Edible Animals

[ysabetwordsmith]

My inner teenage boy was deeply amused by this billboard showing a spectrum of pets to food animals.

Me, I'm a pragmatist.  Anything I can get into my mouth and digest safely is potential food.  In practice, I strongly prefer not to eat other sapient beings unless I am starving to death, so things like cetacean, elephant, and primate are off my list of edibles outside of that context.  There are a few things I choose not to eat because I disapprove of their production methods; farmed veal exceeds my personal tolerance for animal abuse.  However, historic veal is in the same class as buckling for me -- used to be, all the milk animals would drop about 50% male offspring that you didn't need, so you dressed them out right then and had the tenderest meat ever.  That I would gleefully eat if I had the chance.  There are plenty of things I'd like to try, haven't encountered yet, and probably wouldn't want to eat routinely; dog and horse are both in that category.  So are insects, a key indicator that I am not culturally an American despite living here.  My everyday category is wider too: rabbit, goat, and lamb are all things I actively look for and order when I find them.  I also enjoy some animal parts that most Americans do not, including tongue, brains, heart, gizzard, and testicles.  I loved haggis the one time I got it.  However, I have tried kidney and wasn't fond of it; I really dislike liver and would have to be ravenous to eat it willingly.

These are all things that vary widely by culture and time period.  What are some of your settings?

Comments

[technoshaman]

No: Carnivorous land animals, horse, octopus (didn't like it before I knew how smart they are, now *really* no); not a big fan of summer squashes (though okra, fried or in gumbo, is good), picky about brussels sprouts, green veg need to be still screaming (once they've gone limp I'm not a fan); not a fan of strong onion or either end of the pepper spectrum - chipoltle, ancho, serrano are good; don't like the sour of bell peppers, and once you get too far up in the Scoville range, it's just PAIN, not flavour... don't like cauliflower atall, or jicama. I never liked SPAM, and outgrew things like potted meat and vienna sausages... most cream of anything soups by themselves, not so much, although cream of mushroom with garlic is good in Skillet Algorithm or as a base for chicken pot pie.. and of course there's cream of bacon soup with potato and clam, aka really good clam chowder ;) Oh, and tilapia... ptui.

Yes: Most things from the water. I'll pass on farmed Atlantic salmon if I can; the way they do that is pretty gross... the Norwegians, OTOH, have gotten good at it, nearly as good as wild-caught Pacific. Most whitefish, except the tilapia, baked with butter and lemon pepper; snapper is particularly good this way. Cod or haddock in a good beer batter, with proper chips... OMG. Copper River Sockeye Salmon (everybody goes nuts over king, but IMNASHO Sockeye is better) is to DIE for. Pretty much any shellfish, bivalve or crustacean - gimme a plateful of assorted water bugs and a ramekin of garlic butter, and I am a happy bear... and also squid, but NOT octopus. Oh, and catfish and eel, too. (Funny, the one you'd get in a BBQ or other Southern place; the other is most commonly found in sushi joints... unagi, mmmm... but they're sorta similar...)

Birdie: Most fowl, from game hen to goose; I've not had a lot of exotics here. Goose a couple times, duck a couple times, like the duck better. Turkey is yum and dead easy; just takes a while. Chicken's rather a staple hereabouts.

Four-foots: Cow, pig, lamb (not had mutton, wouldn't mind trying), goat, deer (YUM!), elk (also yum), buffalo (is good, but I don't actively go after it, partly price, partly there aren't many of'em left anyway, farm or no)... did NOT like kangaroo the one time I had it... gator, frog, turtle (in order of decreasing enthusiasm)... rabbit... not had squirrel, but my dad has, probably one he shot himself at that... see above remark about taters again...

Offal: Love chicken livers, ever since I was a kid. Like beef liver enough to order it occasionally at diners. Had steak and kidney pie in Blighty, liked it. Gizzards are too chewey. Why my ex likes'em, I dunno. The only other weird stuff I eat like that with gusto is pork rinds. NOM. (It's what you grow up with.) Hearts, too, though they're kinda hard to get...

Oh. This is my privilege showing, I know, but if at all possible, frozen or fresh, not canned veg. Meats, I'm okay with, especially since they're usually either going to end up as an ingredient rather than by themselves on a plate (ham, chicken, fish and shellfish) or already are in something (roast beef in gravy, corn beef hash)... exceptions are sardines and oysters, which I'll happily eat straight from the tin.

Oh, and I like my soup CHUNKY. With a couple exceptions. Egg drop, making that chunky would just be wrong, and the matzoh ball soup I just had for dinner, which was essentially one big damn matzoh ball in a bowl of good strong chicken broth. Now, if I'm making the soup myself, I make ping-pong-ball sized balls and otherwise make the soup the usual way (though if at all possible I use kosher chicken, because let's get as close as we can, shall we?), but just chunks spooned out of that softball-sized hunk and good broth was just what Dr. Brown ordered today. (I was COLD from the ride in...) Oh, and chili has beans and beef, unless I'm feeding vegans, which case it has TVP, but still beans.

That reminds me. I rarely partake of the wily tofudebeest, but will forgo that restriction for a particularly good preparation. Fake cheese, I'll skip; that includes Ch**s* Wh*z and that orangey sliced stuff that's more a lab experiment than an exercise in culinary arts... OTOH, a mild bleu is about as far down that road as I want to go either. (That's an acquired taste, as is feta.)

I had haggis, once, in one of the better restaurants in Edinburgh. Not impressed. The venison, however, was *excellent.*

It occurs to me that I might be able to *make* a haggis I liked. It's essentially meatloaf only with odd ingredients. Sheep's liver, oatmeal, onion, spices, suet... there's a butcher down south called "Proper British Bacon" (OMG do I miss a bacon butty) that could probably set me up. Hmmmm! Hey, I've got eleven months to master it... (Burns Night being 25 Jan...)

Sooooo... what are Rocky Mountain Oysters like?

And how old *is* your inner teenage boy? Mine hasn't grown up quite that much. He's ten. But he's really smart, and gets all the dirty jokes. ;)

For haggis

[dialecticdreamer]

See if you can find uncured pork cheek for your test haggis. It needs slow, moist cooking like heart or tongue, but it freaking MELTS. It's also a little bit greasier than I expected, but in a meatloaf type dish, the fat is a huge flavor boost.