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

[goljerp]

What mishtaneh said, except with this caveat: fish are in a different category than "meat", so you could fish all you want (as long as you only eat the ones with fins and scales). Also, if you could do some sort of "live trap" for kosher birds (mmm, doves) then (assuming the animal didn't injure itself in the trap, and was healthy to begin with) you could probably kill it in a kosher way and eat it.

[dragontdc.livejournal.com]

So rabbit snares and cage traps... Possible.

[cellio]

Well, Thumper's not kosher for other reasons (no hooves), but cage traps and knowledge of sh'chita (slaughtering process) would work.

[goljerp]

Well, Thumper's not kosher for other reasons (no hooves), but cage traps and knowledge of sh'chita (slaughtering process) would work.

Yep. The problem with cage traps and kosher animals is that most of the non-bird species are basically large herd beasts. How do you trap a bison/deer/goat in a cage? The animal can't be injured before slaughter, so some sort of pit trap wouldn't work.