BEST WAY TO CLEAN AND COOK SQUIRREL Cast Iron Cooking

hey welcome to the backwoods gourmet today I'm gonna show you how to clean and cook one of these guys yep bushy tail tree rat gray squirrel whatever you want to call him he's dinner [Music] all right so you got your squirrel that was the easy part right it wasn't so easy for me yesterday but I did find this one out in the green swamp decided to start barking right before dark but I know that a lot of people they just don't know how to clean them or don't even know how to go about it so today that's the first part I'm going to show you even though YouTube may just kick me completely off monetization for showing you how to clean this guy the way that I've been taught to do it is very little blood and guts and you can once you get a little practice you can do it a squirrel in about a minute all right so I'm gonna try my best to film this because I've learned how to do it over the years a very quick manner I might to slow it down I got the chest camera on the chef cam on so hopefully what you don't see on this cam you'll catch on the chef cam because it is a it's a process that I generally do in about a minute but I'm gonna try like I said to capture it on video for you will see how first thing I do is my squirrel I'll get him out here on a hard surface and I've bent his tail backwards okay this is the tail cutting method as well as taught by my grandparents all right I just cut right through the tail but not through the skin on the other side that is the key if you cut all the way through it you're you're gonna have trouble alright and I'm gonna slowly gonna bring that incision downward in both direction now this is way to me it's the least amount of fur on the meat but you're still gonna have to wipe that knife alright so I'm just skinned and down carefully right to his back but I'm also angling down towards his legs all right and I want to get that Junction sometimes I just wipe my knife right on my shoe right right down coming down his thighs there all right try to keep your knife clean as much as you can once you get it about like that all right and you're about done right there all right so we got him started right down the back let me zoom a camera in so you can see exactly what I'm doing so now we have him started I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna bring that flap I just cut right up under my shoe I'm gonna grab both back legs I'm just gonna pull up all right and that it's gonna pull all the way up to his head just like that I changed the camera angle so you see a little bit now I'll just grab his elbows and pull them out just like you're taking off the shirt I'm gonna take my knife put right under his wrist give it a little snap cut snap cut okay I was premature on that before I cut his head I was supposed to grab him down here at the bottom but Figgy weeks still do it but grab his belly here fingers right up under there pulling the other way much easy if it's easier for said still connected all right so you see we shot this one shotgun he's pretty done all right now we just snap them off into a clean container all right there's your skin squirrels in the bucket all right so to finish cutting him out we're just gonna grab right through this ribs don't cut too hard very light pressure down the belly I usually try to pull outwards just a little bit and then I get down to the pelvis let's kind of cut the--' to bone and you see his very little blood at all so I'll open up at the chest here i'ma grab his esophagus or at the top all right that's gonna expose this cavity and I'm gonna take two fingers right in behind where the diaphragm is and I'll just pull out all in one motion you see there's very little blood set for a little bit of blood with you know where he got shot but we're gonna go ahead just wash this up and then when I get it in the refrigerator and let them age you can see there's very little blood on my hands very little blood involved with the process so if you use that tail cut method it's really gonna help you out okay so all dressed out just need a little wash get ready so we're gonna do next is and I would do this with all of them you can cut them up ahead of time if you want you got a lot we just got the one I'll show you how to butcher them later but we want to age our squirrel for a week so I'm go ahead and stick him stick them in to the FoodSaver back and ceiling [Music] I'll keep any bacteria off of him while he's aging you can you can age him for as long as you'd like I go at least a week and I'd always give that seal a little extra time there just make sure it maintains but there he is and put them in a fridge and we'll see you in a week so it's been week squirrels been aging in the fridge in the vacuum pack I just took him out rinsed him off a little bit now I'm going to show you the things you're gonna need to make my favorite squirrel dish okay there's mr. bushy tail tree red right there and chicken of the tree I call him we got some vegetable I got an egg I got some of our favorite seasoning Seminole swamp season if you would like to try that go check it out in the description below let them know where you were you heard about it I got some all-purpose flour I got a double heaping take one heaping tablespoon of mayo real Mayo and one medium sweet so first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make my wash and I'm just gonna take one egg and that right in on my Mayo I'm gonna take a whisk those Jews subscribe and follow our channel know that this is not the first time I've seen this we use this a lot when we batter thing really helps your batter to Eddie here and your meat so much better and it just freaks a lot of flavor also [Music] I want fairly thick slices I'm going to use them to use this to season our oil so that'll be next so today for equipment I'm going to be using the Concord double burner propane stove here you could do this on campfire you can do it in the house you can do it on whatever you got and today I'm going to use something we haven't used in a while on the show and that is our I think they call this the combo three-in-one combo it's from Lodge it's either two skillets a deep in a shallow or you can invert that other one right on top and it makes a very heavy nice tight-fitting lid and that's what you want so if you don't have this one using you know your cast iron lid or use your Dutch oven that works really well also and what a lot of people don't know is is the Dutch oven lids actually fit most launch skillet so I'll show you that real quick so almost all these pans the Dutch oven lid fits on there perfect see that so if you have a Dutch oven but you don't have a heavy lid for your Europe I think this is the number eight or the or that I think now they just call them a 10 inch but 10 inch pan if that's fine I like this one because it's domed for frying and that's what we're gonna be doing with it today so let's go ahead we got our fire going there already we're going to put about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch of oil in there it's probably fun right there I'll go go ahead and let that start heating up you don't have to get crazy about this we're gonna go ahead and just dump these onions in there as that wells coming up and we're just gonna let them soften and maybe Brown just a little bit with the lid off so back over at the cutting board now let's take our little chicken of the tree out of the bag here I'm gonna cut them up also want to make sure there's no you know when we cut them we want to make sure there's no pellets left inside of him shop disciplines a birdshot this back leg off there I just cut him into pieces cut him right behind the front legs and we'll split him right down the middle all right and these ribs I usually just take these ribs right on off of here I mean they're really there's not much meat there to if you got a dog same for him and there's your back the best part the whole squirrel cut that in two pieces all right range them out here on the cutting board I said I want to make sure real quick that there's no pellets in it all right I'm gonna go season them pretty liberally this season will cook out into the rest of the dish and the gravy I got one here I'm not too bad that's due to that way we skinned him here just gonna toss them in the flour give them a good dredging we roll them around in there real good brother all Kotick now here's the little trick with the egg wash shake them off run them through that egg Mayo wash right back into flour all right we'll do that with all the pieces [Music] all righty let's go check on our onions doing those guys start to get a little bit Brown around the edges that's where I like to stop them in and they're nice and soft and put them right back over again [Music] Chiqui know how high that lid give them a flip that is what we're talking [Music] Ellen pretty awesome to golden-brown on that side [Music] waiter you [Music] sprinkle in some flour and how much flour is gonna depend on how much old yeah so we're gonna start we did leave all them drippings in there okay but so you want to go at this easy you can always add more oil if you get too much too much flour I want it to be pretty thick and we want a pretty good amount of gravy to because it gets to that kind of a red color that's when we want to go ahead you only got a small window there to pour in cold water and there goes the motor it's easier to just cook than it is to try to cook and show you what I'm cooking I can tell you that I'm doing this by myself so I don't have a production crew or even a camera person or audio guy or equipment dude whatever I'm I'm it so get that nice and smooth now all right no disaster we just had work on a little bit more than I wanted to yeah I'm sorry guys neighbor is decided mows grass right one night here trying to film for you guys so okay put in a little Seminole small that I put in was the regular I don't want to make this too spicy but it needs quite a bit of seasoning counteract that flour all right come on pretty good all right going back in with our onions earlier alright then I'm gonna bring over just a little bit of milk some people put the milk in when it first started I found that it sometimes it scorches it so I always started with water and then bring my milk or cream or whatever you don't put in there - right back into that with our beautiful Spratt squirrel I know a lot of you're going oh my god what are you doing if I could have just ate that fried squirrel just like that yeah it was pretty that is pretty but believe me this is gonna make it awesome all right now we're fighting some weather coming in and I'm gonna go ahead actually I'm gonna give that just another little shot of water before we put the lid on and well put that lid on and when I'll turn this fire down real real low [Music] let's go gonna check on our squirrel gravy starting to get really tender but starting to thicken up also I want to get down in there kind of loosen it up on the bottom alright and it's still got a ways to go so I'm gonna go ahead now just give it just another little shot of water just don't want to get dried out it's great down the sides back on about another 15 or 20 minutes [Music] starting to get brown puffing up really nice all right begin about the mowing but now I'm going to come in paint them tops a little melted butter I think I'm gonna take some of my coals out of the center Center one looks a little browner than the rest so this uh this adjust our fire a little bit yeah we're racing this storm coming in let's take a look at those Wow pretty awesome let's click at the bottoms perfect go ahead go ahead and pull those off set them over here to the side just leave them in the pot so let's get ready to plate this up here go in here and get one of our biscuits out of the Dutch oven oh man those rows up really nice nice and flaky and tender get that piece over there all right so let's go in for some of the squirrel it's hot off the stove so we have to use some hot pad to handle it there and let me tell you guys wish I could put some smells up here for you just get just a meat out front there and then some of that gravy on them biscuits it's fall apart tinder you see this just take it right off the bone just like that all right since this uh kind of breakfast tom here go ahead right over them biscuits cuz I overhear the egg little sprig of some sage rather garden and that my friends is the best way to eat a squirrel [Applause] [Music] well man I know you want some of that right there let's go ahead and give some of the squirrel try just fall off the bone Oh let me tell you what aging that squirrel in that fridge for a minimum of a week this one was in about ten days vacuum-packed important makes all difference it takes it takes the gaming this out of it helps with the tenderization and I'll let's try something a biscuit with the grave either oh my god so if you never tried cooking squirrel this way before I know some of you guys are guess there's an old southern recipe talk to me by the whole folks you know back in the day and I've eaten a lot of fried squirrel but I'll tell you what this is about fried squirrel two times better so hope you give it a try you like what we're doing please smash that like button right down there you can subscribe to our Channel right here for another break back what's gourmet video is gonna be right up there and for a whole playlist Dutch oven and cast-iron cooking gonna be right up there we'll see you next time

Channel: Backwoods Gourmet Channel

Views: 1,996,221

Rating: 4.7108555 out of 5

Keywords: catch and cook, squirrel hunting, cast iron skillet, eating squirrel, southern cooking, cooking squirrel, squirrel recipe, fried squirrel, squirrel hunting catch and cook, southern cooking recipes, how to cook squirrel, backwoods gourmet cast iron, backwoods gourmet, backwoodsgourmet, best squirrel recipe, how to clean squirrel, how to skin a squirrel, cast iron, outdoor cooking, outdoor cooking videos, best squirrel recipe ever, best squirrel recipes, cooking squirrel meat

Id: qFitQn0W-Ns

Length: 22min 57sec (1377 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/BorealSB]

judging by my backyard, this video would be pretty helpful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7OA4eGk2kE