Since moving into my house in Klickitat County in 2017, I've killed 38 invasive eastern gray squirrels in my yard. To be clear, these are not the native western gray squirrels nor the invasive California ground squirrels/"gray diggers" - I'm very experienced at identifying the differences. With my deer meat supply running low, I decided to tap my reserves of squirrel meat in the freezer yesterday. I thawed out 9 squirrels (skinned and gutted with head, tail, and feet removed) and threw them in the crock pot with some water, chicken bullion cubes, and apple cider vinegar for about 6 hours. I then pulled them out of the crock pot, let them cool for a few minutes, and was able to effortlessly strip the meat off of the carcasses. The rib meat and latissimus dorsi muscles were pretty chewy and so I didn't end up saving much of that, but in the end, I had about a half-gallon worth of shredded squirrel meat. The meat has the texture, consistency, color, smell, and taste of turkey dark-meat. I wanted to put away some meals in the freezer and wanted to try different recipes with the squirrel meat, and was able to find three winners. I followed each recipe pretty close, but made some slight modifications along the way. I ended up with 1) squirrel stew with pakrika (this ended up being a lot like a red meat sauce that I plan to put on pasta), 2) coconut squirrel curry (recipe was for chicken but I just swapped it for squirrel), and 3) bbq squirrel quesadillas (again, a chicken recipe. I added pineapple tidbits to this recipe, which were great. This works as a perfect filler for sliders, burgers, quesadillas, etc.). I ended up with 18 meals worth of squirrel. These aren't quite stand-alone meals, as the first recipe will be supplemented with pasta, the second with rice or something similar, and the third with tortilla shells/hamburger buns. All three recipes turned out extremely tasty, and my wife will even eat them!
If you're interested, here are the links to the recipes used, and some photos to go along with it (my wife made some homemade French bread yesterday too, so it made it in the photos).
https://honest-food.net/squirrel-stew-recipe-paprika/https://tasty.co/recipe/coconut-chicken-curryhttps://www.budgetbytes.com/ultimate-bbq-chicken-quesadillas/Enjoy!
