Delicious recipes to make the most of your pigeon shoot!

Pigeon Shooting Season is here!

Pigeon shooting season is upon us again and we here at Reid Outdoors are hoping that your shooting days go so well that you have an abundance of birds. So we've put together a selection of our favourite recipes to help you get the most from your rewards.

Pigeon & Beetroot Salad

This is one our favourite recipes on the BBC Good Food website. The game, fruit and beetroot really compliment each other.

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 rosemary Sprig
• 4 pigeon breasts
• 100g bag washed watercress
• 1 eating apple
• 4 cooked beetroots (not in vinegar)
• 100g toasted roughly chopped hazelnuts

For the dressing

• 1 tsbp balsamic vinegar
• 3 tsbp olive oil

Method

Make the dressing by mixing the balsamic and olive oil together.

Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the garlic and rosemary, then the seasoned pigeon breasts. Cook for 3 mins on each side and remove to a plate.

Divide the watercress between 4 plates, arrange the apple and beetroot over, then the sliced pigeon breasts. Scatter with hazelnuts, drizzle with the dressing and serve straight away.

Pigeon and bacon burgers

This is a great recipe from the River Cottage website, serve it with some crusty bread rolls, gherkins, mustard and ketchup for the perfect snack or BBQ treat.

Ingredients:

• 250g boneless pigeon breast meat, skin removed
• 250g dry-cured smoked streaky bacon, rind removed
• A good knob of butter
• A few bay leaves
• Freshly ground black pepper

Method

Roughly cut the pigeon and bacon into chunks. Fit your mincer with the coarse blade. Mince the meats together, then mix well by hand and pass the mixture through the mincer again.

Divide the mixture into 4 even portions. Form these into thick burgers using your hands, or a burger press if you have one. Place the burgers in the fridge to firm up for an hour or two before cooking.

Heat a large non-stick frying pan over a medium-high heat (or you can cook the burgers on a barbecue or under a hot grill if you prefer). Season the burgers with a little pepper (you won’t need salt as the bacon will provide enough). When the pan is really hot, add the burgers and sear on one side without moving for around 5 minutes; if things start to get a bit smoky, turn down the heat slightly. Don’t be tempted to faff about with the burgers; leave them alone as prodding and poking can cause them to fall apart or release precious moisture.

Once the burgers are well browned on the underside, turn them over in the pan,

add the butter and bay leaves and cook for a further 5 minutes. 

Then turn off the heat and leave the burgers in the pan to rest for 5 minutes.

We hope that you might try one of these delicious recipes and that you enjoy them as much as us. If you have any tasty pigeon dishes of your own please let us know in the comments section below.

If you are going pigeon shooting check out the pigeon shooting section on our website by clicking the image below.