broadening my culinary horizons

[cellio]

Tonight the butcher had a sign advertising fresh bison. From a species point of view bison is kosher, but you rarely find it at all, let alone slaughtered according to the laws of kashrut. I've never tasted bison, so I was curious.

I decided to have the bison and some beef concurrently, to more directly compare the tastes. Also, the bison was $14 per pound, I didn't even know if we would like it, and I wanted to hedge. So I bought one bison steak and some beef steak of comparable thickness (so I could cook them together), and we each had half of each.

Verdict: tastes like ch--... no, actually, it's similar to beef, but we both found it to be more tender and more flavorful. It did not have that gamey taste that I vaguely remember venison having back when I ate that. I would definitely enjoy eating this again, though I will shell out $14 per pound only very infrequently. Judging from availability trends, though, that's not a problem. :-)

I don't know how much of the tenderness was due to its bison-ness and how much to the cut. (It was a shoulder steak, for what that's worth. Doesn't mean anything to me.)

Comments

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

$14/lb is a very good price for kosher bison. We ordered some from Fisher Bros., a kosher butcher in Manhattan (yes, I know, I should expect it to be expensive). They, in turn, ordered the actual meat from a shochet in South Dakota, if memory serves.

It was good, but not worth the $20/lb that we paid. :-)

[cellio]

Ok, you're saying $14/pound is very good, while estherchaya is saying that's way high. Clearly we both need to go shop from her butcher. :-)