Ok Paige, How do you make the gut's and brain's, lip's and A-hole's taste like the hot dog's at baseball field. Or anyone else that might have the same library as the survival mamma.
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Re: processing the entire animal
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 5:11 PMI haven't ever tried to prep intestine (chitlins) and stomach (tripe) from the get-go, but I know it's a long-time staple of southern and Mexican cooking, so check cookbooks and websites catering to those cuisines. Takes a lot of soaking and washing to remove all fecal matter from the intestines and even make them safe to eat to begin with. Intestines are also used as natural sausage casings, so if you have a good local butcher/sausagemaker, you might be able to trade them the raw intestines for some finished sausages. Intestine can also be turned into cord materials.
The skull meat and testicles of animals are edible, as are the more usual offal such as heart, liver, and kidneys (though I admit that I detest liver and kidneys personally). Chinese people also prepare pig ovaries and uterus as a medicinal food, though I'm not sure what it cures.
Marrow bones are delicious roasted and spread on toast. Leftover bones can be boiled for stocks, pulverized for fertilizer, used as snare bait for predators, or given to the dogs.
Hides and horns are obviously useful, though tanning hides is a long process to get a nice one. My first husband used to sell the horns from his kills to a local metalsmith who used them in making jewelry and knife handles.
For more ideas, I've heard that "The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating" by Fergus Henderson is good and there's also "Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore" by Jennifer Mclagan, which I've checked out from the library and immediately put on my "must own" list. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 6:36 PMhow about if I add this question to the thread topic:
How about other uses than food for processing the entire animal?
How do you get a useful length of sinew off an animal? How do you compound lenghts of sinew for longer lashings, bow-strings, fishing line etc? How do you make strong thread from intestines? (if I understand correctly, 'decomposing' sutures, used mostly on inner-organ repair surgery,(ruptured organs or gunshot penetration) are made from sheep intestines, right?)
I think tanning has it's own threads in the archives here, so I'll leave that out. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 6:43 PMtanning and hide's count's as processing the whole animal. Proceed Thousand. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 6:51 PMyou could also make a whistle out of a bone or antler...
don't forget your lucky rabbit-foot keychain!
And what more comfortable, plush way to wipe one's ass than with a fluffy white spotted owl. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 7:34 PMI cannot beleive the way you have spoken about the majestic spotted owl.
I am offended.
LOL
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Re: processing the entire animal
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 8:06 PMHere's a site with info on processing sinew:
www.sparrowcreek.com/Sinew.htm
And one about making gut string:
www.daniellarson.com/article.htm
And a pdf from an old book:
www.karlroyviolinbook.com/pdfs/...-6.pdf
And a collection of offal recipes:
www.cookitsimply.com/categor...15f.html
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Just a few minutes' work from your humble legal beagle. Hope you find it useful, inspiring, or at least entertaining.
(For the record, I like spotted owls more than I like most people) -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 8:41 PMPaige, your the best. You single guy's should be sending the survival mamma flower's. She could save your ass in the end time's.
I like horses more than most people too. It's just alot harder to wipe your ass with a horse. lol
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Re: processing the entire animal
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 11:02 AMFirst off, I think an old rag, or even some soaked cornhusks will do a better jon on wiping asses than a handful of very irate raptor feathers... Probably less painful too!
As to tendon prep, Tom Browns field guides have an excellent treatise on this subject. I tried it with a buck I got a few years ago and was able to make a fairly effective Bow with a tendon back and string. Unfortunately, Bugs got the bow and damaged it enough that it is now a wall hanging. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 11:05 AMTom Brown's books are great, I've checked them out from the library a few times. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 3:09 PMDoes anybody here eat the intestines and feet of chickens? They are very popular at the street venders in the Philippines. They put the intestines on bamboo skewers and BBQ them. I happen to like the intestines crispy but not burnt, and a nice cold bottle of beer. I don't really care about the feet. But, my grandmother grew up in West Virginia and she told me before she passed on that was her favorite part of the chicken when she was a young girl. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 7:59 PMI've had chicken feet at a dim sum restaurant. They tasted good, but they're a lot of work for very little meat. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 8:05 PMyeah... frog legs, chicken feet, escargot.... They might be an interesting novelty to try out, but as a practical food source I really just think they're WAY too much work for the small ammount of food you get out of them. Matter of fact, I even put crayfish in that category. So much damn work... I just find it kind of wasteful to cook a whole animal when all you can eat is this tiny little section of tail.
Some nuts are too bothersome for me to crack and pick the meat out. I guess I'm just a complainer for any food that isn't available in big, easily attained mouthfulls. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Thu, April 24, 2008 - 6:33 AMI was just reponding to the thread, I have eaten all kinds of wierd stuff in Asia, some stuff I did'nt even bother to ask what it was because I was afraid of the answer. Pig ovaries are eaten in the Philippines also, not to bad either. My favorite of all time is sugar cane rats. they are a cousin to our muskrats. Muskrats are eaten here in the US.
When my youngest daughter was a toddler in the Philippines she and her Grandmother used to get BBQ chicken blood. They put it in a cake pan let ot coagulate cut it into squares and throw it on the BBQ.
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Re: processing the entire animal
Thu, April 24, 2008 - 9:20 AMIt doesnt take long to make a meal out of frog leg's. If your using the boat and head lamp and good gig. round here there's so damn many bullfrog's at night you can probably snagg one and throw it in the bucket about every 30 second's. If you can get your old lady to pole the boat for you. lol
A fish head in a 5 gallon bucket can catch alot of crawfish. It doesnt take long to chop a tail and grab another.
Now I'm thinking about that movie lonesome dove. "have you ever ett a frog" -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Thu, April 24, 2008 - 9:47 AMI love crawdads, but they are a lot of work for a little bite. My sister and I used to catch them in the streams near our farm using cans of cat food as bait. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sat, April 26, 2008 - 7:04 PMRE: using more of animals, this article on my website on uses of he deer might be of some use. It's a free download, and there are a bunch more free articles on the same page that might be of interest to you guys.
paleotechnics.com/articlesindex.html
Also, we have a small booklet that's like a dead animal 101.. sort of an emergency or beginners guide. We have a lot of free stuff on the site, but this one isn't.... sorry, we have to sell something to get by. Hope this isn't considered spamming. A lot of the same stuff is in the article above, just not as general and sometimes not as in depth.
paleotechnics.com/catalogpa...r-SO-47857
Thanks for posting the cool gut string links!
Some thoughts off the top of my head.
Lungs can be Ok if ground up before cooking, but they still aren't all that great:)
Kidneys taste like piss, but I can eat 'em if I decide to. I've eaten a lot worse things.
I don't know anyone who eats spleens and I know some pretty hardcore people!
The stuff in the small intestines isn't that gross. Some animals have gut that is too weak to make casing. Turn inside out and scrape off the loose stuff. Wash well and preserve cleaned casings in dry salt.
Always cut bones open before making stock to get out the good stuff in the marrow. Bones are high in phosphorus. Use them as fertilizer. crushing first is much better than burning them. Don't cook bones that you want to make tools from as it can weaken them.
Great book to have!: Butchering, Processing and Preservation of Meat .Google it.
Brains are probably risky to eat with all the spongiform encephalopathies going around. That includes deer and elk at least. I prefer to avoid them all anymore. Better to save them for tanning.
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sat, April 26, 2008 - 7:46 PMWhat about meat around the spine in a deer? Have you heard anything about a mad cow type disease in dear? I know when they re-stocked elk in arkansas there was problem's with some kind of worm's in their brain's. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sat, April 26, 2008 - 7:54 PMChronic wasting Disease, I did'nt think it was this far east. If you ever see a deer or elk with it you wouldn't shoot it any way -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sat, April 26, 2008 - 9:20 PMThe conservation folk's in arkansas said it was that the elk wasnt used to the warmer temp's in arkansas was the reason for it. I don't think it's a problem anymore. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sat, April 26, 2008 - 11:00 PMMy take so far is not to eat brains of deer or elk period. That's the safest thing to do until further notice. I mean if you really need to that's another matter. They are now keeping an eye out for it in California, though there are no known cases. The meat near the spine is Ok, but the spinal cord itself isn't. It's all part of the same system and is the same as brains.. For that reason it's not a good idea to make chops that cross the spinal column, or to cut the animal down the center of the spine into halves as is often done. Both of these methods smear the gooey spinal cord stuff all over your meat. We still do this with local goats and sheep, but not wild animals, and certainly not a cow. These types of diseases are some kind of abnormal protein. Since they are not bacteria, fungus, virus or anything else alive, you can't kill them by cooking. That's my take on it to this point. I'm not totally sure about using them for tanning. Eggs yolks work the same way, so they are a good alternative in many cases. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 8:35 AMMy grandfather used to eat squirrel brains and eggs for breakfast, I read a while back that a local health department was puzzled over an outbreak of CJD,the human form of CWD and Mad Cow. They finally traced it to to eating the squirrel brains.
I watch this stuff fairly close as I hunt in Colorado every year, that is were the biggest outbreaks of CWD are. It was concentrated in the mountains, CDOW recently reported an outbreak in the Whitetail population over in the eastern plains. They think it started on an Elk Ranch. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 10:50 AMJust the idea of eating brain's makes me want to gag. When I was in grade school I saw a jar of cow brain's at the science fair and couldnt even eat maccaroni for month's after that. I've always read about tanning hide's with brain's. Though I dont know the proper measurement's for cup's of brain's per gallon of water or anything like that. TESTICLES, (balls) is also something I rufuse to eat. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 11:10 AM
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 10:36 AMI've never heard of people eating lungs. I always wondered why? they're such a big organ, and pretty solid. People eat liver, kidneys, intestines, stomach, heart, tongue, brain, but not lungs.... Why? Anybody know? -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 10:43 AM -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 11:12 AMCool lung recipe link. I've always actually thought that the best way to cook them might be like fried chips. I mean then the foamy texture might be of some benefit instead of just being weird. They taste Ok, I've just never been able to really enjoy eating them much. So, a chip like pork rinds sort of... bit o' lung? Sounds like a good trail snack... kids love 'em! -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 11:17 AMDammit, Steve, you had to go and mention pork rinds, now I'm hungry! -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 11:29 AMI can't stand pork rinds. If you've ever raised pigs, you'll know that pig skin is marinated in shit, all their life, no matter how clean you try to keep them. and it smells like shit. and if you touch a pig or rub him on the back or scratch his piggy ears, you'll have to wash your hands five times with pumice and soap to get the shit smell off your palm.
Having raised many many pigs, I can definitely tell you that pork rinds have a mild residual smell of pig shit. I can't eat them. I feel like I'm eating...well, you know.
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 11:33 AM"How about other uses than food"
that seems a more realistic and useful approach to me as well.
first, it can dangerous eating some of the organs like brains or kidneys due to virus/bacteria that can then affect humans when ingested. Also, it has just never seemed smart to me to eat another animals waste organs -- their waste and toxins aren't much better than hours. Though I know that some people can feed things like liver or other organs to their pets, so perhaps that's one use.
I know the fat can be used for things like soap. obviously skins can be used well. what about bones and blood? can the bones be ground down for something? -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 11:35 AMYou can make bone and blood meal for your garden, your plants will love it.
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 7:22 PMOf course living higher up on the food chain puts you more at risk for toxin buildup. The organs of commercially raised domestic animals are probably loaded with nasty stuff... Still, eating liver and Kidneys of organically raised and wild animals doesn't concern me too much... everything in moderation and all that. As far as disease goes, bacteria, parasites and virus' are killed by thorough cooking. Everything I don't use for food gets used for crab bait, goes in the compost, or get's buried in the orchard near trees, shrubs and vines. I would like to raise crawdads someday. They love that stuff.. any and all of it. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 8:04 PMI grew up raising my own pork, chicken, turkey, beef, and lamb... And we SPOILED the animals, they always had the richest, fullest diet you could stuff into them. And the meat was absolutely spectacular. Comparing homegrown meat to store-bought industrial produced meat is like comparing the best thanksgiving feast in your entire life, with a freezer-burned halfway cooked TV dinner.
Still, I've never bought into the whole 'hormones and toxins' thing about commercially produced meat. 'Pumped full of hormones' is an old wive's tale as far as I'm concerned. I've never met a beef farmer who had money to waste on massive ammounts of drugs. Silage is much cheaper and more effective. Same with the idea of 'toxins'... Seriously, show me a chemical study of a steak that finds traces of arsenic or cyanide or some REAL toxic compound that exists in commercially produced meat, but is absent in wild animals.... Toxins? it sounds believable, so people believe it. No further backing of evidence, no explanation of what a 'toxin' is. It's on TV, don't question it.
If mexicans can handle mexican water, and japanese can eat raw fish and rotten smelly soy beans (look up 'nato' beans) then I would like to believe that humans have some sort of coping mechanism for eating imperfect foods. Not exactly like a car motor that clogs up with any impurities in the oil. Go back far enough and you will find humans eating carrion and fruits that rotted enough to fall from trees that were too tall to reach.
Toxins. Put some hair on your chest. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 8:12 PMI wish you could get a decent stewing chicken at the store. One that's skin wasn't bone-white and nearly fat-free. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 8:22 PMCheck out Paiges new picture! mmmmmmmmmmm mmm
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 8:27 PMYou know, Paige, sometimes those 'chicken in a can' things are pretty decent. At first I thought they'd just be a funny novelty, but chicken in a can is pretty good, especialy for broth-based soups or stewing. At any rate, I think they should be part of anyone's 'year's supply of food storage'...
Which, if I have time, I'm going to buy a whole years supply for me and my wife on wednesday, at a local LDS storehouse if I can find one open. I'll let ya'll know how much a full year of food sets you back nowadays. Should be interesting.
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Re: processing the entire animal
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 8:20 PMThey may shoot the roid's and hormones to the the cattle in those massive feed lot's like around amarillo but far as I know nobody around here does. Green grass and a little grain do the trick.
I used to back pack with a guy out west that never treated his drinking water. He just scooped it out of a creek and drank it. He said he's been so sick so many time's drinking water in mexico that it just didnt bother him anymore. I alway's told him he still probably needed a dose of ivermectin. lol
If people were exposed to that kind of stuff more often they would probably become immune to it. I just dont want to go through giardia a few time's before it dont effect me anymore. Like a germ freak that is constantly washing their hand's with anti-bacterial soap is bringing down their immune system and making it easier to get sick. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 6:59 AMI don't know of anyone around here that shoots their animals full of anything, penicillan if they have too.
I am a bit older that some of you and I can remember when you could drink the water out of the streams in the mountains, sign of bygone days I think.
I disagree with you about the hog barns, they are pretty clean -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 7:54 AMI've drank directly from the sources of the cold water spring's along the river's out here if they havent been flooded and fouled up recently.
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Re: processing the entire animal
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 12:47 PM"Everything I don't use for food gets used for crab bait,"
ooh I forgot that some of the organs and blood can be used as bait for traps or to cover the human scent of an area.
"I've never met a beef farmer who had money to waste on massive ammounts of drugs."
live in the city. look at the 10yo girls who are overweight and going through puberty that early because of eating so much fast food meat, or using styling products with hormones in them. Then tell me hormones don't have an effect. ;) I think the key there is you don't know any individual *farmers* who are doing that. The larger companies don't operate like farmers, they operate like factories. Hence pump 'em up, grow 'em fast, get 'em out.
"Toxins. Put some hair on your chest. "
*L* I just saw a very funny video called "F*ck The Earth Day". at the end the guy says "eat some f*ckin rocks. it'll toughen you up." I'll have to find the link and post it. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 12:48 PMoh, and thanks for the tip re: garden. :) I haven't had the option of a garden due apartment living in like... well, ever... so I wasn't aware of that. -
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Re: processing the entire animal
Tue, April 29, 2008 - 6:21 AMThe bulk of all the beef in the US is produced by small producers, the same I don't think can be said for poultry and hogs.
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