- How to cook squirrel.

The Canadian Housekeeper's Guide of 1854 is full of recipes using the foods that settlers and pioneers would find in the northern forests.  One game meat they recommend is black squirrel.

The Housekeepers Guide is fairly unique in that is was written specifically for women who were emigrating from Great Britain to start a new life in Canada.

It's apparent from the text of the book they were traveling as single women who hoped to acquire a job as a housekeeper or a husband when they arrived in Canada.

The author makes it clear she's not going to tell the reader how to cook, but will tell them what to cook.

In this case, it's the black squirrel.  Red squirrel, musk-rat, porcupine, beaver, wood-chuck, ground-hog and bear are also recommended.

The black squirrel is a variant of the Eastern Grey Squirrel and is found throughout Ontario, the mid-west and eastern seaboard of the US as far south as Kentucky.  They are native to the Central Northern US and Canada but have been introduced and thrived in the southern states.

The Housekeeper's Guide suggests they be cooked like rabbit - roasted, fried, fricasseed or made into stew and pies.

One good recipe is as follows:

• 3 squirrels, quartered
• 5 medium potatoes cut into bite-sized chucks
• 1 onion cut into bite-sized chunks
• 2 cups of baby carrots
• 5 stalks of celery sliced into 1/4″ pieces
• 4 teaspoons of chicken stock powder
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon steak seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons of flour
• Water

Place potatoes, onion, celery, and baby carrots into a crockpot. Add squirrel pieces on top of the vegetables. Add chicken stock, mixing with warm water as directed on the label. Add enough water to mostly cover the contents and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add steak seasoning. Cover and cook on high for 5 hours. Add flour and cook covered for another hour. Serve with rice.

The final meal is very, very tender and the meat easily falls off of the bones.

Note: Squirrels have many small bones so you’ll need to take care when eating the meal. You could probably reduce the number of small bones by not including the rib cage when cooking.

This recipe comes courtesy of the Prepping to Survive blog.  Thank you guys.

If you happen to live in New Zealand with its large population of feral Australian possums, you could use this recipe for those animals too. 

Other recipes from the pioneers and settlers can be found at Pioneer Handbooks.

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