I had wild rabbit at a restaurant where the chef cooked meat he hunted himself. It had a really strong flavour I couldn’t quite name. I could see other people enjoying it, but not me personally.
There was a sign that warned diners to watch out for free prizes (shotgun pellets). I didn’t come across any, but I was wary of chewing too hard in case I did.
Here I see a lot of people who have been served badly prepared game. For any meat that tastes too gamey, if you’re not sure how to prepare it, there are some tricks that work pretty much everytime:
- Make an infusion of ginger by boiling it for half an hour. Lot of ginger, the water must taste spicy. Then soak the meat in it overnight. It won’t really live a gingery taste in the meat, so it’s good for most preparations.
- Don’t roast, but braise. Red wine, juniper berries, rosemary, cloves, bayleaves, and laurel are good with most wild animals and musky meats: deer, wild boar, mutton, rock goat, etc etc. Sheepmeat and goatmeat can also go with a lot of cumin, turmeric, chili, cinnamon and cardamom, if you want a more central Asian vibe.
Carp. Had it in poland. The toughest fish meat I’ve ever had, riddled with tiny annoying bones. Tastes a bit like discount supermarket proscuitto… not exactly horrible, but it was so much effort to eat the damn thing to boot
Kangaroo
Any wild ungulate. I’ve had some rodents like squirrels and nutria and so long as you let the meat chill for a couple days, tastes surprisingly good! But I’ve had wild boar, deer, moose, bear, and horse and they was some pretty rough experiences.
I have yet to find seafood that I like.
Irony of ironies is that I love fishing. Luckily anything I catch worth keeping my wife is more than happy to eat.
People always tell me that good fish shouldn’t taste/smell fishy. I retort that I suppose good beef shouldn’t be beefy either.
I’m willing to hear people out, try different fish prepared in different ways, still haven’t found one that I liked, at best they’re mostly tolerable.
I’ve figured out that I generally tend to enjoy freshwater fish over saltwater. If I catch a couple nice trout I’ll eat that for dinner with my wife instead of having to make a separate dish for myself, I won’t hate it, but I won’t like it either and I’d probably rather have a hot dog.
And I like raw fish better than cooked.
I might actually kind of like raw oysters, but they are in no way worth the cost.
Lox isn’t bad, but I’d prefer just about anything else over it.
There are a couple fish-based products out there that are so far removed from fish that they’re hardly worth mentioning for the purposes of this comment that I do enjoy, like Worcestershire sauce and Asian fish sauces, katsuobushi, Caesar dressing, Crab Rangoon (let’s be real, you could probably leave the crab or “krab” out of most takeout rangoons and it wouldn’t change much) some Japanese fish cakes, etc.
The absolute worst is shrimp though. Nothing about shrimp is appealing to me, the taste, smell and especially the texture are all pretty repulsive.
I’m not otherwise a guy with a lot of food hangups and consider myself a pretty adventurous eater. Weird tastes, textures, bizarre fermented stuff, strange meats, etc. are all generally OK in my book, there’s not many other foods out there that I don’t enjoy. In my house right now I have some double salt salmiak licorice, a bottle of Malört, a wide selection of hot sauces going up to around 1 million scoville, I’m pretty sure I have both Vegemite and marmite somewhere in my fridge, some very peaty scotches, and plenty of other very divisive foodstuffs that I enjoy.
I have tentative plans to visit Iceland next year, so I’ll probably end up torturing myself with some hákarl at some point. And I don’t intend to seek it out, but if it happens to be offered to me for free somewhere I may consider trying whale, which I suppose is technically seafood.
Most freshwater fish sucks. And all offal is awful.
Edit: Mutton is also garbage tier meat lamb is pretty good though.
Human tastes pretty weird. Like pork but much more salty.
Saying worst meat is a disrespect to the animal that was killed
Oyster. Anything with the consistency of snot that you’re supposed to swallow without chewing isn’t food. I can make my own salt water that tastes much less disgusting.
As an oyster fan, I can confirm that different species make a pretty enormous* difference to both flavour and texture.
*within the confines of slimy salty shellfish meat
I quite enjoy a half dozen sea-snots (just fresh with a wedge of lemon please), but I can see the lack of appeal.
Tucking into fresh oysters with lemon juice and tobasco is one of the only times I enjoy being alive
tucking in to anything salty with lemon and tabasco is also pretty good though
You can totally chew them
I don’t hate myself that much, though.
You’re not supposed to chew them?! I love oysters but I chew them up.
I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to chew them. I don’t know how you’re supposed to get any of the oyster flavour otherwise.
Hear me out. Have you tried them grilled in garlic butter with a little sprinkle of parmesan?
If it’s not for you then you won’t get any hate from me. I just wanted to throw that out there.
Any “big game”. Moose taste like swamp.
Venison can be good if it’s properly butchered and stored. It so often isn’t though. People will shoot a deer then leave it to hang for a day in 50-60 degree weather. Just gross.
Bears are too greasy. And they’re too smart, eating them is just bad karma.
A lot of game meat can be good, people just have no clue what to do with the processing side of it. They’ll spend thousands of dollars buying the most ridiculous gear to kill the damn thing, and then just fail at butchering and preserving. Hunting is the easy part.
As someone who just bought land and is learning to hunt, this is a very interesting comment.
They’ll spend thousands of dollars buying the most ridiculous gear to kill the damn thing, and then just fail at butchering and preserving. Hunting is the easy part.
Sounds like advice that should be remembered.
Most people make the mistake of harvesting old bulls. The young ones are tasty.
Crocodile can be a bit hit and miss. Supposedly ‘tastes just like chicken’ but there was an extra flavour I can’t describe.
From my experience, between gator and frog you have
Gator: chicken with a hint of fish
Frog: fish with a hint of chicken
I can’t speak to crocodile, but I have eaten a lot of gator. If it’s not prepared properly it goes from tasting like water chicken to tasting like swamp thang.
An undercooked venison burger. I can’t remember what it tasted like when I ate it, but coming back up it was very unpleasant
Cockroach (if that counts) and rat.
What’s the story with the rat
We’re just glossing over the cockroach, huh?
I had a salt and pepper fried cockroach once. It was like a papery gusher with questionable insides
Those words in that order are a pretty wild ride.
I ate a chicken ball dipped in spicy peanut sauce one time because my dad told me it was a chicken ball. It was the testicle of a chicken. It actually tasted fine before I found out what it was.
Woof. I haven’t had nearly the same adventures in meat as you have, but I can say that duck tongue is gross.
Another one of those things that taste pretty ok if you don’t know what it is. I think that’s why hotdogs are popular.
Street food vendor was selling kabobs. Later found them catching and cleaning rats in a nearby alley.
Yikes, did you notice something was off when you ate it?
It was seasoned really heavily. Tasted pretty bad as I recall but honestly my memory of the actual taste and texture has been overrun by the memory of finding out what I just ate.
You said not lamb but lamb. Nothing will ever taste worse than the lamb steak I had from a high end Brazilian churrascaria once. It straight up had the taste and texture of poop. Thinking about it makes me gag.
That’s also where I learned how much I hate filet mignon
What would your favourite meats be?
I’m honestly not a big meat eater but venison is good. I’m a bigger fan of sausages and smoked meats.