Posted on 03/30/2011 5:08:26 PM PDT by upchuck
Looking for raccoon meat? You won't find it at a country convenience store in South Carolina after state health inspectors told employees to throw out their supply.
Tipped off by a complaint, inspectors recently found the cleaned raccoon meat in plastic bags inside one of the store's coolers, along with bagged ice.
"In my 28 years with the agency, it's the first time I've heard of this," Thom Berry, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, said on Wednesday.
"My inspectors, they see all kinds of things, but this is something new even to them."
[snip]
No law bans the sale of raccoon meat in South Carolina, but state and federal officials do not certify it as being safe for human consumption.
"It's kind of like squirrel," said Brett Witt, spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
When I was a kid, a local station in LA, (Lower Alabama) had a Saturday show called the Gene Reagan Farm Show. They had the Annual Coon Hash and Possum Stew Show, where locals would show up in the studio and declare: “Gene this is the best Coon Hash I iver et!” Got to love ‘LA’.
I’m older now and live in the city, but 50 yrs ago, my dad and I used to go hunting, and my mom would have rabbit or squirrel and biscuits by 8:30 on Sat. morning.
The article doesn't say they were selling the coon, just that it was in the cooler with USDA approved meats. Most local food codes are based on the USDA book. Can't have cross-contamination from un-approved meat in a plastic bag to approved meat in a plastic bag (however likely that might be).
I have no problem with folks eating what they kill. I've had coon and squirrel.
But that's the law. And it just dumber than a bag of hammers.
I was in Alaska, on an Army camp, and I couldn't allow fresh-caught salmon into my DFAC. Against the rules. Forget that I was a culinary school grad that excelled in food safety, and did the same point-by-point inspection of the fish that the USDA goons do. That doesn't count. I wasn't the RIGHT PART of the gooberment.
Did I point out that some of the rules are just STUPID?
DEFUND the federal government! We'll take care of defense.
But I'm not bitter.
/johnny
MMMMM Good Eatin!
Armadillos ain’t nothin but Possum on the half-shell.
To urban hunter, next meal is scampering by - Detroit retiree, 69, supplements his income by living off the land
Raccoon: It's what's for dinner
He rolls into the parking lot of Leon’s Thriftway in an old, maroon Impala with a trunk full of frozen meat.
Raccoon — the other dark meat.
In five minutes, Montrose, Mo., trapper Larry Brownsberger is sold out in the lot at 39th Street and Kensington Avenue. Word has gotten around about how clean his frozen raccoon carcasses are. How nicely they’re tucked up in their brown butcher paper. How they almost look like a trussed turkey … or something.
His loyal customers beam as they leave, thinking about the meal they’ll soon be eating.
That is, as soon as the meat is thawed. Then brined. Soaked overnight. Parboiled for two hours. Slow-roasted or smoked or barbecued to perfection.
Raccoon, which made the first edition of The Joy of Cooking in 1931, is labor-intensive but well worth the time, aficionados say.
“Good things come to those who wait,” says A. Reed, 86, who has been eating raccoon since she was a girl.
“This right here,” she says, holding up a couple of brown packages tied with burlap string, “this is a great value. And really good eatin’. Best-kept secret around.”
Raccoons go for $3 to $7 — each, not per pound — and will feed about five adults. Four, if they’re really hungry.
Those who dine on raccoon meat sound the same refrain: It’s good eatin’.
As long as you can get past the “ick” factor that it’s a varmint, more often seen flattened on asphalt than featured on a restaurant menu.
Eating varmints is even in vogue these days, at least in Britain. The New York Times reported last week that Brits are eating squirrels with wild abandon.
Here in Kansas City, you won’t see many, if any, squirrel ads in the papers. But that’s where Brownsberger was advertising his raccoons last week.
The meat isn’t USDA-inspected, and few state regulations apply, same as with deer and other game. No laws prevent trappers from selling raccoon carcasses.
As for diseases, raccoon rabies doesn’t exist in Missouri, state conservation scientists say. It’s an East Coast phenomenon. Parvo and distemper kill raccoons quickly but aren’t transferred to humans. Also, trappers are unlikely to sell meat from an animal that appears to be diseased.
“Raccoon meat is some of the healthiest meat you can eat,” says Jeff Beringer, a furbearer resource biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation.
“During grad school, my roommate and I ate 32 coons one winter. It was all free, and it was really good. If you think about being green and eating organically, raccoon meat is the ultimate organic food,” with no steroids, no antibiotics, no growth hormones.
And when people eat wild meat, Beringer says, “it reminds the modernized society — people who usually eat food from a plastic wrapper — where food comes from.”
Statewide, consumption of raccoon meat can be tracked somewhat by how many raccoon pelts are harvested each year. In 2007, 118,166 pelts were sold.
But there are plenty more out there, Beringer says. The raccoon population “doubled in the ’80s. There’s more now than when Missouri was first settled.”
He estimates there are about 20 raccoons per square mile of habitat.
In the wild, raccoons typically live five or six years. Populations that grow too dense can be decimated by disease, especially when temperatures drop, Beringer says.
“The animals huddle together, passing on the infections. In the winter, we sometimes have massive die-offs. If we can control the fluctuations in the populations by hunting and trapping, we can have healthier animals.”
Fur trappers, who harvest most of the raccoons sold in Missouri, “try to kill as humanely as possible,” says Beringer, a trapper himself. “It’s part of the culture.”
Pelts last year sold on average for about $17. They’re used for coats and hats, and many are sold to Russia. But the conflict between Russia and Georgia severely cut into the fur-trading market, Beringer says. “Pelts will probably be less this year.”
For the average person, who probably doesn’t spend much time thinking how a steer or a pig or a chicken might meet its maker, raccoons may seem too cute to eat.
Until you try one.
At the Blue Springs home of Billy Washington, raccoon, fish, bison and deer are staples on his family’s table.
On this day, it’s raccoon.
All night he has been soaking a carcass in a solution of salt and vinegar in a five-gallon bucket. Now he rinses the raccoon in his kitchen sink.
“Eating raccoon has never gone out of style. It’s just hard to get unless you know somebody,” he says as he carefully trims away the fat and the scent glands.
“My kids love eating game. They think eating deer and buffalo make you run faster and jump higher. My grandkids will just tear this one up, it’ll be so good.”
The meat is almost ready to be boiled, except for one thing: Although its head, innards and three paws have been removed, it still has one. That’s the law.
“They leave the paw on to prove it’s not a cat or a dog,” Washington says.
He cuts off the paw and drops the carcass into a stew pot, slices up a carrot, celery and onion, and sprinkles some seasoning into the water. Two and a half hours later, he transfers it to a Dutch oven. It looks a lot like chicken.
He bathes the raccoon with his own combination of barbecue sauces. Stuffs the cavity with canned sweet potatoes and pours the rest of the juice from the can over the breast.
“I follow the same tradition I watched when I was little. My uncle would cook ’em all day, saving the littlest coon for me,” he says.
“If stores could sell coon, we’d run out of them. It’s a long-hidden secret that they’re so good.”
After several hours, a delicious smell — roast beef? chicken? — drifts from the oven.
A mingling of garlic and onion and sweet-smelling spices.
And when Washington opens the lid, a tiny leg falls easily from the bone.
“See that? Tender as a mother’s love,” he says with a grin. “Good eatin’.”
And the taste?
Definitely not chicken. More like ... bear.
One man’s recipe
Billy Washington doesn’t use a recipe card, but here’s how he fixes raccoon:
•Take one skinned, headless, gutted raccoon. Thaw if frozen.
•Brine in a mixture of salt and vinegar overnight.
•Remove remaining paw, fat and scent glands. Boil raccoon in a stew pot with sliced carrots, celery and onions. Add seasonings.
•Transfer to a Dutch oven, fill the cavity with canned sweet potatoes, brush on barbecue sauce.
•Roast in oven, poking occasionally with fork to check doneness. Remove when the meat falls off the bone.
•Serves five.
/johnny
~ 1 raccoon, dressed
Dressed as what?
Most of ‘em come already dressed as a burglar.
In the 1930’s there was a thriving business on the railroad headed for Kansas City for rabbit. The only problem was that rabbits fetched 3-5¢ each and 22 ammo cost 1-2¢ each so you had to be a great shot! Anyway, the rabbits were stuffed in barrels and packed in saltwater and sent to provide cheaper protein to the urbanistas.
“A few years ago I heard an interview with a teenage girl on the radio that said her dad always brought home road kill for them to eat. She said they got snake quite a bit...”
Worked with a guy like that. He ate squirrel, raccoon and turtle killed on the highway if it wasn’t too mangled. He brought in some turtle soup one day. I passed on it. He always looked healthy and I don’t recall him ever getting sick.
To each his own I guess.
***The Other Other Other White Meat.****
Strange, in the South, “coon” was not the other white meat.
>> skinned and cleaned
I guess the *junior* Iron Chef gets *that* job.
When I hunted and skinned out raccoons back in the late 60’s and early 70’s in Nebraska when there was pretty good money in the hide industry, I decided they weren’t worth eating. You could skin em out and slice off chunks of meat, but cats and dogs on the farm wouldn’t eat it, something just wasn’t right about man eating coon meat. Just the impression the dogs and cats on the farm told me.
lawl
That's why they call you 'prep b*tch' when you are doing your interneship.
/johnny
Man, what we gonna use for tamales? No more raccoon?.......
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