Many modern Europeans would agree with Becknell. Their continent has a badger species of its own, the European badger, which is considered a delicacy in rural areas. Wanting to see what all the hype is about, food blogger Nick Weston grabbed a recently deceased one off the side of a road in Sussex, England. Instead, I took the hindquarters and left them whole for cooking. In the big game section, Steve has an excellent recipe for smoked ham that works with any four-legged creature, including deer, pig, and bear.
I got duck breast on my first whiff. After five days of resting in the brine, I gave the meat a quick wash and dry. I should have emphasized the wash more, as the meat came out saltier than I would have liked—a result of the hams being so thin. Following that, the hams went on a pellet grill set at degrees. Since badgers are omnivores with the diet of a mini-bear, I treated the meat as if it could have trichinosis.
Once the internal temp hit degrees, which took about four hours, I pulled the hams from the grill and let them rest. The meat looked great and smelled great, with no greasy finish that you might expect from something in the weasel family.
Steve joined me with the inaugural bites. Like me, he was optimistic of the influence a good brine can have. He was right. Each bite had the texture and taste of a piece of red meat that had been brined and smoked. Some reporters were disgusted, while Queen guitarist Brian May, who protests the culling, said :.
I think we should seriously consider eating senseless people like this Clarissa whoever-she-is. I wonder if she would be best boiled or braised. People have eaten badgers for centuries and in some countries such as Russia, Croatia and China, they still do. Meanwhile, restaurants are increasingly serving food far less appetizing than badger meat.
Lionfish, a sci-fi-esque invasive species that gobbles up coral reef populations much to the horror of environmentalists, now appears on American and Caribbean menus in filet form and as fritters.
Consuming lionfish and wild boar is part of a growing trend: eating invasive species to keep numbers in check, which is exactly what Dickson Wright was getting at. Take the Shanghai hairy crab. The Chinese, horrified to discover Europeans were using their beloved crabs as animal feed, have offered to eat them instead. He has been eating badger most of his life: he stewed up a piece of back meat with the animal's genitals for supper last Thursday.
All his free meat comes from the roads around his home on Bodmin Moor. I've eaten badger for 55 years and I certainly haven't got TB. As with all meat you just make sure you cook it long and hot enough to kill any bugs. A badger will make a meal for two, says Boyt, though his wife Sue is a vegetarian.
So he often shares the animal with his son and daughter-in-law, who comes from Papua and is used to eating "maggots and grubs. And of course, the brain. You get that by putting a teaspoon in the hole in the back and rooting around.
To a modern cook, eating badger might sound like a terrible idea, but people who grew up in rural Britain during the second world war remember eating it and there are historic recipes for it from across Europe. Badger doesn't appear in any of the great 18th century British cookbooks, and though Dickson Wright says the animal has always been a staple, it seems to have been a food only for the poor. But in France blaireau au sang badger with blood is a well-remembered recipe.
In Italy and the Balkans rural people have a culture of badger-eating.
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