Squirrels had been a significant item of diet all the way back to our country’s beginning. Here are a few scrumptious squirrel recipes with “all the fixins.”

One of the favorite family meals when I was a youngster was squirrel with all the fixins. That usually meant squirrel recipes served with baked sweet potatoes, gravy, cathead biscuits and some type of vegetable (typically canned green beans or turnip greens from the fall garden) to accompany meat taken from the hardwood forests, which surrounded my highland homeland in the Great Smokies. For dessert there would almost always be something made from apples, thanks to the fact that we had a small orchard and the fruit was harvested pretty much at the same time as the hunting season for bushytails opened.

Although I was unaware of the fact at the time, my family was eating in a fashion similar to countless others. Over wide ranges of the country going after squirrels topped the list when it came to the most popular time of hunting. The treetop acrobats were abundant, deer had not yet begun their great comeback story and most folks had ready access to woodlands where squirrels could be found and hunted. Indeed, squirrels had been a significant item of diet all the way back to our country’s beginning. In that regard it is worth remembering that the Overmountain Boys who turned the tide in the Revolutionary War battle of Kings Mountain were sharpshooters who had honed their marksmanship hunting squirrels for the pot.

 

As a youngster I may have been ignorant of squirrel hunting’s historical significance or popularity, but rest assured I knew all about the way the little game animal factored into the “meat on the family table” equation. We ate squirrel regularly, and the only real limitation connected to enjoying this particular type of game focused on how much provender my after-school hunts could provide, buttressed by Saturday hunts with Dad. Both my mother and paternal grandmother could work kitchen wonders with squirrel, and since my maternal grandmother hunted them with a passion presumably she could as well.

Here are a few of my family’s favorite squirrel recipes. Folks don’t eat squirrel much these days, but the animals remain abundant and over much of the country you can hunt them for a couple of months after whitetail season comes to an end. Some states even have a spring season.

 

Anna Lou’s Squirrel

My mother, Anna Lou Moore Casada, prepared squirrel in a variety of ways, but this recipe bearing her name (she would have scoffed at the thought) was perhaps best loved of all. It also enjoys the undoubted advantage of simplicity.

• 2 squirrels, dressed
• Water to cover the meat
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1-2 tablespoons butter

Place dressed squirrels in a large saucepan. Cover with cold water, add soda, and heat to boiling. Remove from heat and rinse squirrel well under running water, rubbing as needed to remove the soda. Return to the pan and cover with fresh water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until tender. Place squirrel in a baking dish, dot with butter, and bake at 350 degrees until browned and crusty.

TIPS: The recipe can be doubled if desired. Use the broth from cooking the squirrel, with milk added and some flour used for thickening, to make delicious gravy.

 

Squirrel and Biscuit-Style Dumplings Recipe

• 2 squirrels, dressed and cut into serving pieces
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 3 or 4 chopped carrots
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 cups water

Place the squirrel pieces in a Dutch oven and cover with water. Add bay leaves and simmer for 90 minutes or until squirrels are tender. Skim if necessary. Squirrel meat may be removed from the bones at this point and returned to the stew if you desire. Add onion, celery, carrots, seasonings and water. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Increase heat to boiling. Add dumplings and continue cooking per directions for dumplings below.

For Dumplings:

• ½ cup milk
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt

Slowly add milk to dry ingredients until thoroughly mixed into batter. Drop by teaspoons into boiling stew. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes longer or until dumplings are done in the center.

 

Squirrel with Lima Beans

• ¼ pound bacon
• 2 squirrels, dressed and cut into serving pieces
• 2 cups dried lima beans, soaked overnight
• Flour, salt and pepper
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 chopped celery ribs
• 2 chopped carrots
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 cup chopped okra
• 3 diced potatoes
• 2 cups frozen corn
• 2 (16-ounce) cans stewed tomatoes
• 1 bay leaf
• Dash of thyme and parsley
• ½-1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (if desired)

Dredge squirrels in flour, salt and pepper mixture. In Dutch oven, fry bacon and remove. Brown squirrels in the bacon drippings and then cover meat, bacon, lima beans, onion, celery and carrots with boiling water. Simmer for two hours. Squirrel meat may be removed from bones at this point if you desire. Add remaining ingredients and simmer for and hour longer or until squirrel and vegetables are tender. If desired, thicken with a flour-and-water paste and adjust seasonings to personal taste.

 

Squirrel and Hashbrown Potatoes

• 1½-2 cups chopped, cooked squirrel
• 3 medium potatoes (about 1¼ pound)
• 1/3 cup bacon drippings or cooking oil
• ¼- ½ cup finely diced onion
• ½ teaspoon salt
• Several dashes freshly ground black pepper

Stew squirrel in water until tender then remove and chop into small pieces. Peel and coarsely grate potatoes. Place drippings in skillet and heat, then slide potatoes into heated grease. Sprinkle onion, squirrel, and seasonings over potatoes. Cover and cook moderately fast until potatoes are browned on the underside. Stir to blend, turn over, cover and brown other side. Total cooking time is approximately 10 minutes. Serve immediately.

TIP: Either an ulu or kitchen scissors works well for chopping up the squirrel.

 

 

Creamed Squirrel Recipe

• ¼ cup chopped onion
• ¼ cup chopped green pepper
• ¼ cup chopped celery
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup chicken or squirrel broth
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 2 squirrels, cooked and chopped
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
• Small can pimiento (optional)
• Paprika

Sauté onion, green pepper and celery in butter until tender. Add broth, mushroom soup, squirrel, chopped boiled eggs, and pimiento (you can reserve a few slices of egg as a garnish if desired). Heat thoroughly and adjust thickness by adding more broth to thin or a flour/water paste to thicken. Serve in puff pastry shells, over toast points, or atop halved cathead biscuits. Sprinkle paprika atop each serving.

 

Jim Casada is the longtime Editor-at-Large for Sporting Classics. He is the co-author, with his late wife Ann, of a number of well-received cookbooks focusing on game, fish and foods from nature. To learn more about them or his latest work, A Smoky Mountain Boyhood: Memories, Musings, and More, visit his website at Jim Casada Outdoors.