Best bird (for eating)

>O

I like turkey more than chicken, but chose chicken because I eat it like 100x more than anything else. it is just so versatile. Not crazy about any other bird I've had.

LOL at emu and puffin.

Turducken

http://www.instructables.com/files/deriv/FYD/FT6P/FUI0XOV9/FYDFT6PFUI0XOV9.SMALL.jpg

duck is rad btw

penguin

Chicken is the most versatile probably. That said goose and duck are probably better. This is very tough.

turkey is a bastard and rarely worth the trouble imo

I have pretty much had everything on there except emu and I'd like to register a little disapointment in chicken being so broad a category but I have to go with duck on this one, anyway.

Goose is awesome but it tends to be a huge mess.

yeah, all those feathers

penguin

― steamed hams (harbl), Tuesday, September 29, 2009 1:46 PM (2 minutes ago)

death march of the penguins

I eat piles of chicken, but duck is so much better. I imagine goose'd b'good, but have not had the pleasure. (No votes for anchovy in your other poll though?!)

mwhite otm re: goose mess, but I voted for it anyway. I found emu to be very similar to ostrich.

"Goose is awesome but it tends to be a huge mess."

Roast goose from Suppenkuche is like my favorite thing. The question is for eating, not for cooking.

I love all those game birds, too.

Duck is my vote, BTW. I've never tried goose though, it seems like something I'd like a lot.

torn between duck goose and chicken

i think ive posted about this on like six other threads but last week i went to this amazing little hungarian jewish restaurant in budapest and had stuffed goose neck and it was maybe one of the 20 best meals ive had in my life

Goose, outside of foie gras, is fucking horrible.

(I will allow that it's likely I've never had a well-cooked goose as my only exposure to it was a home-cooked disaster perpetrated by my father one Christmas.)

Yeah my mom made goose one x-mas when I was like 2 and apparently it was an epic debacle.

I think the poll implies best cooked under ideal conditions (and obvious foie is a huge boon for the goose vote.)

I guess "roasted goose with prune stuffing" sounded good to him at the time but he lacked the culinary prowess to not make it totally yaktastic.

But yeah, foie gras is fucking amazing.

Prune stuffing doesn't sound good whatever you are stuffing it into.

totally yaktastic.

I'm pretty sure that adding grated yak is a mistake...

I thought the prune stuffing sounded great until I tasted it; I actually liked prunes up until that point.

For centuries, a rite of passage for French gourmets has been the eating of the Ortolan. These tiny birds—captured alive, force-fed, then drowned in Armagnac—were roasted whole and eaten that way, bones and all, while the diner draped his head with a linen napkin to preserve the precious aromas and, some believe, to hide from God.

I'm going out tonight and am very very tempted to hide from God while enjoying beers.

J is going to just LOVE that.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Duckduckgoose.gif

J is going to just LOVE that.

She's already "loving" going out on a Tuesday, lol!

I voted Duck before I thought about foie gras, plus I can cook goose properly and it's pretty good in its own right but no left-overs is always a downside imo.

Have yearned to eat penguin for many years now.

Meaning to say if I'd fully considered I'd've quite probably voted goose.

Have yearned to eat penguin for many years now.

http://riotclitshave.com/2009.09/seal.jpg

So apparently one can't just throw a goose corpse in an oven and expect it to turn out tasty like a real breeze?

goose is basically the anti-chicken in that regard

It's honestly not that hard as far as I can remember.

Unless you cook it too long, obviously.

Exactly.

It's not that difficult to cook a goose. The meat is best on the rare side, like duck, and they are incredibly fatty, so you have to stab the skin all over and roast it over a large enough pan.

That last photo isn't what I'd expect to find on riotclitshave.com

I had a friend cook me a goose for my birthday many, many years ago and it almost killed his oven with spilled goose fat.

I am a big fan of pigeon and pheasant and goose and duck, and also guinea fowl (which isn't on this list, for shame, because it's surely less of an "other" than penguin unless you're like Bjork or something), but chicken wins this poll by default because it is best for doing lots of different cookery-type things with.

ailsa, have you ever had your country's grouse?

*insert joke about stolen North Sea Oil revenues here*

only the liquid variety, sadly :-)

http://files.list.co.uk/images/2008/11/20/FamousGrouse2.jpg

This is a massive oversight on my part, what with my brother having been a gamekeeper for years and everything. The opportunity just hasn't somehow presented itself. I could have picked about a hundred of the wee fuckers off the road yesterday on a drive from Inverness to Glasgow, had I fancied some roasted in essence of burnt rubber.

also, xpost lolz to Noodle Vague

I can't honestly say I'm a huge fan of Scottish cooking but the venison, grouse and salmon I've had from there have been outstanding.

My dad used to shoot and grill a lot of game birds (grouse, quail, pheasant – lord do I feel terrible having eaten a beautiful pheasant). Unfortunately he never figured out how to cook small birds & consequently my memories of them all are memories of charred carbon flavor. Poor things.

We also owned ostriches, rheas, and emus, so I've eaten a surprising number of birds here.

I make a mean roasted pork loin stuffed with prunes, just to rep for prunes as a thing to stuff into roasted meats.

voted Pigeon out of respect to the one I shot and ate last year, an act which I slightly regret but whose results were undeniably tasty

n.b. that is the only non-bug animal I have deliberately killed ever, and I don't plan to go hunting with my (licensed) friend again

Ha, Jenny, I was just thinking of my friend who does the same thing. I can easily see that adapted to goose or duck.

It's actually my mom's recipe from a Virginia Slims cookbook that she sent off for in the early 80s.

Virginia Slims cookbook!!!!! :O

My dad used to shoot and grill a lot of game birds - mine too, from time to time (dad preferred deer to birds). I have a couple distant childhood memories of having a little dish next to my dinner plate in which to place the buckshot pellets that were embedded in the meat. Unfortunately those memories are too foggy for me to have a clear recollection of how pheasant or quail actually tasted.

Voted duck, btw. It has to be prepared just right (never prepared it myself, so I don't know what goes into it) b/c there is a lot of crap duck out there (too fatty, or undercooked, much of the time) but when it is good, it is soooooooooo good.

I wonder if quail will get any votes. Tasty meat, but the fiddliness counts against it.

I voted Duck before I thought about foie gras, plus I can cook goose properly and it's pretty good in its own right but no left-overs is always a downside imo.

― Oppositional Soup (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, September 29, 2009 2:59 PM (47 minutes ago)

foie gras de canard is pretty common! maybe as much as goose?

foie gras de canard is pretty common! maybe as much as goose?

It is but distinctly inferior. You want goose liver, preferably from Les Landes.

The 'Birds of Paradise' quail at Thep Phenom are scrumptious, btw.

hen fap

pterodactyl not on the list cuz it was really a lizard?

where can I eat a goose?

we were invited over to our uncles house when ireland was poor to eat a pheasant he had run over. it was nice, until my cousin broke a tooth on a bullet.

anyway, chicken, to be boring. as an aside, i always found duck a greasy and tough meat, do not want.

Greasy? Fatty certainly, and fatty meats are the best. Tough? No way hose! Ok crispy duck is not exactly tender, but that's balanced by the crispy skin, not to mention the cucumber and celery and hoi sin sauce and pancakes. Any half decent chinese place should be able to do a mouth-meltingly succulent duck dish though.

I went to a restaurant in Beijing that specialized in fowl, it kind of like a turducken soup, they just put a bunch of birds of varying species and sizes into a pot of broth and boiled it. didn't taste like much. tiny birds are fun to eat because their drumsticks are cute.

I voted duck

Duck over goose. Confit de canard may be my favorite meal, and when served in cassoulet in the south of France it's no question. I've had delightful goose stews in the south of France too, but I still prefer duck. We had foie gras (goose) yesterday, but I don't enjoy eating it at home (where, because of costs, it's the focus of the meal) as much as I do when it's part of a multi-course meal. Also, I love duck in both French and Chinese cuisine whereas I've never had goose in Chinese cooking.

if you go to a decent Peking duck place, the chef will carve two or three slices of crisp skin from the fattiest/juiciest part of the duck and give them to you, you dip them in white sugar and it's the best thing ever

cutty wouldn't approve

i've only had duck served as a roasted breast, and will now put aside my aversion on ilx's recommendation. will report back.

grouse

I voted other because surely eating a woman is preferrable over gorging on any type of bird with feathers?!?

I have had some v good roast goose but also some goose where once the vast amounts of liquid fat had poured out the meat was very dry and dark. Still fairly tasty, but in need of a lot of gravy. Also the skin doesn't quite seem to go crispy and delicious like duck skin. Mmm duck.

I want to try SWAN! Not really happening in the UK but if I planned a trip to Europe carefully enough maybe it could be arranged?

there's a bunch here

http://images.travelpod.com/users/kyle-and-lisa/1.1238848320.brugges-from-minnewater-park.jpg

swans aren't popular as foodstuffs because they can break your arm, you know. chefs aren't keen.

it's also illegal in the UK isn't it?

yeah, ambulance services simply couldn't cope with all the broken arms.

in fact, is it something weird like treason or some other archaic offence in the UK?

yep, property of the queen. in theory, you could have hung for swanicide right up until 1998.

wikipedia says something about it only being British swans in open water, and so on, but I wouldn't want to risk it.

confused by grammar ... is it hanged or hung?

Hanged for a person, hung for a picture.

Duck takes this, and I didn't even think of confit de canard until Euler mentioned it. I take this question to mean "best bird flesh for eating" and so am not rating goose liver against duck liver as part of the computation.

That said, not enough ostrich love on the thread.

cheers chap. I thought my first post looked wrong.

i'm delighted at the thought that those dem french swans can freely be accosted in open water. of course, you run the risk of a broken arm.

And general condescending frenchness.

from a swan? don't be ridiculous.

Anyway those are Belgian swans so open season. You break my arm, you pay.

Saw the DUCK option and it was all I could do not to order in the crispy guy with pancakes. Therefore DUCK it is.

PHEASANT, PIGEON and TURKEY are dire in the wrong hands so I see the non-love...but mine are not 'wrong hands' - nobody taught how to roast a TURKEY by me (essentially: rub with butter, put in oven spine side up for the first half, flip and baste, apply bacon or slices of lardo to breast and baste baste baste some more) ever moans about dry holiday birds again. Even though I grew up around kamikaze-shitting Canada geese I've only had GOOSE two or three times - even though cooking it is one serious commitment it's great and the accompanying roasted in goose fat potatoes, sublime. I love sticky spicy wings and free-range birds but CHICKEN varies so much in quality - am dreading the form it takes in next air meal, for example.

I can't recall ever particularly enjoying turkey. It's like less succulent chicken.

^^ yea imo turkey is the worst

it has a better taste than chicken imo, although chicken is a key component of my favourite pizza and some of my favourite curries

turkey doesn't seem to work as well in curries, mexican, etc but in a straight roast off it's pretty close between the two imo.

Even though I grew up around kamikaze-shitting Canada geese

this sounds kinda hazardous

duuuuuuuuuuuck

Canada geese were really quite endangered in the early 1970s and my uncle, a conservationist (also a vice detective), would raise 14 goslings every spring as part of a state repopulation program. When they were almost grown, the state wildlife people would come out and put ID bands on their legs. He must have done this for five years. Obviously, each year's intake of goslings would imprint where they grew up and so naturally they came through when migrating or even settled in the marsh or lake with their own goslings. My uncle lived beside a creek and put out seed corn for the waterfowl, so 200-strong gaggles of geese used to arrive en mass in the spring, snarf a bunch of corn, crap on the lawn and fly off.

I really like turkey (cooking method helps, see also stuffing and gravy) but I get fatigue on about the fifth cycle of leftovers.

gawd luvvaduck.

btw suzy, I have a bit of a thing for gooses and your tale is thusly heartwarming. :)

My cousin is 35 and still calls them GEEFS.

Confit is lovely but let's not forget magret de canard too.

I think I have only ever eaten chicken, duck, quail, and turkey. Oh and pigeon too. And pheasant.

For a vegetarian, I sure have eaten a lot of birds.

My dog has the somewhat disturbing habit, from the hound in him, of eating idiot teenage doves. The damn things just stand there, he'll walk up and scarf them down like a snake, whole thing down his gullet. It's disconcerting but I can't really do anything about it but try and notice in advance if he's within pouncing range of a stupid dove. Once it's started, it's out of my hands. I pulled too many still-breathing but disemboweled doves from between his jaws before concluding this.

If your dog's a registered ILX user he can vote 'other' in that case.

They would fall under 'pigeon,' essentially.

You should register a rockruppet for your doggie.

Once I spilled some intensely glorious gravy made of duck juices & red wine and that dog of mine, when alerted to it, ran and hid under the bed. MYSTERIOUS.

Hangover?

grouse (talking spruce grouse here dont know if there are other kinds elsewhere) taste AMAZING

This thread has given me several new cooking ambitions, the strongest of which is to make a goose.

^^^ On a Frankenstein tip?

Christmas Dinner, or: the Modern Prometheus

As long as you don't disinter the corpse of a convicted goose murderer you should be cool.

I've got an unimproved bronze turkey being raised for Thanksgiving this year, but am definitely roasting a goose sometime this fall/winter.

How does a capon differ from a regular chicken (other than in price)?

Lack of interest in lady chickens.

Larger, fattier (and so juicier). Basically a rooster, castrated while a chick - they put on weight fast so can be a larger bird while still young and tender.

Worth the $$$ to try?

I don't think they taste much different from a standard chicken - maybe worth it if you need a giant roast chicken for a dinner party?

But - I'm comparing the flavor to the pasture-raised chickens we get from the farm. A supermarket capon will taste more chicken-y than the normal grocery broiler/fryer - capons generally get a more diverse diet and are slaughtered later (16 weeks vs. 8-10 weeks for regular chickens)

Yeah I only ever just buy a boiler chicken. I'm not so crazy abt chicken that I think I need to experience Chicken-level action if it costs abt the same as a goose, which has me much more curious.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.