Cooking Sandhill Crane Breast

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees when you are ready to cook the breast melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan and sear the breast skin side down to start.

Cooking sandhill crane breast.

Sandhillcranehunting wildeats fieldtotable sandhill crane is one of the best tasting game birds out there. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Onion powder in a small bowl or cup. Cook crane until nicely browned just as with all waterfowl do not over cook as meat is thin it will cook very quickly depending on how hot your coals are.

Liberally coat breast in wild game rub ensuring meat is covered but rub is not caking off the breast. Garlic salt and tsp. This pre meal entree goes very well with a fine bottle of your favorite beer. Cooked rare it tastes just like a ribeye.

Cooking the sandhill crane. Next put the breast on a pre heated grill and cook over high heat searing the breast for 2 3 minutes per side until rare to medium rare. The breast meat is like roast beef hence the moniker the rib eye of the sky but again it can tough and dry if cooked too fast. Dry meat and cut into bite sized pieces.

Cut bacon strips in half crosswise and wrap each piece of crane with a section of bacon securing with a toothpick in the center. Let them sit in the fridge for at least 3 hours or over night. Cook indirectly for 30 45 minutes until the internal temperature of the breast reaches 120 125 degrees. Sear for 4 5 minutes on each side then transfer the breast to a baking sheet and put in the oven while you make the sauce about 8 to 10 minutes for medium rare.

The legs are relatively huge and full of tendons worse than any bird out there. Red chile powder 1 tsp. Brine crane breasts for 24 hours in enough water to cover the breasts with 3 5 tablespoons of salt. I start out with the montreal steak seasoning and slap ya mama cajun seasoning.

Once the meat is thawed out and cleaned mix up 1 tsp. Place the seasoned crane breasts on your soaked cedar planks and place them on the grill. The thighs are tasty the lightest colored and most moist meat on a crane. Roughly crush the peppercorns and rub them into the crane breast wrap in plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge for a few hours.

Seasoning each side of the crane breasts liberally and put them in a zip lock bag. Next i add about a quarter to half of the bottle of the allegro marinade depending how many crane breasts i have. Crane can be tough and a challenge to cook. Grill on bbq using a flat screen style tray other wise the thinly sliced crane will fall on to coals.