I have been following @Diane Lane 's thread about the alligator that lives in the water close to where she lives, and that reminded me of the time when we served alligator steaks at our little restaurant in Idaho. Since we had the only Cajun food in that area, and we served a buffet, we had a fairly good business for a small country cafe. Bobby would order live crawfish and boil them, and people who had never tasted one before would come in to enjoy cradads and corn on the cob along with their buffet dinner. We had several families who were regular visitors, and one family had several children that always came in with them, and one of them asked Bobby if he could cook an alligator. The outcome was that Bobby ordered some alligator meat with his next seafood order, and we served the alligator steaks. The kids that had asked about eating alligator were absolutely thrilled, and happily went back to report to their school friends that they had now eaten an alligator . People loved it , and it was a big hit at the restaurant. I tried a piece, and it was actually very tasty, and did kind of remind me of chicken or pork. It seems to me that an alligator would have made a good addition to the food supply for early settlers to an area where there were gators, assuming that they killed the gator before he got the person hunting one.
I have had alligator but just gator nuggets, which do taste like chicken. If you have a store like Cabellas near you, oftentimes their grill serves meats that we in the US would consider to be exotic. I am sure you could get a good gator steak there, as they have ostrich, antelope and various types of game meats that we wouldn't ordinarily eat. These are some of the choices you can have when you order these various types of slightly unusual meats.
Yes I have several times... Each time it was fried and served with a spicy dipping sauce as an appetizer.
I've had crocodile a couple of times but not alligator...croc is a white meat..people say it tastes like chicken but I don't think it does, personally I think it has more of the taste and consistency of Swordfish...
No, I never have. But then, I'm not very adventurous when it comes to food. I've never had frog legs or snails either.
I've had frogs legs...in a Chinese restaurant in Paris...(errrk they were horrible).... I've had snails...escargot in Italy of all places.... I've eaten crocodile , ostrich, Kangaroo... (in fact I've got Kangaroo, not a whole one,,lol, but kangaroo steaks ..in my freezer currently) Ostrich is waaaay too gamey for me like Venison , it;s 100 % meat, and I like fat on my red meat, so I'm not keen on either of the latter ..but it's very good for you, being low in cholesterol..and high in protein. ..I've eaten all sorts of game birds, pheasant , partridge..Quail, woodcock... etc..
I am pretty sure that @Bobby Cole pounded the alligator meat (or did something to tenderize it) before he cooked it, and whatever part it was we had, it was not tough or stringy. It is probably one of those things that you have to know just how to prepare it for it to taste good. We also sometimes had soft-shelled crabs, and frog legs, shrimp, oysters, and of course, the crawfish. I didn't like the soft-shelled crab or the crawfish, and I wouldn't even try the frog legs, although we had two regular customers that would drive almost from Canada each week to have their frog legs. One couple had a swordfish, and they didn't kow how to cook it; so they traded it to us for several buffet dinners for each of them, and then we served the swordfish steaks.
I used to eat swordfish steaks a lot when I lived in Spain @Yvonne Smith until I learned they are extremely high in Mercury... I love crabs (but only the white meat) , shrimps, Prawns, Scallops..etc... but Euggggh not Oysters, which my husband loves...
Hmm, not gator or crock meat, just eat the regular food and now leaning towards veggies cooked and raw more these days for staying healthy. Some people eat rabbit too, not me though. I love a good pot roast of beef or a burger deluxe once in a while with french fries...today it's veggie burger and crumbles for spaghetti. We've gone more than a year free of bacon and prices have gone down too. That's life I guess.
There are some restaurants here in the region that serve alligator, and I've had it a few times. I didn't find it tough or stringy, but I also had the nuggets, not gator steaks. I've had fried frog legs, and they were good, but that was when I was much younger and a lot more adventurous. I've had escargot at a french restaurant, but they're not something I'd eat again. I've had a lot of crawfish (they're called crayfish back home, and as @Yvonne Smith mentioned, are also referred to as crawdads), and I'd eat those again, but lobster, clams, scallops and oysters are my favorite shellfish. Shrimp are good as well, but are really pushed here on the Gulf Coast, so I get tired of hearing about them. I haven't had fish in a while, so I'm going to have to cook some up soon.
We called them crabs in Michigan. We knew they weren't crabs but that's what they were called locally. When someone wanted to be technical, they might refer to them as crayfish. I never thought of eating one, though.
Ha @Carol Cook I was about to type that. They are called mud bugs down here, as well. @Ken Anderson I can remember when I was young and we would occasionally rent a cottage in New Hampshire or Vermont, always on a pond, and there were crayfish in the ponds. Unfortunately, one time, there were also leeches in the pond, yuck! We never thought of crayfish as food, either, but down south it's quite different, and they're very popular here. If someone wants to make quick money, they will pick up loads of them in Louisiana and transport them here. A lot of the offshore workers live over this way, and they'll pick some up on their way home. They then post them in our neighborhood group (or the other Facebook groups, particular the sales groups, like people do with their homemade tamales), and they are always snapped up.