Poultry & Game Birds

Strictly speaking, the term poultry covers all birds that can be domesticated for the farmyard—chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys and guinea fowl. However, given modern methods of raising birds commercially, several others creep in “under the wire”, including the cross-bred Rock Cornish hen and game birds such as pheasant, pigeon, partridge and quail. Also covered in this chapter are the true wild game birds such as grouse, woodcock and snipe, and wild duck and wild goose.

So popular are birds on the table that they are sold in many forms—whole, cut into pieces, with bones and boneless—often leaving little preparatory work for the cook. However, free-range and wild game birds are still found in many areas, and this chapter gives details of preparing them, from plucking and drawing to cutting in pieces, boning and carving.