Out of your comfort zone meat eating experience
- Thread starter franktank
- Start date
Read the first page of this thread (only) and realized I probably have no business chiming-in...lol However, I'm almost "out of my comfort zone" on anything I've ever had to dress. What I mean by that is, I'm not squeamish and have no issues dressing small game or fish...but once I do, my appetite to cook and eat it sort of fizzles away. Especially before I started cleaning grouse with nitrile gloves on. lol
I mostly don't like game meat (except ruffed grouse) but I'll try almost anything. Some farmed game meat is exceptional, so that confuses things. lol I've had;
Wild venison-don't hunt deer, but have friends who do and I've eaten it at their places. Genuinely appreciate the gesture, would say "yes" to another invite, but more for the company.
FARMED venison-had this at a snazzy restaurant in the town I live in, the nicest (red meat) meal I've ever had in my life. I specify because seafood is my top choice
Moose-had it 2X years ago, remember liking it, but not enough to ever consider hunting them
Bear Sausages-mixed with pork, tasty enough...wouldn't seek them out (venison sausages too-same answer)
Porcupine ribs-worked at a summer camp in Haliburton 33 years ago, the place was crawling with porcupines...and it was a prestigious place ($$$) to send your kids. Maintenance staff had a .22, and used it more frequently than I think most people knew. Anyhow, one day a confused porcupine decided to take a run at a group of kids who weren't aware it was en route, and the guy I was with promptly grabbed a 2x4 and dealt with it. (there was a fence being built nearby) The guy was also a hunter, and decided he wanted the claws...and should dress it and see if it had any value as table fare. Figured it might be my only chance. lol Tasted like burnt hair, and there was no hair on it. lol Couldn't even swallow it.
Would like to try squirrel prepared by someone who knew what they were doing, because I think I'd love hunting them. However, when I see a squirrel...I see a rat with a fluffy tail. No appeal. lol
I mostly don't like game meat (except ruffed grouse) but I'll try almost anything. Some farmed game meat is exceptional, so that confuses things. lol I've had;
Wild venison-don't hunt deer, but have friends who do and I've eaten it at their places. Genuinely appreciate the gesture, would say "yes" to another invite, but more for the company.
FARMED venison-had this at a snazzy restaurant in the town I live in, the nicest (red meat) meal I've ever had in my life. I specify because seafood is my top choice
Moose-had it 2X years ago, remember liking it, but not enough to ever consider hunting them
Bear Sausages-mixed with pork, tasty enough...wouldn't seek them out (venison sausages too-same answer)
Porcupine ribs-worked at a summer camp in Haliburton 33 years ago, the place was crawling with porcupines...and it was a prestigious place ($$$) to send your kids. Maintenance staff had a .22, and used it more frequently than I think most people knew. Anyhow, one day a confused porcupine decided to take a run at a group of kids who weren't aware it was en route, and the guy I was with promptly grabbed a 2x4 and dealt with it. (there was a fence being built nearby) The guy was also a hunter, and decided he wanted the claws...and should dress it and see if it had any value as table fare. Figured it might be my only chance. lol Tasted like burnt hair, and there was no hair on it. lol Couldn't even swallow it.
Would like to try squirrel prepared by someone who knew what they were doing, because I think I'd love hunting them. However, when I see a squirrel...I see a rat with a fluffy tail. No appeal. lol
Pudelpointer
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Lethbridge, Alberta
Read the first page of this thread (only) and realized I probably have no business chiming-in...lol However, I'm almost "out of my comfort zone" on anything I've ever had to dress. What I mean by that is, I'm not squeamish and have no issues dressing small game or fish...but once I do, my appetite to cook and eat it sort of fizzles away. Especially before I started cleaning grouse with nitrile gloves on. lol
I mostly don't like game meat (except ruffed grouse) but I'll try almost anything. Some farmed game meat is exceptional, so that confuses things. lol I've had;
Wild venison-don't hunt deer, but have friends who do and I've eaten it at their places. Genuinely appreciate the gesture, would say "yes" to another invite, but more for the company.
FARMED venison-had this at a snazzy restaurant in the town I live in, the nicest (red meat) meal I've ever had in my life. I specify because seafood is my top choice
Moose-had it 2X years ago, remember liking it, but not enough to ever consider hunting them
Bear Sausages-mixed with pork, tasty enough...wouldn't seek them out (venison sausages too-same answer)
Porcupine ribs-worked at a summer camp in Haliburton 33 years ago, the place was crawling with porcupines...and it was a prestigious place ($$$) to send your kids. Maintenance staff had a .22, and used it more frequently than I think most people knew. Anyhow, one day a confused porcupine decided to take a run at a group of kids who weren't aware it was en route, and the guy I was with promptly grabbed a 2x4 and dealt with it. (there was a fence being built nearby) The guy was also a hunter, and decided he wanted the claws...and should dress it and see if it had any value as table fare. Figured it might be my only chance. lol Tasted like burnt hair, and there was no hair on it. lol Couldn't even swallow it.
Would like to try squirrel prepared by someone who knew what they were doing, because I think I'd love hunting them. However, when I see a squirrel...I see a rat with a fluffy tail. No appeal. lol
I am always surprized a little (I know I shouldn't be) when I hear from those who have nothing good to say about wild game; I honestly prefer almost any game meat (deer, moose, elk, bear*, ducks, geese, pheasant, grouse, etc.) to what I have had in most restaurants or my own kitchen. I don't mind beef, but given the choice I would choose a thick deer steak every time. Pork has no replacement in game - no wild hogs where I am, though given a supply of cougar and clean bear, I could probably do without.
Wild ducks cooked rare (med-rare AT MOST) are an absolute delicacy, as are hungarian partridge. Prairie Mule Deer are about as fine a source of steaks as possible IMO, with moose and elk a short distance behind.
I know that 95% of people's poor experience eating game is either poor field handling (bad shooting, taking too long to cool, making a mess of dressing, etc.) or bad cooking. Only about 5% of the game I have eaten that was "not great" was the result of the animal's specific qualities. As such, I have had a few bad experiences:
There was the Goodyear Goose - I slow cooked that Greater Canada on and off for 3 days, trying to get the collagen in the muscles to break down... no luck. On day 4 I managed to get the breasts off with a surgically sharp knife, and it literally squeaked as a sliced it up for the dogs, who also could not believe how chewy it was!
A buddy shot a bear on the coast when he first started hunting - it was right after the rules changed to where bears became a game animal, instead of a fur bearer, and wasting the meat became verbötten. That bear was in really poor shape, and tasted accordingly. Turned me off bear meat for almost a decade, then we shot a sub-alpine bear one year that was honest to goodness as good as or better than 90% of the beef I have eaten. A point of interest for those who are curious, a older fellow I used to know, who had killed more bears than anyone I have met before or since, told me that he judged the edibility of bears by the colour of their fat: if a bear had white fat it was an 'eater', if it had yellow fat it wouldn't be as good - the darker the fat the more likely it would end up as dog food. We have killed a fair number of bears over the years, in spring and fall, and for the most part this wisdom has played out correctly.
I have killed and cooked Coots, Snipe, Scaup, Ring-necked, Redheads, Goldeneye, all the teals and puddle ducks and the vast majority have been very good, and some outright amazing; early season resident ducks can be strong tasting in my area, and I try to focus on flocks of migrating birds. I think a lot of resident puddle ducks fatten-up on scuds (freshwater shrimp) in late summer / early fall, and it makes them taste 'musky' to me, much like shovellers (though later season shovellers are okay). Once the water temps cool way down and the birds hit the fields, their table qualities improve immensely. The key is, IMO, getting over one's paranoia about eating fowl that is not cooked to a dry piece of leather. Medium rare AT MOST is the only way to eat the breasts from teals, widgeons, redheads, etc. If roasting, pretty much the same rule applies, though the legs will be chewy. Best to separate breast meat and legs on the bigger ducks, and cook them on their own. Small ducks, spatchcock and roast / grill hot and fast. I have probably eaten hundreds of rare to med-rare ducks, pheasant, Huns and grouse, and have never, not once, gotten sick. It ain't bacteria infested chicken!
An exception to my above comments on edibility, is Coastal Blacktail bucks; when I lived on the coast I killed a lot of blacktails. If killed in September or early October or as late in December as the season will allow, they are pretty good. If killed in the last week of October through the end of November, they are very strong tasting from adrenaline. A few bucks I killed in the peak of the rut were so strong with adrenaline that they were absolutely NOT enjoyable. I have killed elk in the peak of the rut, prairie mule deer the second week of November, and whitetails in the middle of a knock-down drag-out battle, and that adrenaline taste has just never been there.
Trying things different than the normal, I have eaten shark, which I love and about 30 years ago I ate Rattle Snake, was out shooting with a friend, this guy was bitten by a rattle snake so every time he see one he kills it and will cook it. He belief is, if they can bit him he will bit back, we were out prairie dog hunting and we came across one, and that was it one shot and fire up the barbeque
I have watched the bearded woodsman videos where he and his brother eat just about anything and everything. One episode they have porcupine and said it was the best meat he'd tried. Butchering that seems like a challenge. I would love to try squirrel but it's illegal to hunt them in Quebec for some strange reason.
I've had ostrich, nothing fantastic or bad about it.
As a general rule, I think anything that eats meat has the potential to have more disease due to ingesting from it's pray. That said, I would try bear if I had the chance. Bear apparently used to be the preferred meat back in the day, when deer was considered a poor man's meat. It's funny how perception can affect your bias towards any given meat... realistically, meat is meat, if it were not for the gross out factor.
I've had ostrich, nothing fantastic or bad about it.
As a general rule, I think anything that eats meat has the potential to have more disease due to ingesting from it's pray. That said, I would try bear if I had the chance. Bear apparently used to be the preferred meat back in the day, when deer was considered a poor man's meat. It's funny how perception can affect your bias towards any given meat... realistically, meat is meat, if it were not for the gross out factor.
TheRecordMan
Member
Smoked horse meat is amazing.
Hitching across equatorial Africa in 1972 I frequently ate "bush meat" which could have been chimp, monkey, crocodile, grass cutter (a near beaver-size rodent) or you name it.
"What's this?" I'd ask looking in a bowl of stew.
"Bush meat."
Had pig head soup for lunch today. I got the snout.
"What's this?" I'd ask looking in a bowl of stew.
"Bush meat."
Had pig head soup for lunch today. I got the snout.
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Coming out of Somalia, back in the 90’s we had a few days in Nairobi. Went to a restaurant called Carnivores. All you can eat, raise the flag to surrender when you have had enough type of place.
I recall we had crocodile, giraffe, zebra, ostrich, beef, lamb. pork, chicken, camel, eland, ox, hartebeest and so on.
Good times.
I recall we had crocodile, giraffe, zebra, ostrich, beef, lamb. pork, chicken, camel, eland, ox, hartebeest and so on.
Good times.
Smoked river eel is very good but also very fatty. I ate lots in the old country where we fished for them in the night. Emu tastes good as well. There was an Aussie restaurant chain called the Outback and they had a grill platter which came with Emu, Krokodile, Kangaroo and Buffalo meat.
- Location
- Saskatchewan
It was still open in 2012, I enjoyed that experience too!
maple_leaf_eh
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Same. I live on a busy street, and the roadkill is prodigious!
Lynx tenderloin is one of my favorites. I served them once along with pork tenderloin all grilled together with just salt and pepper.
The guys thought it was all pork and was it ever good.
Dirtiestharold
Regular
- Location
- Toronto the good?
Had Shark (don't know what species) on the BBQ one time. Raw it looks like Fish, but cooked it looks like a Pork chop. Has it's own taste, somewhat sweet. Don't know what to compare it to, but it wasn't bad. Would eat it again if the possibility arose. Also had Grouper once and that wasn't bad at all.
