Pheasant and Wild Rice

The beer cheese soup aftermath. The post is still getting comments a week later. People are making it and posting photos and tagging me. Someone called me "the pierogi and beer guy," which I guess is my brand now. There are worse brands. I could be "the kale smoothie guy" or "the deconstructed everything guy." I'm the pierogi and beer guy. I can live with that.

At the brewery, the news spread. The head brewer saw the post and said, "You used our lager?" I said, "I credited Lakefront in the recipe." He said, "Good." Then he paused and said, "The soup is good." From a man who has spoken approximately four hundred words to me in six years, this is a State of the Union address.

Megan is back in the classroom. New year, new kids, new energy. She has twenty-three students this year, including a set of twins who apparently finish each other's sentences and a girl named Sofia who brought Megan a drawing of a cat on the first day. Megan put the cat drawing on the fridge at home. Our fridge is now decorated with a nine-year-old's cat drawing. I love this.

September means the Packers are back. Tom and I watched the opener at his house — the usual setup: recliner, couch, beer, brats, opinions. The Packers won and Tom was happy, which means he said, "Not bad," and ate another brat. The Kowalski emotional spectrum is narrow but deep.

Made a Polish hunter's stew — bigos — for the first time this fall. The recipe is Babcia's: sauerkraut, fresh cabbage, pork shoulder, kielbasa, dried mushrooms, caraway seeds, bay leaves. It simmers for hours. The apartment smells like autumn and Poland and everything good. Bigos is the soup equivalent of a warm blanket. You eat it when the world gets colder and you need to be reminded that warmth exists.

Making bigos opened something in me—that instinct to slow-cook through September, to let the apartment fill with something that smells like it took effort and time. Pheasant and wild rice is cut from the same cloth: it’s a hunter’s dish, autumnal by nature, the kind of thing that makes sense when the Packers are back on and the world outside is starting to go amber. If bigos is the warm blanket, this is the wool sweater—different texture, same purpose.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 1 hour 20 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 40 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 lbs bone-in pheasant pieces (legs and breasts)
1 cup wild rice, rinsed
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 stalks celery, sliced
2 medium carrots, sliced into rounds
8 oz cremini mushrooms, sliced
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 bay leaves
Salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

Season and sear. Pat the pheasant pieces dry and season generously with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika. Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Sear the pheasant pieces 3—4 minutes per side until deeply golden. Remove and set aside.
Build the base. Reduce heat to medium. Add onion, celery, and carrots to the same pot. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5—6 minutes until softened. Add garlic and mushrooms and cook another 3 minutes until the mushrooms begin to release their liquid.
Deglaze. Pour in the white wine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Let it simmer for 2 minutes until slightly reduced.
Add rice and broth. Stir in the wild rice, chicken broth, thyme, and bay leaves. Nestle the seared pheasant pieces back into the pot, submerging them partially in the liquid.
Simmer low and slow. Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 55—65 minutes, until the wild rice has opened and is tender and the pheasant is cooked through and falling off the bone. Check liquid levels halfway through and add a splash of broth if needed.
Finish and serve. Remove the bay leaves. Taste and adjust seasoning. Shred the pheasant meat off the bone if desired and stir back into the pot. Ladle into deep bowls and finish with fresh parsley.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pheasant and Wild Rice — When the Hunter’s Instinct Takes Over the Kitchen