Ptarmigan ✦

Lagopède

What it is

Lagopus means hare-foot: the toes are feathered right to the claw, which is how the bird walks on snow and holds its temperature through a tundra winter. It spends the cold months on birch and willow buds and lichen, and that comes through in the flesh as a faint resin note grouse does not have.

In the kitchen

It is the leanest of the feathered game and gives you no margin — crowns at 220 °C for eight to ten minutes, rested longer than they cooked. Pull it at 52 °C in the breast; where a grouse is still rare, a ptarmigan is already dry.

Goes with

Juniper berry Lingonberry Cream Butter Chanterelle Bay leaf Black pepper Cabbage

Same species

Red grouse

In season alongside

Crowberry Salt marsh lamb Bay bolete Hind Bloody milk cap Cauliflower mushroom

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