B ~ OwlOak

    Reply
  3. Avatar for KevinKevin says

    April 15, 2011 at 8:18 am

    Love the concepts behind the dish, and it’s a pretty one indeed. Well done.

    Reply
  4. Avatar for Hank ShawHank Shaw says

    April 14, 2011 at 4:51 pm

    Tyler: Oh yeah, the flavor is pretty different from duck. Sharpies definitely stand on their own.

    Chris: Nice hack!

    Tovar: You are lucky to have tasted them, living in Vermont as you do. You are in the land of the Ruffed Grouse, which is even better tasting IMHO.

    Tasha: Big fan of goat in all its forms. People are so used to their meat being corn-fed, fatty and bland that when they get real meat it freaks them out. A sad state of events, actually.

    Reply
  5. Avatar for Tasha @ VoraciousTasha @ Voracious says

    April 14, 2011 at 4:33 am

    ‘Those of us who like our meat to taste like something…’ – YES! I recently posted a curried lamb pizza and several people commented that they didn’t really like the gamey taste of lamb (or goat) and I was wondering…do you want you meat to taste like nothing? Why????

    This looks absolutely delicious. A gorgeous plate of food.

    Reply
  6. Avatar for Tovar@AMindfulCarnivoreTovar@AMindfulCarnivore says

    April 13, 2011 at 4:09 pm

    A good friend of mine from here in Vermont makes an annual pilgrimage to Montana, specifically to hunt sharpies. He has prepared some for us once or twice. Delicious.

    Reply
  7. Avatar for chrischris says

    April 13, 2011 at 1:21 pm

    for those who don’t have a dedicated sous-vide cooking apparatus you can achieve similar results using a standard beer cooler:

    https://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/cook-your-meat-in-a-beer-cooler-the-worlds-best-sous-vide-hack.html

    Obviously it is not going to give you the same precise control or work with high temps or long cook times but 138 for less than an hour should be no problem.

    Reply
  8. Avatar for TylerTyler says

    April 13, 2011 at 12:33 pm

    Very cool! Being from North Dakota, I shoot sharpies all the time during the fall. Going out and hunting them on a bright, sunny afternoon is an especially nice change after shooting a limit of ducks in the morning. Can make for quite an eventful fall day! For years, I’ve always mixed my sharptail grouse breasts in with my ducks. Often, they’re hard to tell apart. I’d definitely like to try cooking them more on their own, however. Last fall was my first time ever eating fresh (never frozen) sharptail. I did the “bacon-wrapped-breast-secured-via-toothpick” trick and glazed the whole deal in BBQ sauce. Tasted much, much better fresh than frozen, and certainly opened my eyes to the possible cooking options for sharptails instead of just throwing them in with the ducks.

    Reply

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Hank Shaw holding a rod and reel in the American River

Hi, my name is Hank Shaw. I am a James Beard Award-winning author and chef and I focus my energies on wild foods: Foraging, fishing, hunting. I write cookbooks as well as this website, have a website dedicated to the intersection of food and nature, and do a podcast, too. If it’s wild game, fish, or edible wild plants and mushrooms, you’ll find it here. Hope you enjoy the site!

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