I’ve had ostrich and it was very good. It was raised with feed, though. Feed is the most important variable in meat.
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You’re right. not all pork states the same. Piss pig is a perfect example. That, and I like saying it. My experiment would be to start a hereford and angus steers at the same age on the same feed and observe the outcome in flavor, size, etc.
Hope I can make it back to Namibia one day. Good game meats and incredible scenery. (Have considered S. Africa a few times but still don’t want to go there, yet.)
3 different game meats
Dinner buffet at a hotel on a safari. All kinds of game meat and I tried them all, ostrich included.
They only cook the meat over coals. Unfortunately, no matter how much you stress you want the steak rare, whether you get exactly what you order is a matter of luck. Like viewing wildlife.
You often see wild ostriches run not far from the highway. It’s like “hey, wanna race? Let’s go!”. Quite amusing to see.
These are extremely common in the wild
National animal of Namibia. Probably most common game meat in the country. I ate the steaks so many times because I knew I couldn’t eat any back home. Striking creature. Without the horns and dark markings on their heads they look just like cows.
Springbok
Safaris/game drives are not cheap but when you see the animals in their natural environment like that you quickly forget about the cost and/or hassle of getting there. This kind of memory is priceless to me.
In the high Arctic you can have a taste of a different kind of “game meats”. Seal, minke whale, Arctic reindeer etc.
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Cool beans, and meat.
Do frog legs count??
Not sure if it is still legal, but as a boy I do remember “gigging” bullfrogs with my Dad.
I know we both enjoyed eating them.
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my Louisiana buds look for the fresh “grassy” flavor in frogs legs!
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There is still some absolutely crashing poverty and, at some point, the government is bound to have to consider the question of land ownership. Hopefully, it will be dealt with more considerately than in Zimbabwe. And you go to a restaurant and, generally speaking, it’s still the white people eating and the black people working. But we did a township tour on the first trip which I expected to be a bit scary but was all very positive (not that I’d liked to have done without a guide)
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I’ve eaten both frogs/bullfrogs and ostrich, but found both to be very mild. Frogs are eaten a lot in Chinese cuisine, and while I would never prepare it myself, I’m quite fond of it and enjoy it at restaurants. My mom is the old farm girl and will butcher anything and she cooked frog for us often when we were young. Ostrich I’ve only had in hot pot, so thinly sliced. Very mild and was quite delicious; wish I saw this option more often. But neither were gamey or too funky from my recollection.
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Pronghorn antelope aren’t actually antelope.
I get that. Just the term used here for those.
Not joking…its semi-regular practice in FL to trap wild hogs, put them in a pen, and feed them Krispy Kreme donuts for a week or so before they are slaughtered…
If you think farm hogs are ill tempered, FL wild hogs are over there looking for somebody to hold their beer. They are downright mean and armwd with nasty tusks.
sounds horrid on many levels
at least FL’s also got iguanas!
Havent tried iguana yet but wild boar is tasty (no, I dont know if what I had was donut finished.)
Better than the boars finished on other fare in the Hannibal series. (Another plug)
I hear iguana tastes like chicken.
Here’s reptile on reptile
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I wish I could do the same to the Javelina that invade my yard and eat up the prickly pear cactus fruit. But alas, they are a “protected” species.
They are a very tough critter to deal with. They’re ruining a lot of stuff, though. Wild ferals can create mucho havoc. Wish there were an easy way to castrate them in the wild. That’d be a win/win.
I’ve tried iguana twice now. Second try was the last try. I’ve eaten rattlesnake (pretty decent), but iguana and chicken are very far aparat, IMHO. They’re just plentiful, so folkd with less meat money get something to eat.
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I’ve never had goat that tasted gamey to me. Granted, a lot of the time I’m making Haitian or West African styles that have so much other stuff going on you might not notice it. But I’ve also made it as a simple braise with mainly salt, and as “Italian Beef” (“Italian Goat”, rather) type dishes, and still don’t think it’s gamey.
Most lamb cuts aren’t gamey to me, but I can at least taste enough of the strong flavor in lamb leg to know why some dislike it. But I love it.
Rabbit, I also have no trouble with. I haven’t hunted in decades, so any rabbit I make (and this is maybe 1-2 times per year) is farm processed, so I probably wouldn’t remember if the wild rabbit of my youth was gamey or not. Same with venison - what I might get in a restaurant is probably farm raised, and it’s been so long since I’ve eaten wild venison I just don’t remember whether I thought it was gamey or not. But I know I liked it back then (the rabbit, too), so I don’t think I thought it was gamey. I also distinctly remember not liking squirrel, but that could simply have been because it wasn’t prepped well. I never hunted squirrel myself.
My kids all like goat and lamb (or all did, until kid3 went vegetarian). On the other end of the spectrum, my wife can’t abide even milder lamb cuts like chops, and if I cook leg I have to do it outside and let it rest outside, too, or just the smell will drive her from the house.
You know how a pork loin is all white meat at one end, and a lot of redder meat at the other? To her, even that red end of the pork loin (or a pork chop with a lot of the redder meat in it) is “too porky” (gamey) to her!
I think also that much of the US-sold lamb is from NZ or Oz. At least, that’s most commonly what I get retail, in the 3 states in which I’ve spent the most time shopping. I don’t know where the restaurants are sourcing from.
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We have a few lamb producers here in the PNW, but I’m not sure of their distribution range.
