Squirrel Is A Superfood!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love squirrel hunting. I love hunting them and I love eating them. I don't care who knows it, I love squirrel!

I live in the suburbs so talking about hunting and eating squirrel gets a little sketchy depending on the company. Most people think I hunt and eat the squirrels they see going to their bird feeders. Generally, that is not the case. While the squirrels around my house do get pretty big due to the fact that they have no issues finding food, I don't consider them to be what I am looking for when I hunt and eat squirrel. Suburban squirrel eat a lot of things other than the seed from the feeder. I prefer my squirrel to come from areas where it's less likely that they were eating from the local bird feeder recently. I tend to hunt them in areas not very close to houses and away from easy access to supplemental food sources. There are many public land areas nearby that have plenty of "wild" food for them which makes me feel better about eating them. Do I know for sure if they aren't getting additional food from somewhere? No, I don't. The idea of eating wild game is to eat meat that has less added "stuff" than what you get at the grocery store. It makes me feel better if nothing else.

So, what does squirrel taste like? It sounds generic, but I would equate it to chicken. Since most people only have a few things to compare to, chicken seems the closest. More specifically, dark meat chicken. Think, chicken thighs. It has the same texture and taste as chicken thighs. At least to me and my daughter. My wife says it reminds her of beef but with a slightly different texture. My wife also doesn't like it when we refer to the meat as squirrel. She says it's a mental barrier for her. To keep her from getting turned off from what I made, we either don't tell her what it was or we refer to it as "limb chicken". We stole that last one from Danielle Prewett from Wild + Whole. I do recommend checking out her recipes for wild game. They are where I get a lot of my inspiration.

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Squirrel Taco Meat

How do you cook squirrel? Well, there are a thousand different ways to cook squirrel. From the standard squirrel and dumplings to buffalo squirrel "wings". There is even a World Championship Squirrel Cook Off. At this event, people come to show off different ways to cook squirrel. Some of them are pretty fancy! Personally, I prefer to pressure cook the meat so it's fall-off-the-bone tender, then I can do whatever I want. A favorite in my house is tacos. My daughter loves tacos of all kinds, but squirrel tacos are a definite favorite. I've also found that squirrel lends itself very well to a pulled pork style BBQ. Another favorite of mine is squirrel noodle soup. Since it's very similar to dark meat chicken, it's an easy substitute in soup. In fact, I would bet that many people won't notice unless you tell them.

In order to have enough meat to make a meal, I do recommend at least 3 squirrels. If they are all gray squirrels, I would say maybe it's better to have 5. I am lucky to have a lot of pretty large fox squirrels around so I don't usually need as many. Plus, I'm only cooking for a family of 3. A big male fox squirrel can yield nearly 3/4 of a pound of meat. Whereas a gray squirrel is usually less than half a pound. Your results may vary, of course.

While deer hunting recently, I saw 8 squirrels and zero deer. That tells me that I need to come back to that spot after deer season and get some squirrels. This was at a friends place where they don't hunt anything but deer. I've tried to convince them to go after the turkeys that are everywhere, the squirrels, even the geese that fly low and slow overhead. Boomer and I went after the geese this fall with no fallen geese to show for it. As was the case for most of this year, the weather played a big part in our lack of success. Still, I will be going back after the squirrels that came tromping thru the woods making me think there was a deer coming. Revenge will taste great mixed with BBQ sauce on a slider bun!