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

[dragontdc.livejournal.com]

That makes survival in the wild problematic, then.

[cellio]

You can forage (plants) and you can fish. If it is truly a life-and-death matter -- you've been dropped in the middle of a jungle full of poisonous plants, no water, and huntable prey, for example -- you are allowed to eat the animals, because with three exceptions Jewish law can and must be set aside to save a life, and kashrut isn't one of the three. But that doesn't mean you're allowed to make a lifestyle choice that makes keeping the law impossible; you can't choose to go live in that jungle under those circumstances.

[dragontdc.livejournal.com]

I see. Practical. Interesting topic.