Quail Recipes and Cooking Advice

[Chris Amirault]

I just found four beautiful fresh whole quail at my local southeast asian grocer. They're on ice in the fridge for tomorrow's dinner. Does anyone have any tried and true recipes for them? I'm game for most anything! Thanks in advance.

[JohnStewart]

Quail pot pie!

well cheater pot pie. I just roasted the quail and pulled it off of the bone. I cut some circles out of some puff pastry and baked those. Then just sauteed the quail meat with baby carrots, snow peas and onions and what not...then just made an asiago cream sauce. pour everything into the puff pastry shell and mmm creamy goodness.

or stuff them with chorizo and roast them.

[little ms foodie]

Quail with grapes and tarragon!! It's very easy and sooooo tasty!

Just put a sprig of tarragon in each quail and season. Heat about 2 TBS of clarified butter in in a deep saute pan and brown the birds on all sides. Add 2/3 c. of white wine and boil for 30 secs. add 1 2/3 c. chicken stock and about 5oz of green seedless grapes.

Cover the pan and simmer for about 8 mins till quails are cooked thru. Take out the quails and grapes and reduce the sauce till syrupy. Strain it and pour over quails and grapes and serve.

This is soooooo yummy!!!!

[johnder]

I have a recipe I use with bonless quail It can probably be tailored to work with the bone-in quail, but if your knife skills are good, go for the bonless.. much easier to eat.

I start by making a simple stuffing using toasted pine nuts, some shallots, golden raisins and some tarragon. Sweat that all together with some butter and finish it off with some acid -- I use cider vinegar. Just a splash to bring up the acid.

Let the stuffing cool and then stuff the little buggers. I usually grill them in a grill pan with excellent results, but you can sear them off in a regular ovenproof skillet and finish them off in a 450 oven for a few minutes.

During the last few minutes of cooking I glaze them with some pomegranite molasses. I serve it over a dressed frisee salad and sprinkled with some pomegranite seeds.

(if you dont have access to pomegranite molasses, you can reduce some pomegranite juice and sweeten it with some sugar)

John

[bleudauvergne]

Spatchcock them, smear them with the fat you have, season them with herbs in season, salt and pepper, and put them in a prehated 400f/200c oven for 15-20 or until they're done.

(or do johnder's recipe it looks really good)

[bleudauvergne]

Quail pot pie!

well cheater pot pie.  I just roasted the quail and pulled it off of the bone.  I cut some circles out of some puff pastry and baked those.  Then just sauteed the quail meat with baby carrots, snow peas and onions and what not...then just made an asiago cream sauce.  pour everything into the puff pastry shell and mmm creamy goodness.

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That's a nice idea for the leftovers, if you have any!! I'd make little tartlettes because there's not much meat, I think little tartlettes using the quail would be wonderful starters. I always buy and prepare more than we'll eat. Quail is nice to pull out of the fridge and eat cold. I use leftover meats to garnish market soups.

Here is a link to a market veg soup using quail.

Quail with grapes and tarragon!! It's very easy and sooooo tasty!

Just put a sprig of tarragon in each quail and season. Heat about 2 TBS of clarified butter in in a deep saute pan and brown the birds on all sides. Add 2/3 c. of white wine and boil for 30 secs. add 1 2/3 c. chicken stock and about 5oz of green seedless grapes.

Cover the pan and simmer for about 8 mins till quails are cooked thru. Take out the quails and grapes and reduce the sauce till syrupy. Strain it and pour over quails and grapes and serve.

Both little ms foodie and johnder make sauces containing sweet elements. I've never done this, but it's worth a try. I wonder if I could make little tartlettes using a tarragon/grape/raisin sauce...

[little ms foodie]

I'd be happy to taste test!!

[Chris Amirault]

Thanks so much for the replies, everyone. I took the sweet/tart idea and searched the larder, where I found my contraband szechuan peppercorns. I toasted up a handful with a bit of kosher salt and ground it, then made a marinade with the roasted szechuan peppercorn salt and honey, soy, shaoxing, and sesame oil. I didn't have any tangerines, so I used a bit of clementine juice.

I roasted them for 20 min at 400 and then broiled them. They were good, though, in the end, the clementine juice wasn't acidic enough.

Again, thanks!!

[Wine_Dad]

Firstly, bone them. They're much easier to eat and it's not that hard. First start with removing the wish bone, then, using your fingers remove the meat from the internal skeleton. Break both legs at the joints. If you must you can cut the skin at the back bone to remove it but it's not necessary.

Prepare a stuffing of exotic mushrooms, garlic and thyme. (I use some fresh and some dried mushrooms, reserving the hydration liquid for the rissotto). You can zing up the stuffing with Balsamic vinegar to taste (less than a tsp). Stuff birds and truss them if you can.

Meanwhile, make a rissotto using the reserved and strained (2-3 times) mushroom liquid. Shave a little percorino, arrange stuffed quail on top, shave a little truffle on the mix and watch out.

We did a 6 course for gourmand friends of ours. Up against some tries and true high-end dishes this one was everyone's favorite.

Serve with a southern Rhone Gigondas or Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

[mrbigjas]

so i bought a package of six little bitty frozen quails from the asian grocery. i mean they're tiny things. and they've been defrosting in my fridge, and will be ready tonight.

but i'm not sure what to do with them. spatchcock and grill? is there other prep that should be done? should i roast them? or broil them? how about sauces/rubs? any thoughts?

i mean, i could just try to cook them and eat them plain, but that's boring, and you guys haven't let me down yet when i need ideas. it's summer, there's produce galore, i have reduced chicken, lobster, and beef stocks in the fridge, plenty of wine, herbs and spices both fresh and dried, all manners of vinegars, oils, soy sauces, fish sauces, hot sauces, you name it.

so what's your favorite quail recipe?

[jefferyc]

A couple of things, one don't be suprised if they're not fully dressed once you've got them defrosted. Two I've deep fried them whole and they taste wonderfull that way.

[carswell]

They're great split down the backbone and grilled or broiled. My standard marinade and baste is soy, white wine or mirin, ginger, garlic, oil and honey, often with a branch or two of thyme and/or some orange zest or juice thrown in. The leftovers are great on their own or in salads.

Quail also take really well to pan roasting. The classic Italian prep is to stuff each bird with a sage leaf, a slice of pancetta and the liver if you have it; brown in butter; add a small amount of white wine, salt and pepper; cover and simmer until tender (about 45 minutes); remove to a platter; add a few tablespoons of cold water to the pan, turn the heat to high, scrape, stir and reduce until syrupy; pour over the birds and serve, ideally with polenta.

The French do something similar: brown cubed unsmoked country ham (or prosciutto) and some pearl onions (2 per bird) in butter and remove; brown the birds in the fat; add back the ham and onions and pour in 1/3 cup of cognac; after letting the cognac bubble for a minute, add several branches of fresh thyme, salt, pepper and a grating of nutmeg; cover and proceed as above. I love this with bulgar.

[little ms foodie]

I pan roast and also make a nice sauce out of white wine, stock and green grapes with tarragon. YUM!!!

[mrbigjas]

these are all great ideas.

jefferyc, thanks for the warning; i reckon i'll find out when i get home.

i bought these on a whim because i was at the vietnamese grocery, and i was thinking to myself, you always see quail on dim sum menus, but they're so expensive at the poultry place... i wonder how that works. and i looked down and there was the package, 6 for $6.99! that would explain it. so i bought it.

carswell and little ms foodie, when these are pan roasted like this, the skin is not crisped, i assume? and you didn't remove the carcass did you?

final question, if y'all don't mind: when grilled, for how long, about? this pan roasting (and also the recipe for what basically seemed like a quail ragu i found in lidia's cookbook last night) seems to take a good 45 minutes or so till they're tender--when grilling, am i doing it kind of lower and slower like that, or are they OK faster and hotter?

thanks all

[carswell]

carswell and little ms foodie, when these are pan roasted like this, the skin is not crisped, i assume?  and you didn't remove the carcass did you?

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The skin is soft. But even when grilled or broiled the skin doesn't crisp like, say, duck skin does. And, no, you don't remove the caracass for this prep because the birds would lose their shape. The only time I bone quail (and then only if I can't get the butcher to bone them for me) is when I plan to cram them full of stuffing (a Chez Panisse combo of ricotta and chard is a favourite) before trussing both ends of the cavity. Boning is a pain, however, as the manoeuvring room is minimal and the skin tears easily. BTW, only the rib cage/backbone is removed; the appendages are too small to bone.

final question, if y'all don't mind: when grilled, for how long, about?  this pan roasting (and also the recipe for what basically seemed like a quail ragu i found in lidia's cookbook last night) seems to take a good 45 minutes or so till they're tender--when grilling, am i doing it kind of lower and slower like that, or are they OK faster and hotter?

Grilled and roasted quail are best when the breast meat is still a little pink. Depending on the size of the birds and the strength of the heat, we're talking 10 to 20 minutes (longer if they're stuffed, of course). Not every braising recipe calls for 45 minutes cooking, either, though if care is taken to ensure the meat doesn't dry out, three quarters of an hour over low heat does result in a tender, succulent and nicely flavoured bird.

[Shalmanese]

On Iron Chef, a challenger made a dish of roasted quail stuffed with porcini risotto which I thought looked utterly divine.

Otherwise, you could spatchcok them and marinate in ponzu or any other citrusy marinade.

[mrbigjas]

cool, thanks!

[little ms foodie]

what carswell said

[mrbigjas]

p.s. i'm all psyched now. something new, just what i needed.

[Flocko]

I just tried this Bobby Flay recipe for "Grilled Quail with Pomegranate Molasses and Horseradish Glaze with Spicy Walnuts and Tangerine Vinaigrette" a couple of weeks ago. It was sooooooooo great I made it again Friday night

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/cooking/re...6_12635,00.html

It was well worth the effort and the vinaigrette and the glaze was enough to used the second time. I found the pomegranate molasses at a Persian market and use it a lot to sweeten vinaigrettes anyway. Couldn't find any fresh pomegranates so substituted grapes in the salsa/topping. It was really stunning.

Bill

[little ms foodie]

You can also make pomegranate molasses by reducing POM Wonderful juice

[mrbigjas]

hey y'all thanks for all the tips. here's what happened:

when i opened the quails, they were cleaned! so that was good. but they definitely had several feathers left. after some plucking and cleaning, i went with carswell's recipe there, with the pancetta and sage and whatnot, because i had that (or actually, easy access to that on my way home). and it turned out GREAT. took a little less than the 45 minutes--more like half an hour total. they browned pretty quickly. and the gravy (butter/olive oil, then as described some wine and an ice cube of reduced chicken stock), when reduced it totally emulsified the butter and whatever pancetta fat into the liquid, and the gravy was ... like gravy. awesome. served with soft polenta flavored with parmigiana and caramelized fennel. so the meal was kind of monocolor, but delicious.

anyway, thanks. since they were easier and even tastier than i thought (and not too expensive), i'll try the other recipes posted another time--deep frying whole does sound good, and pomegranate molasses and tangerines? that sounds great, but wintery, so i'll give that one a few months...

[Derek]

I'm late to the thread, but I'll add my few bits for the next time:

-- It's the wrong season now, but in the past I've boned the quail and stuffed them with a mix of wild rice, gooseberries and shallots, then wrapped them in bacon and roasted them. This turned out quite well.

-- In my experience, after prepping the quail (particularly boned), it's good to steam them for about 10 minutes or so before the final cooking (roasting or grilling) -- it firms the flesh a bit and tightens the skin, and gives them a better shape.

-- Just like chicken, quail taste better if you brine them before you cook them. Just don't brine them too long.

-- I read/heard somewhere that the French say "Quail should be eaten at the point of a gun," by which I assume they mean "as fresh as possible". Something to drop into a dinner party conversation.

[mrbigjas]

excellent tips, thanks derek. you're definitely not too late--i'll be doing them again, and soon too. i'm not sure about boning them quite yet, because i'm not sure i have the energy on a given day--i generally give myself about an hour to prepare dinner, and while that's feasible on a general basis, it gets kinda sketchy when it comes to prep like boning quails.

ok my childish side just can't believe i wrote that last bit.

[Derek]

excellent tips, thanks derek.  you're definitely not too late--i'll be doing them again, and soon too.  i'm not sure about boning them quite yet, because i'm not sure i have the energy on a given day--i generally give myself about an hour to prepare dinner, and while that's feasible on a general basis, it gets kinda sketchy when it comes to prep like boning quails.

ok my childish side just can't believe i wrote that last bit.

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In direct contradiction to the French, I buy the quail on Saturday, bone & brine them that day, then freeze them. Maybe it's the brining, but I can't tell the difference between these quail and those I've cooked fresh (which is pretty infrequent, to be fair).