A few winters ago I was cleaning out my grandmother’s attic — the kind of job you put off for years because you know it’s half mouse droppings and half guilt — when I found a leather folder wedged behind a stack of Progressive Farmer magazines from 1972.
It was dark brown, cracked at the spine, held shut by a leather cord that had stiffened into something closer to wire. Inside: my great-grandfather’s hunting recipes. Seventeen of them, handwritten on paper so thin you could read the recipe on the other side if you held it up to the window. Some pages had grease stains. A few had blood. One had what I’m reasonably sure is a whiskey ring.
The man’s name was Amos. He hunted the Ozarks his whole life, roughly 1890 to 1965. He never owned a refrigerator until he was in his sixties. He raised six kids through the Depression, and when people asked him how he fed a family that size on a sawmill wage, he’d point at his .22. Squirrel. Rabbit. Possum. Whatever walked past the woodpile.
The recipes in that folder are not charming. They are not Pinterest-ready. They are practical, blunt, and occasionally unreadable. Amos dropped the g off every -ing word he ever wrote. His spelling was a suggestion more than a rule. And he had opinions — strong ones — which he wrote directly into the margins.
This is the start of a new series on FieldHonest. Every few weeks I’m pulling a recipe from Amos’s leather folder, translating it into something a modern kitchen can handle, and keeping as much of the old man’s voice as I can. He’d probably hate that I’m publishing these. He’d definitely hate the internet. But he loved good food that cost nothing, and that feels worth sharing.
Recipe #1: Squirrel Stew With Beans (Or, “The One That Made Pastor Williams Swear”)
This is the most worn page in the folder — the ink is faded, the paper is soft from being folded and unfolded a thousand times. Amos made this stew every October, right after the first hard frost, when squirrels were fat on acorns and the wood stove had just come back to life for the season.
Here’s what he wrote at the top of the page, in his barely-legible scrawl:
Kill 3 squirrel. Big ones. Dont waste shot on the little ones that aint worth skinnin. If you aint got 3 squirrel you aint huntin hard enough.
— Amos, Recipe #1 margin note
He wasn’t wrong. Three fox squirrels is about right for a stew that feeds four. Gray squirrels work too — use four or five, since they’re smaller.
What You Need
- 3 squirrels, cleaned and jointed (hind legs, front legs, back saddle — cut the saddle in half crosswise)
- 3 tablespoons bacon fat (Amos: “lard if yor broke, butter if yor stupid”)
- 1 large onion, rough chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, smashed
- 2 carrots, cut into thick coins
- 2 celery stalks, chopped
- 1 cup dried navy beans or great northern beans, soaked overnight (Amos used whatever beans were in the burlap sack)
- 4 cups water or game stock
- 1 can (14 oz) crushed tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 bay leaf
- Salt, black pepper
- A splash of cider vinegar at the end
Amos also had a line at the bottom of the ingredient list that I’m including verbatim:
If the preacher is comin put in a half cup of whiskey. If he aint, put in the whole cup.
— Amos, Recipe #1
The whiskey burns off. Mostly. Add it when you add the tomatoes if you’re going that route.
How to Make It
1. Brown the squirrel. Pat the pieces dry with a towel. Salt them lightly. Heat the bacon fat in a heavy pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Working in batches, brown the squirrel pieces on all sides — maybe 4 minutes per side. You want color on the meat, not a sear that looks like a magazine cover. Amos’s instructions on this:
Get it brown. Not tan. BROWN. If the pot aint smokin yor wastin time.
— Amos, Recipe #1
Remove the squirrel to a plate.
2. Build the base. Drop the heat to medium. Toss the onion into the same pot and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook one minute more. Scrape up the brown bits from the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon — that’s flavor, not a mess.
3. Deglaze and build the stew. Add the Worcestershire sauce, paprika, and bay leaf. Stir. Pour in the tomatoes, the soaked beans, and the stock. Nestle the squirrel pieces back in. Bring the whole thing to a boil, then drop to a low simmer.
4. Wait. Cover and let it go for about 2 hours. Check on it once in a while. If the liquid drops below the meat, add a splash of water. The beans should be tender, the squirrel should be falling off the bone.
5. Pull the meat. Fish out the squirrel pieces with tongs. Let them cool until you can handle them. Pull the meat off the bones — it should come off easily. Discard the bones (and watch for the tiny rib bones, which are a dental emergency waiting to happen). Shred or roughly chop the meat and return it to the pot.
6. Finish. Discard the bay leaf. Taste the stew. Add salt, pepper, and a splash of cider vinegar to brighten it up. If the broth is too thin, simmer uncovered for another 15 minutes. If it’s too thick, add water until it looks right.
Serve in deep bowls with cornbread. Amos apparently considered cornbread non-negotiable:
No bread no stew. A man that eats stew without cornbread is the kind of man that wipes his boots on the rug. Dont be that man.
— Amos, Recipe #1 final note
A Few Things Amos Would Want You to Know
Skinning matters. Squirrel fur has glands that can taint the meat if you’re sloppy. Amos’s method: make a cut through the skin across the middle of the back, get your fingers in, and pull in opposite directions. The skin peels off like a jacket. He called it “the pants-and-shirt method.” It takes thirty seconds once you’ve done it twice.
Soak if you want, skip if you don’t. Some people brine squirrel overnight in salt water to pull out any gamey notes. Amos didn’t bother. He figured if you grew up eating squirrel, you didn’t need to trick yourself into liking it. I soak mine for a few hours — not for the meat, but because my grandmother told me to, and I’m still slightly afraid of her.
This stew is better the next day. Make it a day ahead and reheat it. The beans absorb the broth overnight. The flavor deepens in a way that science can probably explain but Amos would just describe as “it gets better, quit askin why.”
Freeze it. This recipe makes a lot. Portion leftovers into freezer bags and you’ve got a meal that reminds you of October in the middle of February.
What’s Coming Next From the Leather Folder
Amos had a recipe for possum that I’m not ready to face yet. He also had a rabbit stew that calls for juniper berries and “patience, which yor mother says you aint got.” The recipe titled “Skunk — Read This Twice Before You Start” might win the next slot simply because the margin note on that one is three sentences long and two of them are what my grandmother would have called “language.”
I’ll get there. Seventeen recipes. This was the first one. The folder is open on my desk right now, and it smells like dust and woodsmoke and something I can’t identify. Amos would probably say I’m overthinking it.
He’d be right.