Recipe: Smoked woodcock

About our feeds

From guns and gundogs to the latest shooting news; the complete online network for the British shooting community.

Home
Recipes

| Next

Sunday, 17 August 2008

Mark Hinge serves up a tasty summer combination of game and broad beans

Ingredients

• game (I used a woodcock from the freezer) • broad beans • olive oil • smoky bacon • garlic • mushrooms • lemon • pepper

Method

1. The game (woodcock) has to be smoked under a lidded barbecue or in a purpose-built smoker. To make the smoke, just add wet wood or wood chips. It should take about two hours, but check throughout. After smoking, preferably leave it in a fridge overnight and slice very thinly to serve cold.

2. Quickly boil/blanch your broad beans in water for one minute then remove and fry them immediately in olive oil and chopped bacon. Add two cloves of roughly chopped garlic and sliced mushrooms and continue to stir. Add a good grind of pepper and the juice of half a lemon. Stir for about five minutes in total.

3. Serve the beans hot (or cold, if preferred) with your smoked, sliced woodcock. I add some grated lemon rind as well, just to give a summer lift to the taste and to draw out the game flavour.

Tips

Smoking game in a barbecue is very much trial and error, but the important thing is to keep the smoke going by adding wet wood chips, even twigs, to the coals. You need smoke, not flame, so keep the lid firmly on. Keep your game off the metal grids I use a DIY suspended skewer system between two bricks. Make periodic checks during the smoking process. I didn’t add salt to the bean mixture as the bacon was salty enough. If you are taking game from the freezer, make sure it is thoroughly defrosted before smoking. Finally, take any washing off the line!

Sweet partridge

Our redlegs are out and, like our resident covey o...

Recipe: a rabbit pastry

Ingredients • rabbit • mushrooms &#...

Guns

Yildiz over-under shotgun review

The Yildiz over-under shotgun is low cost and lightweight compared to ... Read more

Sporting Answers

How do I release my chokes?

I own a Browning 425 12-bore multichoke. I have not changed the chokes... Read more

News

Clay shooting to become a GCSE module

As from september schools will be able to offer students a GCSE in cla... Read more

Comments

Post your comment

What's in this issue?

In this week's issue, read our full report on the IGL Retriever Championship, find out about Natural England's plans to change shooters' pest control licences, plus we explore the thrill of a roving syndicate.