Eating pigeons

I ate a pigeon pie in Marrakesh, Morrocco a number of years ago. It was really quite nice, despite it not being an artisan, hand reared pigeon and most likely straight out of the streets.

I'd certainly not turn my nose up at eating it again.

I remember jokingly saying to my grandad about eating some pigeons, and, with no hesitation whatsoever, he replied “you need about 12 pigeons to make a decent pie”
As he was a lifelong farmer, and survived WW2, i had no difficulty believing him.
Anyway, I’ve tried pan fried pigeon, it tastes quite like pheasant, very gamey.

Pigeon breast is nice, had that a few times in decent restaurants.

Maybe quite a lot of hassle for a small amount of meat, but as we rapidly revert to a subsistence culture, you might be on to something.

Might try cats first though.

+1 for pigeon breast and rabbit.
Haven't knowingly had grey squirrel so that's on my list.

I love pigeon breast and buy it whenever I see it. Which is usually about once or twice a year, if I happen to have popped into a posh butchers out in the country somewhere. Two pigeon breasts is (just about) enough for a main course dish for one person, I find.

Nicer than pheasant IMO.

Bought some smoked pigeon in Suffolk once, very good. Squab is the best, I've seen it as the most expensive item on a French menu.

I definitely did not shoot this delicious, plump-breasted pigeon:

the Eastern Europeans (i think they were found responsilble, i cannot find the link) were partial to swan a few years ago in Lincoln

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-21015523

Love a lot of game - pheasant, rabbit, that sort of thing, but the only time I've had pigeon it was horrible. Starter for a Christmas dinner and it was like trying to eat nearly raw liver (rest of the dinner was great though). It's possible the chef hadn't cooked it properly I suppose but it's put me off pigeon for life.

I've always wondered what a scrawny city centre pidgeon would taste like. is it advisable just to grab one, take it home and cook it? 😆

Or are edible ones a specific breed?

Also seagulls, what do they taste like?

I have only had pigeon in dodgy pubs, rather then “nice restaurants”, and it was damn good. Spit the shot out though.

If you can crown a pigeon it’s a pretty quick way of removing the breast meat (same technique works well with a pheasant as well) It’s basically entirely lean so needs short cooking. Anything else and it gets tough. Rabbit is similar in that it’s pretty lean, but can be braised with stock, wine etc. just be ok with using your hands and getting the meat off the bones. Again the gutting and skinning technique is pretty easy and quick when you have done it a few times. They are all pretty tasty, you just need to be a half decent cook to make it work

Or are edible ones a specific breed

Woodpigeons

One of the advantages of occasionally canoeing with a game keeper. Fresh meat on the river tours we do.

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/8053/8137971436_0ab40a0cda_h.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/8053/8137971436_0ab40a0cda_h.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/dp8eom ]Canoe river Spey[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/matt_outandabout/ ]Matt[/url], on Flickr

I used to shoot a lot of pigeons and either ate or sold any that were undamaged. 'Wild pigeon' or 'pan fried pigeon breast with pancetta' etc feature on many a rural gastro pub menu. Pigeon breast is superb eating but a lot of people are put off by it being overcooked. If it is cooked properly and left pink it is tender and has a fantastic subtle flavour, more like steak than game. If overcooked, which is easy to do, it's leathery and tough and tastes over over cooked liver! It goes really well with black pudding and redcurrant jelly.

It's a while since I used to do it regularly but I used to get 45p per bird or £1 for a prepared 'crown' from a game dealer. It's easily possible to shoot 100 or more in a go when they are feeding on peas, barley, oil seed rape etc.  Most of these were exported to France where they are appreciated a lot more than here.

Occasionally I was able to sell them directly to country pubs and restaurants who took fewer but would pay up to £3 or £4 per unprepared bird.

Rabbit too, I used to do pest control at a livery yard that were plagued with them. Headshot with a .22 rimfire to limit meat damage, those I didn't eat were sold for a £1 a time to my village butcher. I never had a problem shifting them

This is free range, organic, low food miles, sustainable meat. It's had a better life than any supermarket chicken and farmers need to protect their crops. Win win.

Also seagulls, what do they taste like?

Apparently seagulls taste awful, which is a shame

I always thought the pigeon they served up in restaurants was a different breed to the one you see in the streets? Wood pigeon maybe?

Pigeons for eating are farmed and fed a decent diet so they taste good. City ones would be rather nasty i think.

I eat pigeon when i see it on a menu. Good scoff.

I was once given a pigeon in france that still had its head and eyes. That was a bit offputting

Rabbit is good as well. Rabbits were introduced to the uk as a supply of cheap meat. They are not indigenous iirc

Saddle or loin is the best bit of a rabbit. Needs a strongly flavoured sauce and if roasted wrap it in bacon first

Mmmmmmmmmm

I always thought the pigeon they served up in restaurants was a different breed to the one you see in the streets? Wood pigeon maybe?

Yep. Nice fat wood pigeon for the pan. I wouldn't be eating any town centre feral pigeon fed on a diet of fag butts and kebab scraps!

https://birdwatchingpro.com/can-you-eat-seagulls/#:~:text=And%20while%20wild%20seagulls%20may,the%20meat%20is%20not%20palatable

Here's everything you ever wanted to know about eating seagulls

Wood pigeon is lovely, as said, crown the breast, 30 seconds a side in a hot pan, then mushrooms in the same pan, once softened, deglaze the pan with red wine, reduce, serve on some nice toast of your choice.🤌

(Ideally outside on a camping stove.)

Definitely edible - far better than just salvageable. We're having pigeon katsu curry tonight actually!! Got loads in the freezer that I've shot off the fields around here (with permission and in compliance with GL42 - see the other thread!).

Woodpigeons are very picky eaters and move around finding the best food source at any point during the year so the meat is great. Can't say I've tried kebab eating ferals from cities...

Good one to try is to pan fry the breasts (keep it pink - def don't overdo it) and thinly sliced over a salad (with some lardons or cubes of black pudding), deglaze the pan with some red wine / port and a dash of balsamic then drizzle over as a dressing.

If anyone is near NE Derbyshire then I can get you pigeon, rabbits and venison depending on season. I'm a registered food business with a 5* food hygiene rating. Just drop me a PM.

Pigeons for eating are farmed and fed a decent diet so they taste good. City ones would be rather nasty i think.

Same with the rats they serve up in posh European restaurants. They aren't just fished out of the local canal.

I was once given a pigeon in france that still had its head and eyes. That was a bit offputting

Common with poultry too. French farmed rabbit often comes with the skinned head staring out at you. Rather off putting

Yep. Nice fat wood pigeon for the pan. I wouldn’t be eating any town centre feral pigeon fed on a diet of fag butts and kebab scraps!

yep this. also including left over crisps, Greggs, McDonalds, pavement pizza and any other crap that chavs chuck on the floor!

Pigeons for eating are farmed and fed a decent diet so they taste good. City ones would be rather nasty i think.

Not in the UK.  Most Wood Pigeon sold in pubs and restaurants is wild and will have been shot over decoys on arable crops. Something like 3 million are shot for crop protection in the UK every year and most go to game dealers. Sustainable wild food.  These days game dealers will insist on the use of steel or other non toxic shot.

Rather off putting

Why? Do you feel the same when fish still have their heads on? It’s a dead animal, if you need to pretend otherwise to eat it, perhaps you shouldn’t.

Rip'n'flip.

Twist off the head; stick two fingers into the hole until you feel the bottom of the breastbone, pull it up and the breasts rotate up and free almost like they were designed that way. Good eating.

I used to eat wood pigeon when I was younger, you want to bear in mind what they are eating, if they are out in the fields all day long, their diet is good. If they are in urban areas, you'll effectively be eating an animal that eats old scraps.

Classic old English cuisine pigeon. Mind you, it's not very nice for the pigeon.

Yeah you want wood pigeons, they are much bigger and have clearly much larger breasts on them, almost like small chickens round here.

I was once on a bike ride and saw two blokes with guns walking the other way. Stopped for a chat and to see if they were airguns (they were) and they said they regularly came out for rabbits, pigeons and squirrels. Squirrel is a popular one in the US but they have much larger species available.

Hedgehogs also apparently good, you have to cook them the Romany way wrapped in clay, but they aren't doing so well these days so don't eat them.

And of course deer are a pest all over the place and fairly widely available.

Don’t kill the hedgehogs! Properly in decline. Look after ‘em!

And leave deer for people who know what they’re doing.

I want venison now…

Herring gulls can be eaten but they need to be fed on grain first so they dont taste of fish or rubbish

Unless you were on st kilda where they lived on seabirds

Ta blokeuptheroad. I thought they were farmed

My lad prepped and cooked a pigeon on a Scout "survival" weekend a year or two back. Not sure where they were sourced from, possibly an allotment

Why? Do you feel the same when fish still have their heads on? It’s a dead animal, if you need to pretend otherwise to eat it, perhaps you shouldn’t.

Calm down there skippy. I never said I didn’t eat them. I’ve shot pigeon, rabbit, goose, pheasant, woodcock and squirrel and eaten them. I also sea fish from a kayak.

If you don’t think the lidless, sightless eye of a skinned mammal skull staring up at you is ‘slightly’ off putting them I think that marks you up as a wrong ‘in in my book

Save the hedgehogs by eating a badger

Squirrel is OK, a bit like tough rabbit. Apparently it takes 24 blackbirds to make a decent pie. Not tried them though

No, it’s four and twe……oh

Carry on

My lad prepped and cooked a pigeon on a Scout “survival” weekend a year or two back.

I remember doing this at scouts and baking them in clay in the embers of a fire sometime in the 80's. It tasted fantastic
I still prefer rabbit though. Stewed with bacon in cider, yum 😋

I shoot and eat woodpigeon. They're delicious and dead easy to pluck. Usually I cheat and just take off the breasts and panfry in butter with seasoning - foraged blackberries go really well with them. It's virtually a cost-free meal.

If you're on Facebook the Giving Up the Game used to be good for cheap game. Less so these days as it seems to be be mostly folk selling (for more than just the ammo) and if I was going that way I'd rather go to a licensed dealer. Still, if you know what you're looking at it's still worth a look. Mostly England and Wales though.

I used to do pest control at a livery yard that were plagued with them.

A friend many many years ago set himself up doing pest control on his free evenings and weekends. Used to pretty much keep him and his missus in rabbit and pigeon meat while he still had the time and inclination to do it.

Yuck, some folk will eat anything.

Not a big fan of eating game birds, though I've cleaned a shed load of them, especially turkeys.Plus geese,ducks, pheasants etc

It's about as far as you're ever going to get your hand up a bird.

Pigeon broccoli and Stilton soup is most excellent.

Rabbit and squirrel gratin ain't bad either

Had fried pigeon breast in a local pub a few years back, tasted flipping awesome as well as being relatively cheap so then found a local game farm shop that sells it.

Excellent pan fried (as many other have mentioned), add some cherries to the pan as well and serve with some rocket. Makes you feel like you're dining in a gastro-pub without the ludicrous prices.

Rabbit is good too, had the head served up too once at a Breton colleagues house in France

Calm down there skippy

Yup, eaten that too...

Closest comparison I can think of is duck, minus the fat.

Also seagulls, what do they taste like?

Apparently seagulls taste awful, which is a shame

As most species of gull are protected, because of declining numbers due to overfishing, that’s no bad thing.

Inland gulls, on the other hand, considering what they’re happy to eat, and just how badly their excrement will eat into the paint on a car, unless it’s washed off immediately, I wouldn’t want have anything to do with! 🤢

Isn't it wood pigeon that you eat?

They're decent sized around my bit.

My mum was from Ness and would get the occasional Guga. Now that was a fishy tasting meat.

https://lookingnorth.blog/2020/06/the-guga-hunters-of-ness/

Eating gulls makes me think of St Kilda.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/12/the-remarkable-story-of-st-kildas.html

Looks a bit rough to me.

Our cat loves pigeon and occasionally brings one in for us to try.
Which is surprising when one considers the size of the cat flap, a pigeon and his own relatively petite size compared to a pigeon.

I wonder if he’d like a Saturday job working at the allotments.

Wood pigeon and rabbit are nice eating. Been to St Kilda 3 times but never ate a gull.

eating seagulls

if you got the right seagull here in brighton it would taste of ice cram n chips i recon.

mostly they probably taste of bins - i cant think of a less appetizing animal.

Baby pigeons. Yes, those that are about to have dark colour feathers. Yummy in Chinese herbal stew. My grandma used to eat a lot of those and we get to eat them too as a kid.

However, the wood pigeons in the UK are just too beautiful to eat. I like looking at them.

Oh ya ... Pheasants that taste good too. I remember not long after arriving back to UK I went to the local market in the Toon where they once sold game meat (not anymore). Well, I saw them selling whole pheasants so I bought three of them whole ... unprepared full of feathers. Such beautiful birds so I just put them in a plastic bag to carry them around. LOL! Well I thought everyone would carry dead whole pheasants around. Some people looked at me LOL! Took it back to my flat and started plucking the feathers and gutted it. I cooked in 3 different ways. Boiled in soup, oven and stir fried .... apart from soup that tasted good, the other two methods of cooking were like chewing my boots. LOL! Taste good though.

They let you buy 3? They didn't sell them by the brace?

Yeah, most cooking methods need liquid or sealing the meat to stop it getting dry or tough. Stew is good.

They let you buy 3? They didn’t sell them by the brace?

Yes, I remember buying 3. Not in brace not sure why. I know they were cheap.

Oh ya ... I have never tasted pheasants in my life before, so I thought they must be "chicken" like but with game meat taste that's all. LOL!

Yeah, most cooking methods need liquid or sealing the meat to stop it getting dry or tough. Stew is good.

I was just cooking them oriental style like clear soup. Next time I will stew them if I can find them cheap.

I was once given a pigeon in france that still had its head and eyes.

That's to see you through the week!

I thank you. Try the pheasant, I'm here all week.

I was once given a pigeon in france that still had its head and eyes.

The far east style cooking in herbal soup, once done we just eat the entire head whole with the brain, eyes the lot coz the flavour of the herbal soup basically covered whatever the head tasted like.

Same goes with chicken head and as a kid we used to bite off the skull to eat the brain ... Yes, I know it's not how people eat here.

There is a cooking school in Leeds that focusses on all that kind of stuff. You can book in there to be a customer for the trainees. I think you'd love it. Some of it was too much for me though when I tried it. I am never going anywhere near "honeycomb pork" again... 🤣 [ it was something tripe like, not pork belly, to my surprise shock ]