Tag Archives: meat

Eating Balls – Cooking with Testicles?

by Nancy Huynh on 2010/06/25 in International

Many men would grimace at the idea of eating balls – testicles – of an animal. Perhaps men are better equipped to understand the pain these animals would have gone through in losing their balls, or perhaps it is simply too close to home. As a woman, I have no issue with eating testicles, though I haven’t had to the opportunity to. This might give new meaning to the moniker some alpha women have been given – ball breakers. The whole idea of eating testicles reminds me of an old Hong Kong movie, where the protagonist was rumoured to be highly endowed and great in the sack because of his weekly lunch of wonton noodles and bulls balls. Guys, take whatever you want from this myth or fact; maybe your girlfriend, wife, or partner might be great-full you gave testicles a try. I’m not guaranteeing anything here.

Depending on where you live, eating balls may not be uncommon at all, and can even be considered a delicacy. In Western Canada and the United States, where cattle ranching is a major industry, Rocky Mountain Oysters, or Prairie Oysters (a nicer regional name for testicles) can be found in restaurants as appetizers. In these ranching regions, they are usually served battered and deep fried. Considering how much beef North Americans consume, there certainly are plenty of Prairie Oysters to go around.

Keep in mind that the animals were never killed primarily for their testicles, but rather the removal of testicles is a common husbandry and culinary practice. So if you’re a meat eater, you are only part and parcel of a food system that practices castration of livestock. Weather you have the balls (pun intended) to eat testicles is a whole other matter entirely.

If you have read this far, you might be surprised or interested to know that there is a cookbook specifically for cooking testicles. And above all, it is written by a man. Chef Ljubomir Erovic, from Serbia where this type of offal is also a delicacy, has been cooking with balls for over 20 years, and two years ago published The Testicle Cookbook – Cooking with Balls. The book contains recipes for a variety of dishes, including pizza and meat pie. Such a book is bound to irk a few people:

  • “the perfect gift for the gourmet chef who has everything, or your friendly neighbourhood feminist vegetarian” [bookfail.com]
  • “the dudes gota be gay im suprised his wife hasnt questioned his obsesion with the nuts.” In the comments at [geekologie]

Clearly, the sentiment towards eating testicles has something to do with different cultural discourses on gender. I’m neither a raging feminist, nor really a feminist at all, but why is it that in dominant mainstream North American culture, organ meat is considered weird?

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“Fries or Salad with your Filet Clone-non, Sir?”

by Wei Su on 2010/06/09 in International, North America, World Recipes and Ingredients

“The End of Food” – is titled so appropriately in Thomas F. Pawlick’s 2006 expose of the state of our food supply (morbid but true). Enter – BGHs, GMOs, pesticides, synthetic chemicals, food additives, artificial colour, antibiotics, nitrates/nitrites, sulfites, refined, heavily processed, high fructose corn syrup-ed “food” (and the list goes on and on and on….) – is anything we are eating today truly “edible”?

Well on top of an already ridiculous amount of yummy chemicals and bio-engineered selections…let’s add animal clones to the mix!

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Would You Eat Horse Meat? I Did

by Nancy Huynh on 2010/06/04 in International, North America

We’ve all heard the stereotypes about certain cultures eating certain animals that most of us find particularly gruesome. Perhaps these animals are pets in our lives, ‘man’s best friend’, but should we deny their tastiness and cultural significance? The mainstream North American diet is as boring as chalk – or at least I think so. And so a few years ago, I decided I would eat anything. Living in Toronto, this statement is rather safe to make.

Two months ago, I ate horse. It was delicious. I dined upon this stallion of an animal at the Black Hoof – a cafe specializing in charcuterie, non-mainstream meats, and offal. It tasted quite good, sweeter than beef or pork, and apparently much leaner too. However, it did not arrive in steak form, but rather made into sausages, and chopped up raw with hot sauce. If I was not told it was horse, I probably would have thought, ‘wow what delicious beef’.

I’ll admit, being acculturated to mainstream North American food, I did find eating horse meat a little strange, though really, no stranger than eating rabbit. Horse meat is actually not as stigmatized in many parts of Europe as you would have think. Though a taboo to eat in English-speaking countries, it is not so in most parts of France and Italy. And let’s be honest, British food is not often revered for being flavourful. While France and Italy are honoured for their impeccable culinary skills, I wonder if monkey meat (brain) would ever be appreciated as a sophisticated delicacy in North America – maybe if the French and Italians started eating it too.

In Canada, horse meat is most readily available in Quebec, and can supposedly be purchased from high-end butchers in Toronto and Vancouver. And so what one may consider as grotesque, others may consider a gastronomical delight, a food that the sophisticated tongue can only appreciate, but I simply think it is delicious, and doesn’t taste like chicken.  But no disrespect to the chicken:  an animal died so we could eat, and even though factory-farmed chicken tastes like cardboard mixed with white paste, we must appreciate its life and death just the same.

I will be returning to the Black Hoof in Toronto next week with a friend, and hopefully she will appreciate this awesome flavour and not think of images of Black Beauty and ‘My Little Pony’. In the next few weeks, I will be tracking down some horse meat from a butcher, and hopefully getting my hands on a copy of the out-of-print Carlson’s Horsemeat Cook Book. Check back for my attempt at COOKING horse meat.

Which animals would you eat? Which ones would you never eat?

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