a farm her entire life among hunters, she has
pressure cooked and stored countless jars of
pheasant, wild and tame duck and goose, as well
as chicken, pork and beef.
My first lesson came a few years ago on a
snowy December morning in the same kitchen
where Lucille learned canning as a child, while
she labored next to her grandmother over a cob-
burning stove. The pheasant hunting had been
good, and a few limits of cleaned birds filled
a cooler on the back porch. First, we filleted
the breast and thigh meat from the bones and
cut these into several pieces. I was tasked with
coating them with a mixture of wheat and corn
flour, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and
pepper. Lucille then fried the meat in her home-
rendered lard (olive oil will also work, but the
final product won't be quite as flavorful) until
well-browned. Hot out of the skillet, she packed
the pieces tightly into clean and pre-heated
canning jars, then poured steaming broth (made
by simmering the pheasant carcasses for several
hours with vegetables and spices) into the jars,
filling the space between the meat chunks and
Canned pheasant hot out of the pressure cooker. The liquid in the jars will gel upon cooling.
PHOTO
BY
GERRY
STEINAUER
PHOTO
BY
JENNY
NGUYEN
DECEMBER 2016 • NEBRASKAland 51
