SC - Horsemeat, was Re: "cruel food"-

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Noemi wrote:

>I've been following this thread with inteterest since I come from a part of
>the US where a horse would be the next to last thing eaten, and not for any
>squamishness.  The cowoby mentality, which still survives, is that your
horse
>is your best and most dependable companion.  Eating your horse only
happened
>in very exteme cases where it was that or death, and happened rarely
because
>you can almost always find a wild critter to eat around here.


Look, I happen to hail from Skagafjörður, the region of Iceland where the
horse reigns supreme. My grandfather had some cows, and he had 400 sheep and
knew each and every one of them by name. But it was his horses that he
loved, and talked about all day long. We love our horses. We use them only
for riding. They are our trusted friends and companions, our pride and joy,
we write poems about them, some of us spend half our life on horseback. And
yes, we eat them. Maybe that is the Viking mentality ...

>My question is what does horse taste like?  My father has eaten horse (it
was
>during WWII in Germany and was all they could get) and said he prefers
>rabbit. . .


The meat of a young horse or foal is rather similar to beef but even leaner.
Some people describe it as having a sligthly sweet taste. If someone served
it to you and told you it was beef, you probably wouldn´t know it was not.
The meat of an older horse is coarser and fattier and the fat is yellowish
and quickly goes rancid. I´m not partial to it but some people prefer it;
the meat of our old fat mares is exported to Japan, where it is eaten raw in
thin slivers, I believe.

I´m not sure if this goes for other breeds than the Icelandic horse, as I´ve
never knowingly had horsemeat elsewhere.

Nanna

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