Cook your Catch – Whole Fried Dove from Public Land Hunting in Georgia
Eugene L. 09.07.23
We are going a different direction with the Cook Your Catch today, while normally it’s something that swims with me. This time we are going with something that flies, mourning doves. I had a somewhat successful hunt over the weekend during the Dove Opener. For a lot of people, the dove opener marks the beginning of the fall hunting season. These little birds are considered great eating and are most commonly eaten in the form of bacon-wrapped poppers, something that I’ll hopefully cover next week. Instead of breasting these birds out I chose the little more tedious method of plucking the whole dove which also gives me a bit more meat. Especially only having to clean two birds this was a good choice for a lighter lunch. So I’ll be showing you how to pluck and clean a whole mourning dove along with how to lightly fry the whole birds, along with their gizzards.
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First things first, start plucking the bird. Start with the feathers along the belly, using you index finger and thumb to kinda pull and roll the feathers off the body. Work over a bucket or a box to catch all the feathers. Do this for the whole breast/belly side then move onto the back. You don’t have to baby the dove like you would a quail, but their skin is definitely on the thinner side. Try to be somewhat gentle to not tear the skin.
Once you pluck most of the body you can just grab the tail feathers and pull those out. The leg feathers can also be plucked the same as you did for the body. The hardest part of the dove to pluck is the wings. The feathers are more firmly planted into the wing skin so it takes a bit more work. Start by taking out the primary flight feathers a few at a time. Then move on to the smaller feathers. Honestly, it’s up to you if you want to pluck the wings, there is maybe a morsel of meat on them. So if you’re not up to it, just clip them with some kitchen shears.
Now the feathers are gone, time to clip the feet, the damaged wing portions, and the head off. It is pretty easy, just take the kitchen shears and snip at the joints for the feet. They’ll come right off. For the wings again just cut at the joint, I took some of the wings off on this first bird because the pellets had shattered the bones in the wing. For the head, you can kind of pull it right off with your hand, place your thumbs right where the neck meets the body and kinda fold it forward and pull. The head should come off along with the crop, if there are some vertebrae left you can just snip it with the shears.
Now to gut the dove, right above the anus you can see a ridge where the breast bone ends, you can use your hands, shears, or a knife and make an incision there to open up the body cavity. Once it’s opened up just scoop all the organs out. You can save the heart, liver, and gizzard to cook up later as well or give them to your pets as healthy treats. This time the livers were pretty mangled by the shot and me to be worth the effort to cook them, but the hearts and gizzards were good.
To clean the gizzards take a knife and split them open. You will see a bunch of grit and food material in the center along with a membrane that will pull away from the gizzard. Pull all that out then give it a rinse and the gizzards are ready to cook. Now give everything a rinse with cold water and pat dry. Store in your fridge till it’s time to cook.
Cook your Catch – Whole Fried Dove
Ingredients
- 2 – Doves
- 1/2 Corn Meal
- 2 tbsp AP Flour
- 2 tbsp Corn/Potato Starch
- 4 tsp Tony Chachere’s Seasoning
- Frying Oil
Start heating up your oil, you can use a countertop fryer or just a pot like this. You want the oil temp to be 375F.
Take a teaspoon of Tony’s or whatever creole seasoning you like and rub it on the birds and gizzards, then put them aside.
In a bowl put the corn meal, AP flour, starch, and seasoning, then mix till blended. This is way more than I needed but I split the breading and stored most of it in my freezer for another day.
Dredge the birds in the fry blend, make sure to coat them inside and out. You don’t want any bare patches.
Once everything thing is dredged let them sit like this for a bit, You want the flour, meal, and starch to pull some moisture from the birds and hydrate. The longer they hydrate the better the quality of your crust will be.
After letting the birds and gizzards sit in the breading for a little while, you want to drop them into the oil, if you’re cooking more than two birds you want to go in batches. You don’t want to add too many doves into the oil at a time or the oil will cool down and make the birds greasy. Cold oil makes for greasy fried food. It should take about 4 minutes in the hot oil to cook the birds. Make sure to flip the doves in the oil as they cook for even cooking. For the gizzards, they only take a minute, so make sure to add them in last.
Once they are done pull them from the oil onto a wire rack or plate of paper towels to drain the excess oil. I sit up any whole birds I fry like this to help the oil drain out of the body cavity. Once the oil drains they are ready to eat.
