How to Cook Wood Pigeon Over Fire - The Cheapest Game Bird, and One of the Best

If I had to pick one game bird to persuade someone that game is worth eating, it would not be pheasant or partridge. It would be a wood pigeon. The breast is a dark, dense, iron-rich little piece of meat that eats like a very good steak, it costs almost nothing, there is no close season so it is available all year, and over a fire it is done in four minutes.

It also has a reputation for tasting of liver, which it only does when it has been overcooked. Keep it pink and it tastes like what it is: the best bird on the list and the one nobody buys.

Buying Pigeon

• Wood pigeon, not squab. Squab is a farmed young pigeon, pale and mild and expensive. Wood pigeon is the wild bird, shot as a crop pest in enormous numbers across Britain, dark and rich and cheap
• Buy the breasts if you are new to it: two per bird, about 60g each, usually sold in packs of four or six. One bird is a starter; two is a main
• Buy whole birds if you want the carcass for stock, which is worth it. Plucked or skinned; skinned is more common and perfectly fine for breasts, because pigeon skin does not crisp well anyway
• Check for shot. Pigeon is shot with small pellets. Run a finger over each breast

The Breasts, Over Embers

This is the whole method and it takes less time to do than to read.

• Breasts out of the fridge half an hour before, patted dry, brushed with oil, salted
• A bed of hot embers, a clean grate. The hand test: two seconds at 12cm
• Two minutes on the first side. Do not move them
• Flip. Ninety seconds
• Pull at 54 to 56C in the thickest part. They will rest to about 58C, which is pink through, like a good steak
• Rest three minutes on a board. Slice each breast into three on the angle

That is it. If you take them past 62C the texture tightens and the flavour goes livery, and that is the only thing that ever goes wrong with pigeon.

Whole Bird, Spatchcocked

A whole pigeon flattened and cooked like a tiny chicken is a lovely thing and a slightly longer job: backbone out, press flat, oil and salt, six minutes skin side up in the cool zone of the fire, then two or three minutes over the embers to colour. The legs will be a little chewy whatever you do; they are small and sinewy and best gnawed with your fingers rather than fought with a knife.

Pigeon is the bird I put on the fire when a guest tells me they do not like game. Ninety seconds a side, pink, a smear of something sweet. They ask what it was, I tell them, and they go a bit quiet.
- Cai

What to Serve It With

Pigeon is rich and iron-dark, so it wants sweetness and earth. Beetroot from the embers. A puree of celeriac or cauliflower. Blackberries, cherries or a spoon of damson jam loosened with the pan juices. Wild mushrooms in butter. Black pudding, which is the classic and the right pairing. A crust of charred bread underneath to catch the juice. For a canape, one slice of breast on a disc of black pudding with sticky onions is as good as party food gets.

The Carcass

If you bought whole birds, roast the carcasses hard over the fire once the breasts are off, then simmer them with an onion, a bay leaf and a few juniper berries for a couple of hours. The stock is dark and intense and makes the sauce for the next pigeon you cook. Nothing from a bird that cost two pounds needs to go in the bin.

Pigeon is on the fire at every workshop we run, because it is the fastest way to show someone what a game bird can be. For the other birds in the season, my guide to game birds over fire covers pheasant, partridge and duck.