Bock-battered Dove

I went hunting with my dad for opening weekend of dove season and somehow ended up with a ton of meat that nobody really wanted at the end. My dad helped me clean it all up and sent me home with the fillets making me promise to do something good with all of it.

Hunting your own meat is debatable when it comes to cost efficiency. Assuming you have a gun already, you have to buy a license (around $70 here for the combo hunting-fishing), ammo, and then have a place to go which can also be expensive if you don't have land or know anyone that does. But if you're a good shot you can use less ammo, and if you get animals through multiple hunting seasons it will probably pay out. Of course in my case, I ended up on the winning side because I got way more than my share of meat. Moving on.

We decided to split the meat in half preparation-wise, with half being fried and half being grilled. I won't claim either of these to be healthy, but the fried dove wasn't much money to make. So I'll put that one up first and then put up the grilled stuff with bacon later.


Bock-battered Dove

Most of these ingredients you should have (flour, milk/buttermilk, spices) as staples. The only thing you should have to get is the beer and the dove.

Time:

Marinate: 3-24hrs

Prep: 5-10min

Cook: varies with method

Ingredients:

Dove (as much as you've got)

2 bottles/cans of beer (We used bottles and had a little left in each. Any beer will work, but we used Shiner. Darker beers will give you more flavor, but they cost more as well.)

2 cups flour

3/4 cup milk/buttermilk

salt

pepper

other spices to your taste

container with lid large enough to hold dove (marinating container)

two shallow containers for battering (pie pans work well)

fryer or skillet with oil

If your meat is frozen, defrost it.  The best way to defrost is to move your meat from the freezer to the refrigerator a day or two beforehand. This allows it to slowly thaw out as opposed to a quick thaw.  You can quick thaw if you want (we did because we didn't plan well) but the meat stays more tender if you do it slowly. 

Instructions:

1. Place meat in your marinating container and pour in 1 bottle or can of beer. If you have more meat you may need more beer.

2. Let the meat marinate for at least 2 or 3 hours.  The longer you can wait, the more it will soak up, so the best would be to let it marinate overnight.

3. Heat up your fryer with oil or skillet with oil. You want it to be nice and hot for your meat.

4. Place buttermilk and remaining can/bottle of beer in one of your battering pans. Put flour and spices in the other pan.

5. If you've fried food before, it's the same process. Put a few pieces in the first pan with your milk and Shiner. Get them coated all over.

6. Move them to the second pan with your flour and spices. The first pan makes sure that the stuff in the second pan sticks. You could use water in the first pan, but that's not as tasty.

7. Once you've got a nice even coat on both sides, toss your birds in the fryer. Your time will differ depending on how hot your oil is and whether you are using a deep fryer or a skillet. If you’re using a skillet you will have to do one side at a time and then flip. Either way, you want the outside to be a nice golden brown and the inside cooked through. Dove is darker meat so it won’t look like a chicken nugget.

Our fryer kept going on and off so I don't know what temp it should be.

8. Do a few pieces of meat at a time. Dove pieces are small so just put however many you can handle at a time together. When they come off the skillet or out of the fryer put them on a plate under some aluminum foil or maybe in the oven so they stay warm while you cook the rest.

Special thanks to the Jordans for letting us get their kitchen messy and helping us cook and eat all of this food. 


Happy Eating!





ps - If you don't have buttermilk, you can add a few teaspoons of lemon juice to normal milk (not your whole gallon, please!) and the acid will begin the curdling process.  It won't make it spoil but it will make it work for buttermilk.