Would you eat/cook.....

bonkey

...horse?

The reason I ask is because US Congress has apparently just outlawed the slaughter of horse for human consumption, which got me thinking.

I'm not asking any of the politically-loaded questions, cause there's better fora for that...but I'm just wondering on the opinions of foodies.

Have you had it? If so, Do you like it? If not, would you try it?

Me...I like the stuff.

I'm also looking forward to trying donkey at some point - my better half had some in France recently and raved about it.

jc

Blub2k4

Wow, I would eat it, I haven't eaten it yet.
Do you have a link to an article or anything?
Do they give a reason?

muletide

I would try it once and if I liked it, and if it was available I would continue to eat it. If i didnt like it I would not eat it. It is all a matter of taste

Asiaprod

bonkey wrote:

Have you had it? If so, Do you like it? If not, would you try it?

Very popular here in Japan, very tasty. Many different ways to serve it. The two I know and like are as Horse Jerky or as served in drinking establishments (over here the emphasis is on the food, not the booze, though we drink our fair share) where they freeze it and it is served in wafer thin slices to dissolve in your mouth washed down with Saki. This is one thing the Japanese did get right. Heavenly. Nearly forgot to mention, we don't cook horse meat, you eat it raw.
There is only one criteria over here when it comes to food; if you can catch it, you can eat it. I have had some real strange food .

DonkeyStyle \o/

I'd probably try it if it were put on a plate infront of me... but probably not something I'd order.

I'm also somewhat disturbed that I initially read the title of this thread as "Would you eat cock?" :eek:

CJhaughey

I have eaten it a few times most recently in Iceland.
The horse was served as a fillet steak and it had a much milder and sweeter taste than beef.
I have also eaten old horse in a stew and it was fantastic, very tender.
Why I ask did congress outlaw the eating of horse? surely in the US which is the home of steroid *enhanced* beef horse would be a good wholesome and non contaminated food?
It really is a form of cultural imperialism IMHO.

The Sweeper

I'd eat it, but again I'd have issues with how it was reared. Horses, by nature, need even more space and exercise than cattle, pigs, sheep and goats. It's a relative cruelty thing.

One possibility for outlawing horsemeat in the US is precisely that - horses are, first and foremost, not a meat animal. They're rared as pets, working animals - kind of like big dogs. When they find their way into the food chain it's often because they've come to the end of their useful life as a working animal, or for some other less than savoury reason they've been sent to slaughter.

Horses can also suffer stress easily than other animals bred for meat. I'd rather see horses specifically bred for meat - for instance a short, docile breed that's hardy enough to cope with being outdoors all day every day, so they can graze and form the natural herd order that helps keep them calm. Plus, I think foals from a horse bred for meat should be kept with the mothers until they're weaned - as opposed to opening up a big 'horse milk' niche in the dairy market.

At the moment 'horse meat' can be from anything that passes as a horse - breed, age, life history notwithstanding - that's the part of it that puts me off. It'd be the same for donkey.

Victor

Apparently in Ireland, if you eat it, you can't ride it and vice versa. Hence horse, etc. can't be slaughtered for human consumption and ostrich, etc. racing is illegal.

golden

Would not eat it as there are issues in how the horses are treated. ie live export from Ireland to destination etc.

The Sweeper

By the way guys, if you're ever wondering "why would congress do that" - the bills congress votes on are usually debated in hearings in advance of the votes. These hearings are available to the public as webcasts on the House Committe's website.

This link: http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/07252006hearing1992/hearing.htm#Transcript should bring you to the page where you can listen to the archived debate on amending the US Horse Protection Act yourself - the transcript isn't available yet.

Victor wrote:

Apparently in Ireland, if you eat it, you can't ride it and vice versa. Hence horse, etc. can't be slaughtered for human consumption and ostrich, etc. racing is illegal.

It's not the same deal in the US - there's an "unwanted horse" issue: animals abandoned or whose ownership is relinquished - for whatever reason - can be included in the food chain. I'm not clear on whether that's the human consumption food chain or the dogfood chain, to be fair, or indeed both! It raises the possibility that little Lucy's favourite pony, Monty, can be horsenapped and made into burgers on the basis that he's a 'stray'.

bonkey

Blub2k4 wrote:

Do you have a link to an article or anything?
Do they give a reason?

I found it on the front page of google news on Friday, so a search there should turn it up no problem.

The reasons are more-or-less as given here already, but any news article you find will probably have a summary too.

Asiaprod wrote:

Very popular here in Japan,

Yeah - one article I saw said the horse-meat in the US was mostly for export, and 90% of that went to European and Japanese destinations.

jc

Victor

"I have not bored myself senseless listening to the webcat"

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

It's not the same deal in the US - there's an "unwanted horse" issue: animals abandoned or whose ownership is relinquished - for whatever reason - can be included in the food chain.

Ah, this may be down to Mustangs - wild horses, often on Federal land. They have been wild for multiple generations, so hopefully Monty is safe.

The tend to be culled every few years.

emeraldstar

i would never eat horse, no way. on holidays once a friend of mine ate it accidently. when she realised she nearly got sick. we all nearly got sick in fact :eek:

Blub2k4

emeraldstar wrote:

i would never eat horse, no way. on holidays once a friend of mine ate it accidently. when she realised she nearly got sick. we all nearly got sick in fact :eek:

Yeah, irrational dislike of food is good, mmmkay.

FergusF

In France and Spain there are horses specially bred for their meat and the meat is available in supermarkets and butchers' shops. Here in northern Spain where I am currently based, many meat horses are pretty much 'free-range', they wander over mountain commonage - similar to sheep in the West of Ireland.

I have tried it in both stews (older horse), and grilled (meat from a young colt, cut in fillets like a minute steak). As another poster mentioned, it is very tasty - the stew had a 'deeper' flavour than beef stew and the steaks are sweeter than the beef equivalent. Less fatty too, so it needs to be either grilled very lightly, or stewed for a good while.

The main concern I'd have about it - as with any meat - would be it's provenance, was it raised humanely, etc. All this talk of meat is making me hungry, off to the shop now to see if they have any in stock for my lunch!

Demetrius

I propose that all those who catch or kill wild animals ought to eat 'em! Goes for Foxes too!

nando

Victor wrote:

Apparently in Ireland, if you eat it, you can't ride it and vice versa. Hence horse, etc. can't be slaughtered for human consumption and ostrich, etc. racing is illegal.

I'm not so sure about that. There's at least two horse abbatoirs in Ireland and many horses are exported for slaughter in Europe. Although horsemeat might not be available I don't think its illegal, just a matter of no demand.

I'm a vet and although I don't usually work with horses I know that new veterinary drug laws mean that a horse can only receive certain drug treatments if the owner agrees to his passport being stamped as "not for human consumption". If this section is not filled out then the horse can be slaughtered for meat in Ireland. This is a new system introduced within the last year or so. Before that Irish horses were often slaughtered for meat regardless of previous treatments.

Would I eat it? No, but I'm vegetarian

Don't know anything about ostrich racing though, lol!

Diogenes

A friend brought over some fantastic sausages and black pudding from a butchers in kerry when he was staying with. An incredibly generous portion or so I thought.

Turns out there was also a whole cows tongue there as well. My friend's Ukarinian girlfriend got it, cow's tongue boiled with some bay leave and whole peppercorns is a Ukarinian delicacy, when cut very thin. He suggested I tried it.

I swear I tried. Have you ever looked at a whole cow's tongue? The texture of the top of it? The sheer flacid floppiness of it? Jesus. I couldn't. I boiled and fed it to my dogs. Who over a couple of days are now addicted to the stuff. Their whole bodies wag at the smell of it.

So at some point I'll have to do this again.

Bugger

boneless

I have eaten horse flesh on many occasions. I was also served dog in Korea. It tasted ok until I was actually told what it was. However, after I got over the initial shock I finished the meal.

I have dined in a number of establishments in France which were run by Berbours so I assume I have had my fair share of goat too. I now make it a policy not to ask what the meat in the cous cous sauce is.

taztastic

I did see a horse meat pizza in an anarchist pizzaria in Berlin. If its on pizza it cant really be contraversial.


"I wish I could drink like a lady. I can take one or two at the most. Three and I'm under the table. Four and I'm under the host. "

The Sweeper

Diogenes wrote:

A friend brought over some fantastic sausages and black pudding from a butchers in kerry when he was staying with. An incredibly generous portion or so I thought.

Turns out there was also a whole cows tongue there as well. My friend's Ukarinian girlfriend got it, cow's tongue boiled with some bay leave and whole peppercorns is a Ukarinian delicacy, when cut very thin. He suggested I tried it.

I swear I tried. Have you ever looked at a whole cow's tongue? The texture of the top of it? The sheer flacid floppiness of it? Jesus. I couldn't. I boiled and fed it to my dogs. Who over a couple of days are now addicted to the stuff. Their whole bodies wag at the smell of it.

So at some point I'll have to do this again.

Bugger

Have you seen the price of ox tongue on the deli counter?? My mother used to cook it. She cleaned it, then boiled the tongue, then skinned it after it was cooked (hence getting rid of the texture of the top) before cramming the whole lot into a bowl with some of the reduced stock from the boiling, covering it with a plate, weighting said plate with a tremendously heavy iron weight and leaving it like that overnight. When the resulting 'loaf' is turned out it's a combination of meat and aspic. That's when you slice it thin and eat it.

When it's done properly it's really, really good.

Diogenes

MinesBIGSLUT wrote:

Have you seen the price of ox tongue on the deli counter?? My mother used to cook it. She cleaned it, then boiled the tongue, then skinned it after it was cooked (hence getting rid of the texture of the top) before cramming the whole lot into a bowl with some of the reduced stock from the boiling, covering it with a plate, weighting said plate with a tremendously heavy iron weight and leaving it like that overnight. When the resulting 'loaf' is turned out it's a combination of meat and aspic. That's when you slice it thin and eat it.

When it's done properly it's really, really good.

I'm sure and I suspect the suprise of expecting a huge pile of sausages and instead having a giant floppy tongue plop out of the bag had a singularly suprise (and not a pleasant one at that.) The texture of the top was just (it had a serious "Yeach" factor) the thick veins at the bottom. Jesus.

I really didn't want to research it properly. I've a cook book which has a lambs brain and peach bruscetta, which I ain't touching.

Coming from a generation that grew up in rising prosperity where off cuts became unfashionable as people could start affording better cuts of meat, while at the same time we had the Samoillea (sic) BSE, and foot and mouth, the cheaper cuts of meat just became something we stopped eating.

Now I've picked up a cheap good slow cooker I'm researching these odd cuts I ignored growing up. As they say about french cooking "You've got to be prety ****ing desperate to figure out if you cook snails in a shed load of garlic butter they're fantastic."

But however having a o cows tongue flop onto the table expecting a pile of sausages has a bit of a "horses head, godfather" shock moment.

On aside myself and my wife were in paris recently we went to a bistro and ordered two "parisian" salmon sashami starters. the veal carpaccio and steak tartaré. The salmon was drowned in a sickly sweet inedible soya based sauce. The veal was drowned in a heavy olive oil and had no taste, and the tartaré wasn't even seared (which in their defense I just assumed it would be). After twenty minutes we realised that the only thing that had actually been cooked was my frites.

PS Um whats with the name change? Its er, a little odd?

The Sweeper

Well none of sashimi, carpaccio and tartare are supposed to be cooked to be fair. Though in carpaccio's defense, it's supposed to be paper-thin slices of well-hung meat, so full of sweet flavour and not needing an olive oil bath, and similarly sashimi should be fish so fresh it was swimming mere hours before, (minutes, in some places), and the soy should be on the side.

Diogenes

MinesBIGSLUT wrote:

Well none of sashimi, carpaccio and tartare are supposed to be cooked to be fair. Though in carpaccio's defense, it's supposed to be paper-thin slices of well-hung meat, so full of sweet flavour and not needing an olive oil bath, and similarly sashimi should be fish so fresh it was swimming mere hours before, (minutes, in some places), and the soy should be on the side.

Well yeah, thats my point, aside from the tartare each dish was like the evil version of itself. Jesus the sashimi, i can still see it, swimming in that vile sauce...

Ugh, this subject matter should not be viewed through the mirror of a mild hangover.

Asiaprod

MinesBIGSLUT wrote:

and similarly sashimi should be fish so fresh it was swimming mere hours before, (minutes, in some places), and the soy should be on the side.

Ah, there is a Japanese delicacy where the sashimi or sushi (salmon or eel) is sliced in thick slices and coated with butter then lightly singed with a gas flame for all of 10-20 sec. It can then be covered in a sweet Miso/Soy sauce or eatem as is with just the melted butter. This type of Sushi is commonly called Tataki (means=lightly roasted), and the most common sushi dish served in this manner would be Toro or Chu-Toro.
<I eat this at least once a week>

The Sweeper

Would it be on the menu as salmon sashimi then, or salmon tataki? Or is that how it works? (In Paris? Who knows... But generally?)