Yes, it is also not just at slaughter, but animals stressed throughout life can have funny coloured meat and tastes different. It definitey affects chickens, which is why setting them in the cone helps as they are still and calm in there.
I was also told that stressed lobsters have a very different taste too.
Animals living an outdoor wild life with lots of exercise have “funny colour meat” and it “tastes different” too - it’s called game.
Not really available here as the locals prefer plain, light coloured meat without a “funny taste” but fine in the UK in season:
No game in Switzerland? I must have been dreaming then all of autumn when I found plenty of game in restaurants and butcheries around.
Venison and wild boar yes. What else have you found?
Deer and chamois.
Deer is a generic English term for all animals of the deer family, the meat thereof is all called venison, regardless of it’s a Roe, Red, Chamois, whatever.
Stupid, it is, and when you see several different meats on a menu here (CH, France, DE) they’re always named from the specific animal, usually male and female versions also specified.
So yeah, restaurants doing the traditional autumn game (==Wild) menus will usually offer meat from three or four different animals.
If English is so imprecise, then in German: Hirsch, Reh, Gemse, Wildschwein. Not all the same.
Grouse and pheasant are readily available here during the season for them.
Some farmers here have shops selling vegetables, fruits and meat. However, I’ve never seen chicken meat.
Here maybe the important distinction.
Here is in Switzerland.
Dunno where you are, in the fall I have ready access to boar, venison, deer… during the year, whenever its the season there’s good game in a couple of shops in Basel and online.
Yes, we know. There is no season for these. There’s a hunting season, sure but most Venison here seems to come from New Zealand anyway and it’s definitely not autumn there.
I was thinking of pheasant, pigeon, guinea fowl, partridge and so on.
It would appear I am not trying hard enough to look for these game birds here.
In the UK even supermarkets sell most of these in season including the discounters. Butchers naturally do of course.
I have not found crocodile or zebra either. Good supermarkets sell bison though, but it will be farmed.
You’re welcome. Its awful and I speak from experience (had it years ago at the “famous” Carnivore just outside Nairobi.)
Bizarrely I have seen crocodile in Denner here. I’m damned sure that wasn’t Swiss though.
Interestingly enough, all weird meats are usually described “tastes like chicken…”
We had pigeon in France and frankly I couldn’t eat it, knowing what it was, so (as usual) OH had to finish my portion. He didn’t mind because he thought it was excellent…personally I think it tasted a bit like chicken liver and it was “stringy”.
I liked partridge though.
I am not used to game meat so I can’t say I miss anything here.
I used to have a lot in the U.K. but never wild boar as that was wiped out in the UK a few hundred years ago and importing meat wasn’t a thing back then.
Italy is a good place to eat lots of game birds too.
Fun thread. What started out with KFC in Basel then went over lectures that we should not eat fast food to bare-handed butchering methods. And now that we have also addressed the “game is not really available in Switzerland” claim, we are at crocodile meat.
I had pigeon for the first time recently in China. I thought it was awful. Very hard meat, not much flavour, annoying to eat. Maybe it was the local way to prepare it, but I was not impressed.
On a market in China I have seen a whole crocodile from which they cut meat for skewers. It looked pretty unhygienic and the meat looked white and fatty. Very unappealing.