Anyone know how to cook Gopher Snake?
Addie Greene
fridge right now. It's already skinned. It's fresh - we run
over it a day ago, and it's been kept cool since.
Does anyone have any (serious) ideas as to what to do with it next?
Besides grossing people out that is. :-) How do I prepare it?
Thanks, Peter (& Addie, who gets credit for skinning it :-)
Addie Greene
D. Toczyski
Why don't you try recipes for alligator. They're both reptiles and may
therefore share the same taste and texture. You could also just assume
that the "if it's exotic, it tastes like chicken rule" is correct and go
from there. Finally, You might want to look it up in the Joy of cooking.
They have recipes for a lot of weird stuff (eg raccoon and possum)
Jerry Lovejoy
>I'm absolutely serious. I have a 3-foot long dead gopher snake in my
>fridge right now.
>
>Thanks, Peter (& Addie, who gets credit for skinning it :-)
Many years ago my wife and I were served deep-fried rattlesnake at a gathering at Eastman Lake near Chowchilla in Central California=
.. As near as we can recall the "snake" was prepared by marinating in wine, herbs (mostly garlic), and butter, then rolled in flour=
and deep fat fried until crisp. To be fair, it was very boney, but on the bright side...it did taste just like chicken!
Jerry and Jeannette Lovejoy
>
nicole bernadette hansen
thousand miles away from my books right now, but _Unmentionable Cuisine_ by
Charles Schwabe is perhaps the best resource for recipes for strange animals
and strange parts of regular animals. He is a veterinarian at UC Davis and
has collected together hundreds of recipes from all over the world.
Marjorie Rosen
: I'm absolutely serious. I have a 3-foot long dead gopher snake in my
: Does anyone have any (serious) ideas as to what to do with it next?
: Besides grossing people out that is. :-) How do I prepare it?
: Thanks, Peter (& Addie, who gets credit for skinning it :-)
A friend of mine successfully makes stew out of all types of snake.
Marjorie
Bill Hilbrich
: I'm absolutely serious. I have a 3-foot long dead gopher snake in my
: fridge right now. It's already skinned. It's fresh - we run
: over it a day ago, and it's been kept cool since.
: Does anyone have any (serious) ideas as to what to do with it next?
: Besides grossing people out that is. :-) How do I prepare it?
: Thanks, Peter (& Addie, who gets credit for skinning it :-)
Prepare it the same way you would any firm piece of fish.. Although since
you are going to have to clean it, you might as well try to remove the
meat from the bone... Then either steam it with lemon slices or you could
make a chodder. Depending on who you feed it to, it might be a good idea
to agree with them when they mistake it for chicken B^)
Andy Pforzheimer
In article <3tg57g$n...@news.rain.org>, Addie Greene (lan...@rain.org) writes:
>We came, we saw, we ate it. Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions. I
>ended up largely improvising. The write-up follows:
>
>Skin and gut the snake; cutting off the thin tail, pull the
>skin up toward the head. The skin doesn't want to come off
>the head very much, so you probably need to chop that off
>too. (We kept the skin - in fact that's why we got the snake
>when we run it over, for its skin; the cooking idea came
>after we've gone through all the trouble of stripping the
>carcass, and felt like throwing the rest out would be a
>waste of our effort).
>
>After throwing out the internal organs, wash the body cavity
>out with hot water. You now have a long stretch of meat
>wrapped around a spine and ribs.
<midsection deleted>
>***
>
>And that's all folks. Happy experimenting!
>
>Peter the Roadkill Devourer and Addie the Snake Eater.
>
This was my favorite post of the month. I have saved it in my
Special Recipes file.
APforz
(still smiling)
Ell-Piret Multer
>From: hilb...@magellan.cloudnet.com (Bill Hilbrich)
>Subject: Re: Anyone know how to cook Gopher Snake?
>Date: 5 Jul 1995 21:18:54 -0500
>Addie Greene (lan...@rain.org) wrote:
>: I'm absolutely serious. I have a 3-foot long dead gopher snake in my
>: fridge right now. It's already skinned. It's fresh - we run
>: over it a day ago, and it's been kept cool since.
You might try your favorite rattlesnake recipe on it. <g> Actually, that's
closer to the truth than it sounds. Most snake can be fried like fish quite
well. I wouldn't do anything too unusual with it. Most unusual meats can be
cooked quite simply so that anyone wanting to savor the unique flavor can do
so. Loading it down with barbeque sauce, for example, while doable, would
not allow the subtle flavor to reveal itself. A simple dish of snake and
chips would be wonderful. Just slice, dip in batter and fry.
amanda toering
>
>We came, we saw, we ate it. Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions. I
>ended up largely improvising. The write-up follows:
>
>Peter the Roadkill Devourer and Addie the Snake Eater.
So...did it, uh, taste like snake? I'm in awe of your bravery and
intestinal fortitude. I can't eat things from which I'd normally run away
screaming.
I, for one, will always welcome reading about any meals y'all decide to
post.
amanda
Addie Greene
ended up largely improvising. The write-up follows:
Skin and gut the snake; cutting off the thin tail, pull the
skin up toward the head. The skin doesn't want to come off
the head very much, so you probably need to chop that off
too. (We kept the skin - in fact that's why we got the snake
when we run it over, for its skin; the cooking idea came
after we've gone through all the trouble of stripping the
carcass, and felt like throwing the rest out would be a
waste of our effort).
After throwing out the internal organs, wash the body cavity
out with hot water. You now have a long stretch of meat
wrapped around a spine and ribs.
Cut the more bony parts of the body off - those being the
two ends, neck- and tail-wise. You can use those as stock in
a soup - just boil the meat as you would that of a chicken,
add veggies etc according to your favourite recepy.
Cut the more meaty parts of the snake into thumb-long
pieces. The spine is tough, hack! Marinate for a few hours
in Teriyaki Sauce, with three cloves of garlic (minced) and
some garlic powder, some red wine vinegar, some cooking
wine, and, finally, a couple of tbspoonfulls of honey.
While the snake marinates, chop one each of a red, yellow,
and green pepper, half an onion, some Chinese cabbage,
perhaps carrot (I was out), and fry for a bit, then pouring
in the marinate from the snake - this should obviously be
after it's sat in it for a while :-) - add water, and cook
until tender.
As for the snake-chunks, deep-fry them till crisp. Deep-
frying is necessary because the meat is forced into a tube-
like shape by the ribs, and coils strongly when heated, and
I wasn't able to make flatten it against the frying pan to
my satisfaction - I ended up pouring in some left-over stir
fry oil till the pieces were covered, and heated till they
were golden-brown - by that time the edges, which _do_ touch
the pan, were black.
Now, the frying-to-a-crisp is advised because the snake is,
after all, mostly bone, with some muscle wrapped around it.
When it is that deep gold-brown colour, the ribs become
edible to a large extent (especially the ones near the ends
of each piece), cruching nicely in your teeth. The best way
to eat the snake, I found, was to bite at one side of the
spine and pull down, pulling the meat off the ribs. It
separated nicely, when the ribs weren't "crunchable",
leaving behind a neat, fish-bone-like skeleton, except the
bones are sharply curved.
Serve the veggies and sauce over steamed rice, with the
snakeribs on the side, to eat with your fingers, like spare-
ribs. (In fact I think I inadvertantly approximated a honey-
garlic spare-rib recepy, eh? I don't really know since this
is the first meat I've had in years).
***
And that's all folks. Happy experimenting!
Peter the Roadkill Devourer and Addie the Snake Eater.
Anne Bourget
WARNING: READ NO FURTHER IF YOU BECOME NAUSEOUS EASILY...OR NOT SO EASILY.
I hope that the fellow who prepared and ate the Gopher Snake reads this.
My questions are posed in earnest and are not an attempt to be funny or
cute. It is just that I am a very curious person.
When you say gut the snake, just what does that mean? Are there organs
that run the length of its body? Or are they all rather compactly centered
near the head? Is its stomach the whole inside of the snake? Is it similar
to deveining shrimp?
And this thing about spine and ribs...ooooh...are there millions of tiny
ribs or just a few? Do they run the entire body? I know the answer to my
next question would have to depend on the size of the snake, but after
you take out its organs and spine and ribs is there much left?
For some reason I am flashing on Michael Moore's film "Roger and Me." An
unemployed GM factory worker is making ends meet by raising and selling
rabbits. And she is very accommodating. She asks her customers, "Pet or
Meat?" The former gets you a cute bunny, and the latter a skinned and
gutted rabbit ready for the cooking pot.
Anne
--
____________________________________________________________________________
Anne Bourget bou...@netcom.com
Mary f
>
>In article <3tg57g$n...@news.rain.org>, Addie Greene (lan...@rain.org) writes:
>>(We kept the skin - in fact that's why we got the snake
>>when we run it over, for its skin; the cooking idea came
>>after we've gone through all the trouble of stripping the
>>carcass, and felt like throwing the rest out would be a
>>waste of our effort).
>>
>
><midsection deleted>
>>
>>And that's all folks. Happy experimenting!
>>
>>Peter the Roadkill Devourer and Addie the Snake Eater.
>>
>This was my favorite post of the month. I have saved it in my
>Special Recipes file.
>
>APforz
>(still smiling)
>
I enjoyed this one too.
Did you see that moosemeat, it's road kill :-)
Mary f.
|\ _,,,~~~,,_
/, .-'`~\ ~-. ;-;;,_
|,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-'
'-~~''(_/--' `-'\_)
It's a widdle pud
jac
>From: Jerry Lovejoy <fb...@quiknet.com>
>Subject: Re: Anyone know how to cook Gopher Snake?
>lan...@rain.org (Addie Greene) wrote:
>>I'm absolutely serious. I have a 3-foot long dead gopher snake in my
>>fridge right now.
>>>Does anyone have any (serious) ideas as to what to do with it next?
> How do I prepare it?
>>
>>Thanks, Peter (& Addie, who gets credit for skinning it :-)
Bob Engelbardt
>Many years ago my wife and I were served deep-fried rattlesnake at a gathering
>at Eastman Lake near Chowchilla in Central California=
>.. As near as we can recall the "snake" was prepared by marinating in wine,
> herbs (mostly garlic), and butter, then rolled in flour=
> and deep fat fried until crisp. To be fair, it was very boney, but on the bright
> side...it did taste just like chicken!
So why not just eat chicken :))
Bob Engelbardt
Kailua, Hawaii
bobe...@aloha.com
Mike Welsch
>I'm absolutely serious. I have a 3-foot long dead gopher snake in my
>fridge right now.
>Does anyone have any (serious) ideas as to what to do with it next?
>How do I prepare it?
>
I prepared a small rattlesnake last week in this way:
Saute sliced onion, celery, and mushrooms. After a few minutes, lay coiled
snake on the cooking vegetables, add a can of chicken broth and a large crushed
clove of galic and simmer (approx 10 minutes, depending on size of snake) or
until snake is cooked.
Separately cook white rice.
Present the snake coiled on a bed of white rice, with vegetables filling the
center of the coil. The meat will peel off of the snake in long strands along
the backbone, not unlike linguini noodles. In this way, you avoid the problem
of bones. A 30 inch snake served four as hors d'oeuvre.
-----------------------
mike welsch
m.we...@az05p.bull.com
fe...@is.co.za
How did it taste?