Ever eaten a nice bowl of crocodile soup? Crocodile steak? Crocodile sausages for breakfast?
Just outside Liuzhou city centre is a crocodile farm full of the creatures which get sold all over China. The specific type is the Crocodylus siamensis or Siamese Crocodile picture above. This freshwater species is native to Indonesia (Borneo and possibly Java), Brunei, East Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
In the wild, they mainly eat fish and snakes supplemented by other reptiles, small mammals and birds. They very rarely attack humans but get grumpy when tending newborns. Who doesn't?
QuoteThe Siamese crocodile is a stocky, medium-sized freshwater species, with adult males typically reaching a length of 3.5 metres (11.5 feet) and females measuring around 2.7 metres (8.9 feet). The weight of adults ranges between 40 and 120 kilograms, with the largest male recorded reaching a length of 4 metres (13 feet) and a weight of 350 kilograms (771.6 pounds).
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Earth.Org
According to The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, the total Siamese crocodile population in the wild is critically endangered with only around 500-1000 mature individuals. This decline is due to habitat loss and losses to poaching for the food and leather markets. According to the World Wildlife Fund), Cambodia has most and there may be now be around 100-300 wild adults in Cambodia following a reintroduction projectby the government.
There are however around 1.5 million Siamese crocodiles in farms in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and China. These are sold as meat, as skins for leather and as traditional medicine products. In addition, they sometimes mate in captivity with seawater crocodiles producing larger hybrid species. The number of these is unknown.
Crocodile farm, Liuzhou
Known as 鳄鱼 (è yú) in Chinese, the creatures can be bought whole for ¥1391.43 / $190.40 USD or in parts – a tail will cost you ¥340 / $46.55 USD, the head ¥113.43 / $17.58 USD, a claw ¥241.23 / $33.02 USD. This would be for the restaurant trade. As for the home cook, they are more ikely to be buying a 500g steak at ¥80.55 / $11.03 USD.
Crocodile tail steak
The scales are removed (not an easy job) but normally the skin is left on. The meat is often braised as 红烧鳄鱼 (hóng shāo è yú), red-cooked crocodile. The 'palms' are a favourite cut for red cooking. The meat can also be roasted or used in soups, often with Chinese yam. The meat has a slightly fishy flavour; the texture is more like chicken; the skin like pork skin.
The meat is made into crocodile jerky and there is even a type of instant crocodile soup. That, I haven't tried.
I’ll post some recipes later. You can make them in a crockpot.
Images courtesy of Liuzhou Crocodile Farm.