Squirrel chili

[richhodg66]

Had six or eight in the freezer and #2 son is home from college so simmered them in the crock pot, picked all the meat off the bones and made a pot of white chili. Not sure what all he put in it, but it turned out pretty good.

The past few years, I haven't squirrel hunted until after deer season, so it's time now to get back out. I haven't been seeing nearly as many as most years, not sure why.

[toallmy]

Your post reminded me of my first and only attempt to cook squirrel , a older lady that I took squirrels to told me how to cook them , ' but I didn't quite get it ' she said you have got to pre boil them before you cook them , so I got me a mess together and boiled them it didn't work out very well I ended up with a kettle of bones and brown juice . Lord only knows how I made it through my childhood boy was I thick headed . Enjoy you chilli

[MaryB]

I like squirrel stew. Cut the squirrel up, flour and brown it. Add water or chicken broth and simmer until the meat is falling off the bones. When about half done add veggies of choice. When browning I also add onion and garlic(at the end so it doesn't burn). Carrot and potato are my go to veggies. Pan of biscuits and eat!

[dale2242]

I crock pot the squirrels until the meat falls off the bone.
Brown in a skillet and add BBQ sauce.
Serve on toasted burger buns.
BBQed squirrel sandwiches...dale

[owejia]

Squirrel broth/soup was a home remedy for sick folks around here when I was young. Mama made squirrel and dumplings, or fried them.

[gwpercle]

White Chili....that just sounds wrong ...I don't even want to know what white chili is .

[gon2shoot]

White Chili....that just sounds wrong ...I don't even want to know what white chili is .



Kinda like squirrel gumbo, only different.

[dpoe001]

Squirrel pot pie around my neck of the woods. I know a lot of people who eat it i give them all my squirrels. The bbq sounds good!

[richhodg66]

White Chili....that just sounds wrong ...I don't even want to know what white chili is .

A lot of people make chili with chicken. One of these days, gonna try it with fish. One of the beauties of chili, no hard and fast rules to it.

[Chad5005]

i like squirrels and gravy over rice

[Duster340]

OK.... I gotta get the 22 out this weekend. This thread is making me hungry!

[gwpercle]

A lot of people make chili with chicken. One of these days, gonna try it with fish. One of the beauties of chili, no hard and fast rules to it.
I've fixed chili with ground turkey and it's good. Whats throwing me is white chili.....
How do you make chili that's white ?
Someone post a recipe for this white Chili... I'm clueless
I know what Green Chili Stew is !
Gary

[PaulG67]

I have not had squirrel in 45+ years. I do like the idea of squirrel chili. Sounds real good.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

231947
Click to enlarge.

Earl the Squirrel didn't show up for breakfast this morning. Which one of you guys.........? ;)

[richhodg66]

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/16962/easy-white-chili/

This is probably pretty close to what the boy put in it, though he added some black beans and some other stuff.

Google white chili, you'll come up with a lot of stuff.

[gbrown]

Up at the old camp, we had plenty of fox squirrels, big and fat. Someone would go out and take about 4 and we would cut them up, fry them, make a roux and then a gravy and stew them for about 2-3 hours. Name of it is fricassee. Fall off the bone tender. Serve over potatoes or rice with some greens, biscuits or cornbread. Mmmm-good.

[redhawk0]

Squirrel Pot Pie for me too growing up in Pa....but the chili idea really sounds good. I'll have to give that a try.

redhawk

[Lloyd Smale]

ive ate it twice and you couldn't pay me to eat it again.
White Chili....that just sounds wrong ...I don't even want to know what white chili is .

[richhodg66]

To each his own. I enjoyed it as did my two sons. Can't get the wife to touch squirrel.

Like a lot of stews and chilis, this was better to me as leftovers after it had sat in the fridge over night. Seems the heat from the chili peppers he put in it came out better.

I used to bowfish every day for about seven months a year and stacked up a lot of carp, many of which I ate in various ways. Smoked it is great and I used to add smoked carp to chowders, good stuff. It's meaty, oily fish, but if you cut off the mudline, ones from a big clear lake can taste pretty good. I eat fish tacos at a place we eat sometimes, was just thinking that might be a neat variation on chili at some point too.

[MaryB]

Baked carp isn't bad... scale it, gut it, cut head off. Bake on a rack so grease can drain. Peel back the skin and munch on crackers.

[gwpercle]

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/16962/easy-white-chili/

This is probably pretty close to what the boy put in it, though he added some black beans and some other stuff.

Google white chili, you'll come up with a lot of stuff.

In Louisiana we call that recipe...White Beans not white chili...jeeze

[gwpercle]

231947
Click to enlarge.

Earl the Squirrel didn't show up for breakfast this morning. Which one of you guys.........? ;)

I thought I was the only one who feeds the squirrels....the squirrels are so much more interesting than the dumb old birds.

[richhodg66]

I thought I was the only one who feeds the squirrels....the squirrels are so much more interesting than the dumb old birds.

Well, Louisiana says and does a whole lot of things the civilized world doesn't understand so there you are...

[Der Gebirgsjager]

You're right, Mr. gwpercle. Usually, though, it starts with feeding the birds, and eventually the squirrels find out about it and move in. They are entertaining to watch.

I used to occasionally shoot the large tree squirrels out of our walnut orchard when I was a kid, and the family would eat them. A bit later in life I made a friend from Texas who would actually eat the heads, a part that we discarded. Just recently I read a news story about a fellow that caught some exotic disease from eating the heads, and died rather quickly. Wouldn't consider eating squirrel today -- those rib steaks that come from the supermarket all wrapped in plastic on a Styrofoam tray have more appeal.

Now days when I walk out to feed the squirrels, I have to look about very carefully to make sure a hungry squirrel sniper isn't drawing a bead on them! :-D

[fiberoptik]

Speaking of heads & squirrels, I once headshot a tree rat & he headed for the top of the oak tree. He ran right past the treetop! Was still running as he fell down to the ground, then stopped. Figgerin he was dead [emoji88], I walked over to pick him up. Took a peek where he was hit. Saw a big hole in head & brains [emoji3447]. Then he came back to life and tried to bite me! Dropped my .22 & quickly rung his neck like he was a rabbit [emoji235]. After that I went to hollowpoints!
Gotta agree with slow cooker. Pressure cookers work good too, and much faster!


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[fiberoptik]

Had a squirrel problem at my house in Michigan. Kept getting in soffit. Finally found his was inside my drop ceiling. Scared the **** [emoji90] out of wifey! Even more so when it chewed its way down into the living room while I wasn’t home [emoji537]. My cat ignored it. My wife ran and hid from it. I got home to fi d him hiding in ceiling again. I pulled out my Ruger single 6 with Calibri loads—primer only. Hadn’t sighted in with them, so it wasn’t working out so well. I then grabbed my Sheridan Silver streak. I’m standing on top of the 6’ ladder on tippytoes, holding my pelketgun sideways so I can git dat sucker. I have only 1 tile removed, so I’m looking for him and he tries to jump me from behind! Almost fell off the ladder on that one! He takes off for the far side of ceiling after that, so I get a sideways bead on him and [emoji95]! Dead [emoji268] [emoji232] in my ceiling! 3 days later I find my kitchen a disaster upon getting home [emoji536]. [emoji506] bread shredded, stuff knocked down. I was PO’d. Then I hear rustling behind my cabinet holding the microwave! I look [emoji102] behind it and see more brown fur and a bushy tail! Shot that one with the Sheridan as well! Of course I had to eat them both, since I did shoot them both in my house [emoji536]!
Sweet revenge!
Man—2 Squirrel—0!
(True story)
Almost as good a story as the time I head butted a Great White shark [emoji1655], better than the time I caught a deer [emoji1662] in a headlock from the car [emoji594], or had a knife pulled on me in the Philippines [emoji1198].
(Also true stories)


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[fiberoptik]

White Chili....that just sounds wrong ...I don't even want to know what white chili is .

White chili is what you get using other than beef, or in my case, before adding all the cayenne and peppers and black beans!![emoji892]!


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[Lloyd Smale]

suckers and carp are usually canned in this house. I do have to say though that I have eaten it at friends homes cooked slow on the grill and its much better then some give it credit for. Id take carp over bass any day.
Baked carp isn't bad... scale it, gut it, cut head off. Bake on a rack so grease can drain. Peel back the skin and munch on crackers.

[richhodg66]

Smoked was my favorite, but we made patties with it like you would with canned salmon and the kids loved those when they were young.

We had a strange carp die off in the big lake I live on here, real weird and the party line we got from KDWP wasn't convincing. The population of them still is nowehere close to what it was, and I'm convinced enough anglers griped about the "trash fish" that someone devised a species specific poison or micro organism to kill them off. I used to bowfish a quarter mile stretch of shore, out and back, almost every night and could count on shooting 8 or 10, now I hardly see any if I walk that stretch.

[MaryB]

In spring I always catch a dozen or so 3-4 pound carp to smoke. Vac bagged they keep frozen for a year. Great appetizer and people scarf it then ask what kind of fish. When I say carp some have turned green and I thought they were going to puke LOL Yes it is oily but as mentioned, you can trim off a lot of the fat when cleaning. I fillet and skin then smoke the fillets on a screen over a foil drip tray(a must or your smoker will reek of carp fat for months!).

[mzlldr]

I notice that nobody mentioned Curried Squirrel ---- you might be pleasantly surprised if you do .
Best wishes to all for Christmas and the New Year ,
MZZLDR

[MyFlatline]

Squirrel is good if you can get it tender. We always quick fry to brown and then place in a pressure cooker for ten minutes. Can be eatin then.. When the wife and I first got married, I was cooking down a pot of squirrels to make dumplings with, well I got side tracked out in the yard and until the smoke alarms started going off,,,well you get the picture. She has not let me live that one down yet..

We have a bumper crop this year, Maybe the air rifle needs a workout..

[WRideout]

I had tried fried squirrel once, and found it to be about like chewing a steel-belted radial tire. Then I found a recipe in Paul Prudhomme's cookbook for something called Super Squirrel, and it was great! A friend of mine, who was from Conyers GA, said that it was the best squirrel he had ever put in his mouth. He was the guy who took his wife squirrel hunting for a first date.

Wayne

[richhodg66]

If you can post that recipe, I'd be interested.

Not seeing many in the woods here this year. Kinda funny, the rabbits always get scarce after Spring, but I have never seen them so thick in Spring then disappear so completely in Summer and Fall as this year, I thought they had gone extinct. I know rodent populations come and go in cycles, could the two be related?

I haven't made an effort to squirrel hunt this year but usually see a lot during the conduct of deer hunting and didn't see many this year. Not sure what's going on.

[fiberoptik]

I thought I was the only one who feeds the squirrels....the squirrels are so much more interesting than the dumb old birds.

Fatten them up for the kill……


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[WRideout]

"If you can post that recipe, I'd be interested."

I'll send you a PM.

Wayne

[Tripplebeards]

This one makes number five...

http://i.imgur.com/teIjcN1.jpg

I've been out with the 22 wmr the last couple days and this one came sneaking in after a coyote calling session right after I turned off my foxpro to see what all the dieing rabbit noise was all about. He was one of the prettiest, softest squirrels I've harvested. It was a good sized one with a full belly of corn.

Time to fire up the croc pot!
After about four hours the meat falls off the bone and mix it up with BBQ sauce and make sloppy joes out of it. Good stuff. I normally par boil mine first. It makes all the fat,crud, and fur I missed float to the top. I scoop it all off the top if the boiling foam on the top of the pot till it boils clean and then croc it.

[richhodg66]

When I was about 14, I scrounged enough money to buy a Squires Bingham bolt action in .22 WMR and proceeded to slay all kinds of stuff with it as a teen ager (still have it), but quickly figured out the .22 WMR is too destructive on edible small game. I've used a .17 HMR on exactly one squirrel, won't do that again unless it's a head shot.

Makes me wonder why every time the ammo manufacturers want to increase the power of rimfires, they always go lighter and faster. Seems to me like the old .25 rimfire was the perfect level for edible small game, wish it was still around. I prefer cast in my .22 Hornet, cast in a .30-30 or similar or just standard .22 LR hollow points.

[Tripplebeards]

Last year every squirrel I shot with 30 gr vmax litteraly blew a huge hole in them. This year I've been trying for 100% head shots. The last four in a row put bullet sized holes in and out but destructive inside. I make sure it's head shots only with 22 wmr. The fox squirrel was #6, 12 gauge meant for a crow. I had grey stained 22lr semi auto that shot excellent...I think it was a squires Bingham as well. Long gone now.

[Tripplebeards]

I haven't harvested squirrels since the early eighties and took a few last winter and played around with cooking them. Here's how I get my squirrels ready to cook. I par boil them and scoop off all the nasty brown and white foam till the water is boils clean and then I put them in my croc pot with any seasoning ans one BBQ sauce. This gets all the fat, hair, and all the other scuz off the the wild game I missed. After about four hours in a croc pot I take them out and remove the meat off the bones. It just about falls off the bone at this point. I par boil turtle meat as well, then, like the squirrels, I'll boil till the turtle meat is tender. It gets all the nasty game taste out of the meat.

I normally just eat the meat right out of the crock or with cream of mushroom soup over toast. I'm going to try chili with this batch. This post inspired me.

http://i.imgur.com/mE0HihR.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/uLiKBl3.jpg

[Tripplebeards]

All done...just finished, vacuum sealed, and tossed back into the freezer for another day. I Crocked them for a good 6.5/7 hours. The meat is as soft as a tender cooked chicken.

Five squirrels set and done weighed 1.4lbs.

http://i.imgur.com/3xylRgb.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/WicHx5o.jpg


I only have chili mix and two cans of chili beans
left in inventory so I'll have to make a grocery run. I'll wait till after Christmas before I make tree rat chili. Gonna make normal chili "hormel style"...it's either that or I'll grab a bag of chicken noodle knock out mix and call it a day.


I just found three and one rabbit in back of my freezer from last year. They looked a little freezer burnt so I'm going to have to go get a few more.

When I was out the other day I counted 10 greys all together down the hill to the right of my tree stand. I see them everywhere when I'm in my stand bowhunting so I figured I'd climb up in it and have A sit. I can't turn that far right or I'd fall out and couldn't make a good shot anyways twisting my body. I waited about 45 min and two walked behind my tree stand and to my left. After those two were down the rest new the gig was up.


You guys that feed them would hate me. I live trap every one of those rotten things and take them as far away from my neighborhood as possible. I have two apple trees,two peach trees, two pear trees,one cherry, and a big garden they distroy. The next door neighbor feeds them non stop. He had a little over 15 mice under his feeder all at one time as well that lived under his house and front steps. They all ended up migrating into my house this winter. They did the same last year and brought fleas inside transferring them to my dog. The mice are all dead now after several glue traps and Deacon. I'm about ready to mix up some Malrin fly bait into his seed mix and call it a day.

[richhodg66]

Sounds like you need a good air rifle.

[Tripplebeards]

I own a Walter talon 22. I've tried to adjust the trigger twice. It still has a horrible, heavy pull and the air rifle is longer and heavier than a 30” shotgun.

[WRideout]

When I lived in Knoxville TN I used to hunt the Forks of the river Wildlife Management Area down next to the Tennessee River, east of town. It is adjacent to a residential neighborhood, so people walk their dogs there a lot. One day I was walking back to my car, and I saw a bird watcher in full uniform walking toward me; visor hat, binoculars, book in hand. I was, of course wearing my squirrel hunting uniform, and carrying my Win 1200. When the lady got close, she asked "What are you hunting today?" I figured, this is it, she's going to give me all kinds of trouble for killing little innocent animals. "Squirrel," I said. She replied, "Would you come over to my house and shoot some? They are getting into my bird feeder and making a mess." I never did go; safety zones around dwellings and all that, but I was sorely tempted.

Wayne