Damon Bungard

Dove seasons are blasting off around the country, and it’s always a great way to kick off hunting season. They’re challenging and fun to shoot, and taste great. Traditionally ‘dove poppers’ are made by filling a jalapeño slice with some cream cheese, adding a breast and wrapping in bacon before throwing them on the grill. But what happens when dairy no longer agrees with you, and you’re looking for something different? I’ve come with a solution I think you’ll enjoy.

For whatever reasons, as many folks get older they get sensitive to dairy products. For my wife Ashley, it coincided with pregnancy. As a Vermonter who loves cheese, it was a tough adjustment, but we found ways to get creative in the kitchen. Since I love both hunting and eating dove, a new way to cook them was in order, so I put my brain to work.

I enjoy both flavor and texture contrasts in my food. Spicy and sweet. Crunchy and soft. I also like relatively simply and easy to prep meals, with minimal cleanup. This recipe has all of that.

Since duck is so often prepared with fruit, or a sauce like orange marmalade, I immediately thought of Mandarin orange slices. They’re about the same size as a dove breast, and readily available. That was pretty much it, changed out jalapeno/cheese for a slice of orange, wrapped it with a dove breast with bacon, and off to the grill. It worked pretty good, and I’ve tweaked it a little over the years.

I’ve found cooking over a live-fire like a BREEO fire pit is a great way to enjoy the cooking process, but also to have better control over some of the textures I like, like getting a charred outer bacon crust without overcooking the breast in the middle. Between the bacon and the orange, it keeps the meat moist and tender, and when you eat them you’ll often get an injection of citrus. By cooking over a live fire, there’s no messy bacon grease to clean up either, it all burns up in the fire. Lots to enjoy.

Here’s the recipe and a video of how like to cook them, along with a couple suggested sides.

Dove Popper Recipe

Ingredients:

1. Dove breasts, cleaned
2. Spicy seasoning of your choice
3. Mandarin Orange Slices
4. Bacon
5. Olive Oil
6. Toothpicks

Preparation:

1. Season the dove breasts with olive oil and spicy seasoning of choice. Mix. You can cook them immediately, but I’ll often age the breasts in the seasoning in the refrigerator for a day or two.
2. Halve the bacon.
3. Wrap a single breast with a single slice of Mandarin orange and half a slice of bacon.
4. Secure with a toothpick(s)

Cooking:

1. Fire up the BREEO fire pit and get a good fire going
2. Let that fire burn down until flames have mellowed and bed of coals is forming
3. Put everything on the Outpost grill. As you’ll see in the video, I’ll often set the grilling basket, with green beans in this case, on a lower surface like the Sear Disk.
4. I don’t have a set time to cook anything, and on a live fire like a BREEO it’s a function of how hot your fire is, the ambient air temperature, and the physical nature of what you’re cooking, and how well you like things done. I just go by sound, look and feel of what I’m cooking. That interaction with your food over time in the process of cooking is the fun part.
5. Once done to your liking, remove and serve.

You can certainly cook them on a grill as well, but I find cooking over a live fire much more fun.

As you can see in the video, I removed the green beans first since they were closer to the fire and cooked faster. I like to remove the sweet potatoes once each surface is a little blackened, it gives them a nice crunchy, caramelized outer from the honey, and the salt nicely contrasts their natural sweetness. For the Mandarin poppers themselves, I’ll generally only flip them once, and after that outer bacon looks crispy all around I remove them.

That’s how I do it, and as mentioned before there’s not really any cleanup after since the fire takes care of that part.

Hope this gives you some ideas for a new way to cook dove. Give it a try sometime, and enjoy, it’s officially hunting season.

Salty Sweet Potato Side

Ingredients:

1. Sweet potato
2. Honey (Maple syrup also works well)
3. Olive Oil
4. Cinnamon
5. Sea Salt. (I love a Chile-Lime Flavored Sea Salt we get from a shop in Savannah, GA)

Preparation:

1. Clean and slice the sweet potato into roughly 1/2” thick disks.
2. Coat with olive oil and honey
3. Add cinnamon
4. Add flavored salt

Salty Tangy Green Beans

Ingredients:

1. Fresh Green Beans
2. Olive Oil
3. Sea Salt. (Again I use the Chile-Lime flavored salt)

Preparation:

1. Put green beans in a grilling basket
2. Coat with olive oil
3. Add flavored salt (The Chile Lime Flavored Sea Salt we get from Savannah adds the tanginess, but if plain sea salt you can also coat the beans with lemon salt or juice)