In Videos: Squirrel Melts
I notice she didn't actually eat it.
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In Videos: Squirrel Melts
My favorite way to eat squirrel is simple: Dredge in flour, fry in butter and olive oil, then make a gravy. I'm partial to rabbit pie, but stew is good as well. And we tend to butcher our own deer. I like it many ways, but deer tips with wine sauce over noodles is very good. And our pigs always have the same name: Fred or Fredette. The cow names always change though. My kids call hamburgers Patches Patties, after the most recent slaughter. However, we don't mess with chickens. They are much easier to buy from the neighbor, and none of us like to clean the coop. P.U.! I could also tell you what we grow in the garden, but I think you get the point.
In Videos: Squirrel Melts
OK, I thought I'd weigh in here, as a hunter and self-styled gourmand. Yep, I eat squirrels, and in fact am writing about squirrel-eating in an upcoming issue of Meatpaper.
Squirrel is just another game meat. And Ed, to answer your question it can best be described as a darker, richer and quite frankly, less insipid version of rabbit meat - especially domestic rabbit meat - which can be boring. "Delicate," is how I'd characterize it if I am feeling charitable. I prefer squirrel to domestic rabbit, especially the gi-normous squirrels we get in the Sierra Foothills.
My issue with this gawd-awful video much the same as Jazzinx's - I love squirrel, but this recipe makes me gag. But then I am admittedly a foodie. Look at it this way: As atrocious as this recipe is, at least Mum did something with Little Johnny outdoors, which is an increasingly rare thing in this video age. I salute her for that, at least. Now to buy her a proper game cookbook...
In Videos: Squirrel Melts
I have eaten a lot of odd things in the past like horse, or snake-- I cannot say that I have had squirrel. It seems a bit odd; I bet it tastes like rabbit?
How 'nutty'!
In Videos: Squirrel Melts
Thank you Perky my friend. Being discriminating is not being discriminatory. It just means I am a food snob. Anyone see the squirrel with the cheese doodle pic yet? How could you eat something likes junk food?
We have talked about the guniea pigs a few months back. I really just do not have a taste for rodents at all. Or offal for that matter.
Of course it is a free country and you can eat anything you like.
In Videos: Squirrel Melts
There is a rabbit stew w/dumplings recipe of Jamie Oliver posted in Recipes. I've had rabbit stew and it was great - except for the need to be ever watchful of small bones. I would think squirrel doesn't taste a lot different.
Like the pigeon story - location is a key factor. I love venison given to me by a friend because they basically feed on corn and apples. I've had other venison that was too gamey for my taste.
So much of what we eat is cultural. My cousin lived in China for 3 years and came home from the grocery with what she thought was some sort of salami. A neighbor told her it was donkey penis, after they had consumed quite a bit with crackers. She felt compelled to throw it out.
FYI: Based on some other discussions, I feel that JerzeeTomato is NOT a bigot by any stretch of the imagination.
In Videos: Squirrel Melts
Guinea Pig is a favorite in Peru. It's kind of off-putting when you go through the markets and they are selling them alive. Like eating your daughter's hamster. But we did try it and it was good. I imagine a squirrel is not too far from that!
In Videos: Squirrel Melts
kerosena, some folks trap them but most of us use a 22 rifle, unlike traps it's a very quick ending. traps have always bothered me because they can cause much un-needed pain. some inexperienced shooters use shotguns but that tears up the meat and you have to spend time picking the buckshot out of it.
In Videos: Squirrel Melts
@-Olddad, must squirrels be shot, or can they be trapped? I ask because my grandmother told me that during some lean times, she served squirrel for dinner, but did not tell my grandfather what he was eating. I'm having a hard time picturing Gram with a gun (even a bb gun). So did she trap them, or was she pulling my leg?
In Videos: Squirrel Melts
Has anyone heard of Brunswick Stew? Apparently the original recipe included squirrel as the protein. Nowadays you see it made with smoked or unsmoked chicken and pork.
I've never had squirrel, but I understand why someone would hunt and eat them. I knew an old man who raised pigeons, for food, but he would never eat a pigeon living in Central Park or on the window ledge of a building in NYC. While I've never grown anything for food, not even a tomato, I still "got" why he did it.
I think it was Julia Child who once said that people need to come to terms with their food. Meaning she knew how that chicken came to be on the cutting board in front of her. I find that people who have not come to terms with where the meat on their plate comes from, have a problem accepting how that meat got there. Reminds me of the time I met a girl who thought meat was a certain part of a cow, not a piece of muscle.
Come to terms with your food and don't judge others because they have.
In Videos: Squirrel Melts
I've been told they make a great bbq. My undergraduate advisor was involved in an attempt to increase the population size of a rare subspecies of squirrel and they killed off a large number of individuals of a competing subspecies that wasn't rare. Instead of wasting all of the meat they had a bbq.
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