Horses have long enjoyed a close relationship with many humans, on a similar level to household pets, but I guess there are some who fancy them as food rather than pets.It’s splendidly healthy, with half the fat of beef and ten times the chloresterol busting Omega 3s. It’s said to taste similar to beef, our national dish.
It’s free from bird flu, mad cow disease, tuberculosis, foot-and-mouth and tape worm, the scourge of our traditional meat industry. And apparently Gordon Ramsey wants us to eat it.
This Tuesday’s episode of Channel 4’s the Fword featured the straight talking chef urging us to take horse meat to our hearts, or at least into our kitchens.
The show’s main stunt, sending the abrasive Janet Street Porter to hand out horse burgers at a racecourse, seems an unlikely way to win fans for the meat. The police were called and moved her on for engaging in “deliberately provocative act”, a charge which seems right on the money.
But it’s won him yards of column inches and started a national debate. What makes cowmeat an acceptable dinner, while horsemeat’s taboo?
Some would say, British sentimentality. Now that the combustion engine has made the horse as beast of burden redundant, horses have become pets. Most Brits would no more eat Dobbin than Fido.
But more than that, there’s the image of the horse as a noble beast, man’s companion and even saviour. Many of us were bought up on books like Black Beauty, The Horse and his Boy and the Little White Horse, not to mention TV’s Mr Ed. Other farm animals just can’t compete. Not so elsewhere.
Horsemeat is eaten as far afield as Kazhakstan, Japan and Sweden, where sales exceed those of lamb and mutton. The Belgians love horse, especially in steak tartare, and it’s a common ingredient in rustic Italian salamis. The French even have special butchers, called boucheries chevalines, with magnificent gilded horseheads hanging over the door.
To cook it, most recipe books recommend using the same method as beef. In fact, venison recipes are a better guide, since like horse it is a super lean red meat with a tendency to dryness.
The flavour is stronger than beef too, with an insistent sweetness and tang. Like lamb, another distinctively flavoured meat, it goes well with punchy flavoured herbs, such as rosemary, sage and juniper.
Link: Telegraph Image: Wikipedia
Tags: Horse Meat | Merits | Food
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