Horse Meat: Sourcing, Preparing, Eating

[annabelle]

Heh. No worries.

[ChrisTaylor]

Horse was made avaliable for human consumption a couple of years ago in Australia. Until this point there were rumours of French expats buying pet mince. See, you could kill and butcher and sell a horse for pet meat. You could not kill and butcher and sell it for steaks and chops and hamburgers and roasting joints. There was a small amount of, er, fanfare when the change landed. A Melbourne restaurant (the now defunct Embrasse) decided to organise a horse tasting menu. Cue death threats and etc. They ditched it. Eventually I tried it at another Carlton restaurant: an off-the-menu special mentioned to us about half way through a degustation. It came in the form of a ragu and I rather liked it, altho' being in a ragu it was flavoured with other ingredients (including chocolate) so it was difficult to know exactly what the unadulterated flavour of Black Beauty was.

I called the one butcher, at the time, that was selling the meat for human consumption. He was all the way over in Perth: for Americans, I guess that's like living in Texas and calling a butcher in New York to order some steaks. The postage alone was very expensive and he was charging about $30/kg--the price I was paying for nice, grass fed steaks and salmon fillets and good prawns--just for mince. The steaks were getting up to $100/kg. Demand was high but, then again, this was just one butcher and it was a very short time after the meat had become avaliable. I'm sure lots of people were curious. I haven't heard of anyone else selling horse meat in Australia since the initial run of publicity. I certainly haven't seen it appear in the 'game and etc meat' catalogues at the local poultry/game store.

[Hassouni]

Horse meat is clearly a Central Asian nomadic thing. The various dairy products I have no idea. I'm sure it's ubiquitous in all dairy-eating societies. Kaymak is the same as sarshir in Iran, 'ashta/geimar in the Arab World, and even clotted cream in England. Ayran is the same as doogh, tan, shineena, and whatever the Georgians call it.

[shawarma_prince]

On 4/17/2020 at 6:44 PM, Hassouni said:

Horse meat is clearly a Central Asian nomadic thing. The various dairy products I have no idea. I'm sure it's ubiquitous in all dairy-eating societies. Kaymak is the same as sarshir in Iran, 'ashta/geimar in the Arab World, and even clotted cream in England. Ayran is the same as doogh, tan, shineena, and whatever the Georgians call it.

 

Can't imagine horse meat taste good though. There also seems to be a myth that churros are Chinese too. Fried dough is pretty universal.

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/travel-food/article/2119830/how-spanish-chefs-stole-chinas-dough-and-turned-churros

[liuzhou]

40 minutes ago, shawarma_prince said:

Can't imagine horse meat taste good though.

 

 

Why not? In fact it is delicious. Donkey is even better.

[Hassouni]

I know a Kazakh who complained that he couldn't find good meat in Istanbul, of all places. I responded, "what do you mean, the lamb here is incredible!" to which he replied, "yeah but there's no horse"

[liuzhou]

[rotuts]

Ive had cheval in France .

 

some of the very large markets have meat of all kinds segregated by species

 

you look down the long meat counter and see  a paper-mache  ( of course )  replica of the

 

species head.

 

Cheval , next to beef , looked a lot redder than beef to me.

 

and there is nothing wrong w the taste , but it seemed to me to be sweeter ( grilled plain )

 

and with a different grain than beef.     Id rather have beef   than cheval 

 

simply based on those differences  

 

never had donkey .

 

and what's really inhuman is breeding and racing animals , to the point of their destruction .

 

 

 

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by rotuts (log)

[gfweb]

I wonder, are there horses bred for eating or is it always a failed racehorse?

[IowaDee]

Well said rotuts!  I ate horsemeat as a kid.  Your description fits my memories exactly as to taste, color and texture.  We always had just the tenderloin and it was cooked on the grill.  It was sourced through a high end pet food shop and was not cheap by any means.  It was not something that graced the table often but I had no complaint when it did!  Our spoiled cat, on the other hand was served only the spleen and it was a challenge to cut into cat bite sized pieces.  

[robirdstx]

1 hour ago, gfweb said:

I wonder, are there horses bred for eating or is it always a failed racehorse?

I was wondering the same and found this on Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_meat

 

As horses are relatively poor converters of grass and grain to meat compared to cattle,^[10] they are not usually bred or raised specifically for their meat. Instead, horses are slaughtered when their monetary value as riding or work animals is low, but their owners can still make money selling them for horse meat, for example in the routine export of the southern English ponies from the New Forest, Exmoor, and Dartmoor.^[39][40] British law requires the use of "equine passports" even for semiferal horses to enable traceability (also known as "provenance"), so most slaughtering is done in the UK before the meat is exported,^[40]meaning that the animals travel as carcasses rather than live. Ex-racehorses, riding horses, and other horses sold at auction may also enter the food chain; sometimes, these animals have been stolen or purchased under false pretenses.^[41] Even prestigious horses may end up in the slaughterhouse; the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner and 1987 Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year winner, Ferdinand, is believed to have been slaughtered in Japan, probably for pet food.^[42]

Edited April 20, 2020 by robirdstx (log)

[kayb]

Sorry. Not eating Black Beauty or Man o'War or Secretariat, et. al. Anyone who wishes to is welcome to my share.

 

On the other hand, will happily eat either Bambi, Bugs or Donald.

 

[gfweb]

52 minutes ago, kayb said:

Sorry. Not eating Black Beauty or Man o'War or Secretariat, et. al.

 

So far as you know

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal

Edited April 20, 2020 by gfweb (log)

[rotuts]

anything , and everything for a Buck .

[Margaret Pilgrim]

When we were first married, my in-laws supplemented our protein with lots of elk meat.    It, like cheval, is sweet.    It made good chili, but I never learned to appreciate it as a stand alone meat.    My m-i-l used to make "chicken fried steak" with it as I remember.   

 

I do like young venison and adore rabbit.    I got ducked-out in France during Mad Cow year(s).   

[Duvel]

29 minutes ago, gfweb said:

So far as you know

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal

 

When this happened I was working for my company in one of our regional headquarters in Brussels. Horse meat is very popular in Belgium, and I had several excellent dishes made from horse. My (local) colleagues were surprised to learn in the course of investigation that IKEA had mixed a certain percentage of horse into their Köttbullar (meat balls). They could not understand why someone would taint the precious horse meat with beef or pork ...

The night of the conversation they took me to a local place in Waterloo to enjoy horse tartar, accompanied by a Duvel - outstanding !

[Duvel]

3 hours ago, rotuts said:

and there is nothing wrong w the taste , but it seemed to me to be sweeter ( grilled plain )

Last year I spend 10 days traveling Kyushu. In Kumamoto, horse meat reigns supreme, and specialized restaurants offer full courses of „basashi“ or raw horse meat. It is delicious and comes in a surprising amount of different cuts.

Because horse muscle stores significant amounts of glycogen, a „fast“ kill of the animal leads to sweet tasting muscular meat. It is usually enjoyed with a special soy sauce, nixed with grated ginger and garlic.

[Porthos]

I would have no qualms about eating horse, and much to my DW's dismay,  I would try dog if it were ever offered to me.

 

For humor: while in grade school a classmate told me that bologna was made from cats and I believed him. I continued to eat it.

[rotuts]

No cats .  No dogs .

 

and now , No bats.

 

Cuyes would have to be boned out

 

en ballotine.    

[Margaret Pilgrim]

A friend of ours touted a small restaurant in Florence.    He said their ravioli were the best he ever tasted.    He returned year after year for these, until the place was closed for using rat meat in their ravioli.

[IowaDee]

When it comes to eating meat, I draw the line at eating carnivores.  If it can eat me, I won't eat it.  

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

He returned year after year for these, until the place was closed for using rat meat in their ravioli.

Surely that must be so much trouble it would command premium pricing as gourmet food, no? Very little ROI I I would think.  A little like me Believing that somebody sits around skinning moles so I can have moleskin?

[Margaret Pilgrim]

7 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Surely that must be so much trouble it would command premium pricing as gourmet food, no? Very little ROI I I would think.  A little like me Believing that somebody sits around skinning moles so I can have moleskin?

Naw, just skin 'em and boil 'em up.

[rotuts]

@IowaDee 

 

that's very very interesting .

 

Ive never thought of it in those terms.

 

what about the Omnivores   

 

please understand  

 

Im about to have a Personal Beverage

 

and watch  Bosch   1080i   n mu iMac.

 

Its my understanding  that Wild Boar  

 

in the Southern Regions of USA

 

eat everything 

 

but if '' harvested "

 

make your SmithField Pork

 

should they re-open a seriously necessary Plant 

 

taste  in MonoTones   rather than  SurroundSound

 

6 speakers minimum , and a deep bass  speaker 

 

that you feel lightly in your bones.

[Hassouni]

45 minutes ago, IowaDee said:

When it comes to eating meat, I draw the line at eating carnivores.  If it can eat me, I won't eat it.  

Not having eaten a strict carnivore (I mean, pigs are omnivores), I've heard the general consensus is they don't taste very good.